This is a special Friday post with two special purposes.

First, if you’re new here, welcome. I hope you enjoy what you find here at So Much More Life. My posts are aimed at promoting a simple, deliberate way of living that’s not entirely minimalist but is always smart, intentional, fun and interesting.

New readers: Please remember to sign up for free emails about every new post so you don’t miss anything.

Why am I expecting new readers today?

That’s my second point. I’d like to encourage my regular readers to visit my guest post today at AriHerzog.com. Ari explores all sorts of topics related to the web and evolving media. He often focuses on the social web, but since it’s his blog, he can write about whatever he wants.

Even better, he can publish guest posts from great writers like me. (I have intermittent lapses of modesty, as you may know.)

Please visit Ari Herzog’s blog today and read The Key To Online Success, a guest post from me.

In it, I point out that one of the keys to online success is establishing an online presence and staying with it, nurturing it into a web home for yourself and for the community of people who follow and support you.

That’s an idea I’ve written about before. In a post from 2010 called Still Here? Always Here? Some Bloggers Are Fading Away, I lament the bloggers whose good ideas have passed away. In that post, I told my readers that I am “still striving for relevance in a crowded field and with fewer readers than I’d like”.

I don’t strive for relevance anymore. I now simply say simple things aimed at making a simple difference in the world. It’s a simply amazing idea, I think.

If you haven’t already seen my new post on Ari’s blog, please take a look. I’ll see you there — and I’ll respond to your comments there too.

There’s no doubt which life-simplifying decision belongs at the top of the list:

Totally Clean Countertops

The idea behind totally clean countertops is very simple: Once you’ve decluttered a surface like a kitchen counter, a dining room table or a living room end table, don’t put anything back on it.

Cleaning is a breeze when there’s nothing there. If something finds its way onto a completely clean surface, it immediately looks out of place and begs to be moved somewhere more appropriate.

What could be simpler?

I introduced this idea to you in my post 4 Reasons To Try Totally Clean Countertops way back on April 14, 2010. (Can you believe I’ve been writing about the minimalist lifestyle and simple living all this time?)

At the time, I thought this seemed like a good idea, but I now know that it works very well over the long term.

In fact, the surfaces in my home that I decided should be completely clear of clutter — like the kitchen table and the kitchen countertops — are still completely clean. When necessary, I bring out the things that I need, use them, then put them away. While a few dirty dishes sometimes sit on the counter near the sink and a box intended for donation to a thrift store sometimes clutters up the table for a few days, nothing lives on these surfaces.

The rarely-used toaster and a slow cooker hang out under the counter until they’re needed, and there are no decorative odds and ends confusing me about whether they’re really clutter or not.

The surfaces that I decided didn’t need to be completely clean — like the table by the front door and the bar between the kitchen and living room — have repeatedly attracted new clutter and have required cleaning.

Clutter, as it turns out, attracts more clutter.

Also, totally clean surfaces look nice, finished, complete and sensible. Surfaces with stray mail, receipts from repairmen and decorative spaghetti holders look disheveled, unreasonable and even silly. Bills belong where they can be paid (and usually not on paper at all), and spaghetti comes from the store in a perfectly usable bag or box.

Putting This Into Practice

I suggest ditching the useless décor items that clutter your surfaces and putting food, appliances and other utilitarian items out of sight. If cleaning up means that a certain surface serves no purpose at all, remove it completely if possible. No home needs extra tables sitting around that could someday attract clutter.

You may be surprised by some of the other things that I count among my best decisions so far, but I hope this first one is as obvious to you as it is to me. Totally clean countertops work to immediately eliminate the feeling of clutter in your home. Dumping the debris from your flat surfaces is also one of the best possible starting points for those turning to a clutter-reducing lifestyle.

We’ll talk about other things during this 10-post journey through some of my best practices, but we’ll eventually get to all 10 of my best decisions.

I’m curious what you think of this post. Have you tried totally clean countertops? And what do you think will be the next good decision I highlight?

If you prefer not to comment, maybe this is a good time to check out my original post about this topic. It’s waiting for you, and comments are still open there too.

Decluttering the home is often the first step toward a minimalist lifestyle — and it’s a very necessary one. As we make progress, however, we often place less emphasis on getting rid of the junk that clutters our lives.

