apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

that quote sounds very confucian - if you have everything straightened out in your house then society functions. gives a new meaning to "housecleaning" especially in an election year!

Oh, sweet Lord, if only it were true. I'm currently trying to pare down and green up, but I'm a geezer by anyone's definition. I've learned, in 6-plus decades, that people just simply aren't right much of the time. I don't know when it all went wonky and became distorted and mean, but I fear it's going to take a miracle to turn it around. If doing what I'm doing can help, praise Allah.

When the goal of working on the home is create comfort and harmony for your family and guests, the results will be positive. But plenty of people work on their homes and its decor to display status and indulge their consumption compulsion. The result is homes that don't nurture the people in them. As with anything, working on the home has to be approached in the right spirit.

(This comes from having lived for a time in a beautiful, well decorated home that did nothing to help the happiness of the people living there because it was about the stuff, not the people.)

so few responses to this lovely post. even here on AT I'm often mazed at hopw quickly things can turn nasty. THIS is the point and I'm making a new determination to live said point more vividly.

I shared a beautiful apt with a man for seven years. It was 'out of a magazine' our friends used to say. In reality, it was empty and cold because there was no love there. That was our dirty little secret.

Never having heard this quote, it's making me kinda' weepy. Not only is is beautiful - but true. I grew up through the 50s and 60s and although they had their share of issues, I think in my lifetime that's as close to peace on earth as I will ever see. I agree with 39520expat that something went wrong somewhere. In a jaded and cynical world, it would be nice to think we could change the world one home at a time.

Having a healthy, beautiful home lifts our spirits up, I've been in shanty towns that look happy and cheerful because those who inhabit it have made it a point to live in a decent and good looking home, that's where it all starts, the spirit and from the inside to the outside, things can get better.

But lots of people are convinced of their own righteousness, and don't have a good character. Harmony in the home doesn't equal order in the nation--how does anyone extrapolate that? If this is an "old Chinese proverb", remind me again how the Cultural Revolution turned out.

Things get "nasty" in the comments when the posts are nonsense.

Perhaps only those looking through the eyes of hope can appreciate this beautiful quote for what it is.