These are my thoughts about Rule 14 from Jordan B. Peterson’s “40 Rules”. You can read them all here. In the case of the rules that made it into his “12 Rules for Life” book, I’m not going to repeat any of his explanations here. These are my own thoughts about each rule from my own life and experience.

14. Try to make one room in your house as beautiful as possible.

I live in a one-room apartment so my choice of rooms has already been made for me!

I’m organized when it comes to computers, books, and processes. I want to be able to find stuff easily and I want things to be done a certain way, so I keep things clean and simple.

Outside of those three categories, I’ve always lived in the middle of mess, chaos, and clutter.

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve hung a picture and I can count on even less fingers the number of times I’ve painted a house or apartment wall. I just wasn’t interested.

I’ve never owned nice things and I’ve never even considered the possibility of making a room “beautiful”.

After reading Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and then reading this “rule” in Jordan Peterson’s Quora list of 40, I started cleaning up my apartment. That was before I moved to this tiny one-room place.

I never got to the point of making any of the rooms beautiful, but I did make them nicer and more liveable.

It felt good.

The question remains, however, as to why I never made it to the level of “beautiful”.

Peterson’s comments on this rule are thought-provoking:

Firstly, he says that, when you live with other people, the very act of you cleaning up and beautifying that one room may cause resentment and sabotage from others in your household, because it means you’re changing and they’re not.

Secondly, he says that it’s far more difficult than you might imagine to accomplish this task. It might involve shunning other activities, saying goodbye to many items, perhaps buying or restoring some other things (such as drapes, chests of drawers, bedding, paintings, decorations), maybe learning how to paint walls and fix broken belongings. It’s not simply a question of “cleaning up”.

“As beautiful as possible” goes far beyond just keeping it clean and organized.

For me, life has turned a little bit upside down following this latest move. It’s been a challenge to find spots for everything. So I’m somewhat back on my heels.

But I’m on the path to reorganizing, again, and then going on to the beautifying stage.

I’m looking forward to eventually living in a beautiful room!