Since decluttering is a very obvious and outward sign of a life coming under control, nothing could be more important. When we don’t think much about it, though, the clutter seems to creep back in. Is it time for you recommit to decluttering?

It is for me.

When I proposed my big five priorities for simple, minimalist living, I placed getting rid of stuff at number three. That was probably a mistake. When I rewrite that post based your input and my discoveries (as I said I will eventually do), putting the priorities in order of importance might be a good idea. That means getting rid of things comes first.

So Much More Life essentially started as a blog about my decluttering journey. I posted about a number of other things along the way, but the weekly updates about my Decluttering and Simplying 2010 project formed the basis of this blog for a year.

If you’re new to So Much More Life, I suggest you look at some of those early posts focusing on decluttering.

You don’t necessarily need to read them all to understand how my interest and passion for decluttering grew more intense, waned a bit, then grew intense again before my yearlong project went out with a whimper.

These four posts are a good sampling of my 2010 decluttering process:

1. The first week of my Decluttering and Simplifying 2010 project
My journey started with this simple, dull little post that includes a photo of some of things I eliminated from my kitchen in mid-December 2009. Since I promised my readers (and there weren’t any) that I would provide weekly updates, that’s exactly what I did for 51 more weeks.

2. The 26th week of my Decluttering and Simplifying 2010 process
This post shows how much can be accomplished if you commit to doing something every week. It explain the progress I made in just about every room of my house.

3. Top 5 Lessons for You From Half a Year Decluttering My House
This is some practical advice for decluttering, including the idea of starting with the easy stuff first and completely clearing as many flat surfaces as possible.

4. The 52nd week of my Decluttering and Simplifying 2010 process
This is a simple look back at what I accomplished in my home in 2010. In it, I express my hope that 2011 would be your best year ever. Was it?

Then in May 2011, I wrote a post called Don’t Forget About Decluttering in which I suggested that keeping decluttering in mind keeps us from undoing our efforts, allows us to make additional progress, lets us celebrate our progress and is an important part of showing others the path toward a simpler life.

Now, with 2012 well underway, I repeat the question with which I began this post: Is it time for you to recommit to decluttering your home?

Today is as good a time as any to throw away some papers, take some junk to a charity shop or get rid of the expired food items in your kitchen cabinets.

I’ve never heard anyone say that they regretted decluttering. Have you? I’ve often heard people say they wish they had simplified their lives sooner. Haven’t you?

That’s a lot to cover, so I’ll get right to it.

Soul-Shaking Questions

When I saw Courtney Carver’s post on Be More With Less titled “Ask The Soul-Shaking Question” (I added the hyphen that’s required for a compound adjective) I immediately knew the topic was something I should write about.

To really let simple, minimalist living infiltrate your soul, you have no choice but to ask yourself some soul-shaking questions about what you really want from life, including: Is your current lifestyle working for you? Does it matter?

While I don’t think your soul-shaking questions will taunt you or should cause you to lower your expectations about their answers as she suggests, I think that unexamined lives often go out of control. Those of us who choose to look at life’s toughest questions may find some stress in examining these issues, but we also get satisfaction, comfort and joy from coming through the examination process.

The real purpose of this post is to get you thinking seriously about examining your life even more closely than you ever have before.

Knowing What You Want

Courtney is forever linked in my head to Joshua Becker of Becoming Minimalist, and I’ll explain why after the next big heading, so skip ahead if you must.

It’s interesting that Josh’s February 1 post called “On the Importance of Knowing What You Want to Accomplish” fits right in with the kind of soul-shaking examination that Courtney suggests.

I don’t know if Josh would understand or agree with my logic, but I think many of life’s strangest circumstances can be explained by a simple New Age-y statement: You don’t know what another person’s soul is trying to accomplish.

When you see people whose lives are out of control (perhaps like my neighbors with too many storage building), people whose bodies seem to have failed them from before they were born or good people to whom bad things happen, you may see soul-shaking questions about your faith and your gods.

You never really know what someone else’s soul is trying to accomplish, but maybe you can understand what your soul is trying to accomplish if you ask yourself some soul-shaking questions.

The Link Between The Two

The link between the post Courtney wrote and the one Josh wrote is obvious, I think, but you probably don’t know why these two competent bloggers are forever linked in my mind. So here’s the reason: They are the only two bloggers that have denied my request to write a guest post for them.

