Too little
One-sided convenience
“I prefer an empty cupboard; the washing is your problem.”
One person’s ideal decides another person’s recurring work.
Fairness
Count the work your clean shelf creates elsewhere.
An impartial disposition to give relevant interests and evidence their due.
In simplifying a shared life, it asks whether the same consideration reaches everyone affected. An arrangement that makes your room easier may make another person’s day harder. The number of objects is visible; the distribution of work often needs a second look.
Fairness gives shared work a fair hearing
You remove every spare towel from the bathroom and congratulate yourself on its calm appearance. Someone else has already started the second load of washing. The room is quiet because the work has moved. Fairness follows it into the laundry.
Finding the balance in Fairness
An illustrative everyday situation
A household considers reducing its shared dishes.
A fitting response
Relevant consideration
“How will this affect the people who use and wash them?”
Those affected help evaluate a workable arrangement.
Pursued too far
Mechanical equality
“Everyone must own exactly the same number.”
Identical counts replace attention to different uses and needs.
An equal count is not necessarily an impartial decision.
When the situation changes
One person may need more equipment for an actual task. A relevant reason can justify a different arrangement without treating anyone as more important.
What Fairness makes possible
Fairness can make simplification a shared decision instead of a quiet transfer of burdens. It asks about access, upkeep and control as well as space. Agreement may involve compromise; it need not produce an immaculate room or unanimous enthusiasm.
Fairness in ordinary life
The shared shelf
You ask before removing something another person uses, even if it appears idle during your day.
A reversible experiment
Everyone affected agrees to try a smaller arrangement and to reconsider if it creates unwanted work.
Nearby virtues, different work
Generosity
Generosity offers a benefit; fairness asks whether the offer also transfers an unreasonable burden.
Self-Respect
Self-respect keeps your own needs in view; fairness gives others’ relevant needs the same consideration.
Fairness and its counterfeits
Counterfeit: Tidiness by delegation
Calling a plan simple because someone else must absorb its complexity is a counterfeit of fairness. Name the transferred work.
Counterfeit: Identical treatment
Giving every person the same allowance regardless of their actual use is a counterfeit of fairness. Relevant differences belong in the judgment.
How to cultivate Fairness
Trace who will do each resulting task.
Ask the affected person rather than assuming their consent.
Agree on a way to revisit an ordinary shared change.
Try it today
Respect shared ownership and consent. No one must accept deprivation, humiliation or an unsafe arrangement to maintain household harmony. Choose a lower-risk example if disagreement carries threats or retaliation.
Before changing one shared arrangement, ask who uses it and what work the change would create. Do not change it unilaterally.
With the things you use
Do not simplify your life by burdening someone else.
Questions worth returning to
Whose convenience has been easiest to see?
Would my reason still seem fair if I inherited the work?
Keep the practice proportionate
Respect shared ownership and consent. No one must accept deprivation, humiliation or an unsafe arrangement to maintain household harmony. Choose a lower-risk example if disagreement carries threats or retaliation.
About these practices · DisclaimerQuotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
Was her point of view the only possible one with regard to this marriage?
George Eliot · Middlemarch · chapter XXIX; narrator · excerpt
Dorothea’s question in Middlemarch makes another perspective matter. A shared space cannot be judged solely from the person who wants it emptied.
nor does he put aside good words because of the man.
Confucius · Analects · XV.22; Confucius speaking · James Legge translation · excerpt
Confucius separates a useful statement from the status of its speaker. The person doing the washing deserves a hearing even if someone else designed the system.
Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
Benjamin Franklin · Autobiography · Part II, plan of moral perfection; Justice · excerpt
Franklin’s justice precept includes omissions as well as injuries. Ignoring transferred work can matter even when nothing has been visibly taken away.
He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.
John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · II, Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion · excerpt
Mill challenges confidence based on one side alone. Ask those affected what a proposed simplification would change for them.
Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil:
John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · II, Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion · excerpt
Mill warns about suppressing part of the truth. A tidy photograph can leave the recurring labour outside the frame; a fair decision brings it back into view.
different persons should be allowed to lead different lives.
John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · On Liberty chapter III; individuality · excerpt
Different circumstances can justify different belongings. Impartial consideration does not require identical counts or identical rooms.
art made by the people and for the people as a joy both to the maker and the user
William Morris · Hopes and Fears for Art · The Beauty of Life; popular art · excerpt
Morris includes makers as well as users in an object’s benefits. In a household, the people doing the work should count alongside those enjoying the result.
Continue exploring
Take these ideas into everyday life
Read freely, follow the thirteen-virtue program, or adapt this collection in My Virtues. There is no target for the number of things you own.