Take everything out of a given room, then bring back one by one the things one feels essential not merely because it fills space but for the presence of which some one can give a good and sufficient reason.
It will mean a trial of a few days, because it is not easy to separate habit from need.

A table _has stood_ in a certain spot: that is no reason in itself why it should continue to stand there unless it supplies a need.
If a fetish stands in the way of social progress, do away with it.

If the idea of home as the shell is standing in the way of developing the idea of home as a state of mind, then let us cast loose the load of things that are sinking us in the sea of care beyond rescue.
It is quite possible that we may return to that state of mind in which there was a pleasure in caring for beautiful objects.

The housewife of colonial days did not disdain the washing of her cups of precious china or doing up the heirlooms of lace and embroidery.

When our possessions acquire an intrinsic value, when all the work of the house which cannot be done by machinery is that of handling beautiful things and has a meaning in the life of the individual and the family, service will not be required in the vast majority of homes: then we may approach to the Utopian ideal of the nobility of labor.
"The plain message that physical science has for the world at large is this, that were our political and social and moral devices only as well contrived to their ends as a linotype machine, an antiseptic operating-plant, or an electric tram-car, there need now, at the present moment, be no appreciable toil in the world, and only the smallest fraction of the pain, the fear, and the anxiety that now make human life so doubtful in its value.