Courtney turned me down in June 2010; Josh brushed me off just after Christmas of that year. Courtney said she wanted to get things more established before taking guest posts and would keep me in mind for the future. Josh’s response was harder to understand and made me a bit mad, actually, so I won’t bore you with it.

At the time I wrote to each of them, I wanted to promote my blog to a wider audience, but it didn’t exactly shake me to my soul when those two possibilities didn’t come through. Others did. I don’t write many guest posts anymore (and read fewer blogs than I have in a long time) because I’ve found there are other ways to grow and support a blog.

In any case, there’s a point to point out about this union of people in my minds: Courtney, Josh and I are all still here. We’re all still writing interesting and useful posts, and we’re all still committed to our audiences and to asking ourselves soul-shaking questions about what we really want – and sometimes we even share the answers we’re discovering.

My soul responds well to shaking. Does yours? Have you tried it recently?

This is the story of my neighbor who collects storage buildings. Here’s a little about this family followed by the lessons I think we can learn from them.

The Family On The Corner

They live up the road for us in a three-section manufactured house (the housing-industry term for a mobile home) on just over an acre of property. It’s a corner lot visible to everyone in their neighborhood and everyone passing on the road.

We immediately noticed the home when it was installed because it is at least twice the size of any other house in the area. Then we noticed that when the moving truck backed up to the front door, it stayed there — in the same position — for over a month. How much does a month-long U-Haul rental cost?

Now it’s several years later, and their property is littered with storage buildings. One is a simple metal shed. Four or five are nice wooden structures with porches and windows. They installed an electric poll and meter box at the back of the property near these nicer buildings, but they never put in the meter nor a power line to the pole.

When they leave the door open on a building, boxes and piles of nothing in particular are visible inside each one. Nothing is organized, so nothing could ever be located. That blows my original theory that they might run a salvage or resale business of some kind.

The latest building addition is a bright blue one placed in their front yard up on blocks to make it level. It’s the largest one so far. Cinder blocks are stacked up to the door to form crude steps.

When I saw one of the women from the house entering this new building a couple of weeks ago, I saw a washer and dryer inside. There’s no electrical connection to the building, however. It’s near their water well, but there’s no water pipe going into the building either.

There is also a camper trailer and the trailer portion of an 18-wheeler permanently installed on the property.

Amazingly, the riding lawnmower sits outside like mine does.

What Can We Learn?

This is a true story, and the only conclusion I can reach is that this family lives a life out of control. How could I reach any other conclusion?

I could be wrong, but the life I observe up the road serves as an example that teaches me at least five important life lessons. Here they are:

1. Accurately assess your needs. Some of their buildings aren’t completely full, and I haven’t actually seen anything inside that trailer in months. They have a mess, but they have more space than they need. Do you?

2. Clean up what’s yours. They also have piles of dirt and rock all over their property from digging into or building up their land to make it level for each building. In addition, they accepted a property with an old road running through it and some other flaws, and they have never cleaned up any of them.

3. Finish what you start. Why would they pay to put up a utility pole and then never connect it to the any utility? Leaving things half done is costly, wasteful and calls your judgment into question.

4. Be kind to one another. If they’re outside, the family with the storage building graveyard up the road from me always waves, and we wave at them. They’re strange — like the couple that rarely mows their yard (that’s us) and the family with too many security lights (that’s the one across the street from us) — but they seem like nice people. Even those with lives out of control can be nice, can’t they?

5. Mind your own business. I really feel a bit guilty writing hundreds of words about a family I don’t know, and I’m wondering if minding my own business might be a good course of action for me. They may not be good at minding their business, but the family that collects storage buildings hasn’t shown any interest in my business.

I wonder, however, if this family up the road from me is living the kind of simple, deliberate life they could be enjoying.

Still, I don’t want to make any value judgments. I just wonder if there is a better way for them. I’ve found a path that gives me some peace and comfort, and I wish everyone could.

I’ll probably never know how things are really going for the family up the road with the storage building farm because I don’t plan to stop and talk to them. I don’t imagine they want me to.

Based on the story I’ve told you about the family up the road, what do you think of them? Does their life teach any kind of lesson to you? Does mine?

So come on now, own up: Which of you found So Much More Life that way?

It’s a bit funny and also a bit amazing that Google knew where to send these searchers who were just a little off. At least the searchers spelled my name right, and that’s probably how they found this blog.

As I was cleaning the little pieces of paper from my desk in December, I found a note about this unusual search term and realized that lots of people live lives that aren’t quite as good as they could be because they’re just a little off.

How could you refocus your life to make it just a little better?

Whether you’ve been on the journey to a simple, deliberate life with me for a long time or only for a little while, there’s something you may not realize: In many areas, you’re almost there.

In many ways, your life is just about right. You may be only a little off.

Maybe you don’t need to dump a dozen bags of unneeded clothes and two dozen boxes of kitchen clutter. Maybe your desk and your hall closet are already well organized. Maybe you already do meaningful, fulfilling work that doesn’t consume your whole life.

Maybe you just need to slightly tidy up and minimally rearrange what you have now into the life you always imagined possible.

Maybe the disorder that once held the place in your brain where your passion should be is almost all gone, and the passion could come flowing again if you’d just deal with a few more outstanding issues.

Do you get the idea?

Trying to find this blog by searching for Gip Plaster There’s More To Life Blog isn’t quite right. But a few people got to this place — their destination — even though their original focus was just a little off. It’s amazing that you can be a little off but still reach your destination, isn’t it?

Are you nearly there in one or more areas of your life?

And by the way, there’s more to life than you’re experience now. There must be. There’s much more to life than you ever imagined. So much more.

Deciding to live in a way that doesn’t depend on stuff requires focusing for a while on your own needs. You must decide which so-called needs are really just wants and eliminate from your life everything that doesn’t fit in.

Those of us who choose simple living often choose a minimalist approach to work too, and that sometimes means making less money than those who willingly sell their lives.

Still, the world is overflowing with people and causes that need help. No matter how little you have today, there are those who have less, and you’re in a position to help — if you want.

In my developing list of the five priorities that shape simple, minimalist living, there’s no mention of charitable giving. Point 5 suggests being a well-rounded, complete person, however, and giving to charity could be considered part of that priority. What do you think?

Here are three things about charity for minimalists that I think I are worth considering:

1. You must give something, mustn’t you?

I think we all have an obligation to give time, money and other resources to those worthy people and causes that need help. Don’t you?

That said, I make very few charitable donations these days.

In the past, I’ve supported museums, political causes, animal welfare groups and public television, but none of these causes get money from me anymore. I’ve lost interest in politics, and while I sometimes benefit from museums and public TV, they aren’t a crucial part of my simple life.

If I give anything to anyone in 2012, it will be to animal welfare causes or directly to the people who the help.

2. Direct giving makes sense.

While donating through a non-profit organizations allows you to combine your gifts with others to make a big difference, directly giving to someone who needs help is often a better way to make a real, quantifiable difference in someone’s life.

Direct giving isn’t necessarily tax deductible, but it’s often rewarding in other ways. It can be as simple as helping your friend who has fallen on hard times or using your gas and time to feed the hungry, take people where they need to go or get things for people who couldn’t get them any other way.

3. Limiting the number of organizations to which you donate reduces waste.

Some non-profit organizations spend an appalling among of the money they collect trying to get more money. They bombard those who already give to them, insisting that they give even more.

Limiting the number of non-profit organizations to which you give limits the amount of junk mail you get. Donating a small amount to an array of organizations, as I once did, keeps you in touch on many different fronts, but it’s terribly inefficient. Have you tried this approach?

Of course, true minimalists are vigilant about limiting the amount of postal mail and junk email they accept from anyone, including their favorite non-profits, so all this waste is really an unacceptable byproduct of well-intentioned actions.

Final Thoughts

Whether you have a lot of resources at your disposal or not, I’m sure you sometimes give some of them away.

As I’m writing this today, I don’t have many resources available. Money is tight because I’ve been dropped from an agency that was providing me a lot of writing work and because I wasn’t making that much anyway. While my old bookselling business is showing some signs of new life, there won’t be much extra money coming this week or next. I’m not in a position to help anyone else, am I?

Yet I’m writing today with little hope of financial gain, mainly for the benefit of myself and my readers. And I’ll be spending time in the next few days with people who enjoy and perhaps even need my love and attention. That sounds charitable, doesn’t it?

Perhaps the simple, minimalist approach to being charitable is to live a charitable life. Being charitable means being devoted to the assistance of those in need. Are you?

To start 2012, I’d like to refine a list of what it means to live a simple, deliberate life. Here’s my first attempt. I hope you’ll offer your comments below and help me perfect this list.

If you’re a simple, deliberate person, you:

1. Mind your money.

You cut your spending on nonessential items, eliminate unnecessary bills and simplify your financial relationships to eliminate wasted money and excess in as many forms as possible.

2. Tend your time.

You balance your time between work your enjoy and entertainment that adds value to your life. You know when to limit your entertainment, when to limit your work and when to stop either of them to be with real people who have meaning to you.

3. Get rid of stuff.

You don’t own things just because you can afford them, and you don’t own more cars, clothes, gadgets or gear than you need for the kind of simple life you desire. You loosen your attachment to things and cut clutter from you home, your brain and your life in general.

4. Think about food and health.

You take actions that improve your health and eating habits when you can. You aren’t necessarily a fanatic about health and fitness, but you strive to improve every area of your life, including how well your body works.

5. Are a complete person.

You don’t allow your life to be dominated by any one thing, person or situation. You recognize your emotional, physical and spiritual needs and act to fulfill them all. You understand that denying yourself something that your soul, brain or body finds essential is a poor choice.

How did I do?

This is my first attempt at this five-point definition of a simple, deliberate life that I hope will become an important part of this blog’s future. With your input, I’ll refine it, and we’ll discuss it in more detail in future posts.

Is this list of priorities too specific, too extensive or lacking some essential elements? I look forward to your opinions.

Here’s a bit about what I’ve been doing the last two weeks, then I’ll tell you my commitments to you for the coming year.

My Christmas Project

In December, I made a commitment to myself to clean up the little pieces of paper that clutter my desk. These scraps contained lots of useful information and lots of blog post ideas, but they existed in a form that was nearly useless to me.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve cleaned up almost all the pieces of paper, eliminating the useless ones and rescuing the good ones by putting them into a digital format I can work with.

I created a text file with line after line of things I want to research and bits of information I didn’t want to forget — like that I need a 10-millimeter wrench to change the air filter on my car and that my pupillary distance is 63 if I need to order custom reading glasses.

I also started files for more than 30 blog posts rescued from these scraps of paper. Many of them are for So Much More Life, and several are for my catch-all blog Gip’s Front Yard. A few are for other projects, and a couple don’t seem to fit anywhere yet. Some of these files contain hundreds of words and don’t need much more to make them ready for you; others contain only a line or two of notes.

My desk looks better now, but better yet, I have a great head start on 2012.

My January project is a bit more mundane and boring: I have to type up some information for my taxes that’s missing from my bank account details because of my quibbles with Quicken, but I should have plenty of time this month to do that along with the much more interesting work of finishing all the posts I started — and starting many more, I hope.

My 2012 Commitments To You

In 2011, I committed to bringing you useful, entertaining and interesting posts that are different from the kind you find on other simple living, minimalist blogs. Did I succeed?

I also promised you two posts per week and short, direct posts that don’t waste your time. By the end of 2011, I was only offering one post per week, and many of my posts were flabby and long. Still, I think I offered a unique perspective that you couldn’t have found elsewhere.

In any case, my 2012 commitment to you is one post most weeks. I’ll skip a week when I have nothing to say or no time to say it, and I’ll offer a second post on weeks when I have more to say than I can say in one. I also recommit to offering uncomplicated posts with as little flab as possible. I won’t stop telling my story along with my comments, however.

I also commit to staying on topic much better than before. When I have something to say that doesn’t directly related to simple, deliberate living, I’ll post it on Gip’s Front Yard instead of trying to contort the message to fit here.

Let’s Get Started

I’ll be back next Tuesday and most Tuesdays in 2012 with an interesting, entertaining and useful post about something related to minimalism and simple living.

For this blog to be a continued success, however, I need your help expanding the conversation. Closed systems are dying ones, so I’m flinging open the doors to new readers and new ideas of all sorts.

Will you help me stay on track and help me find others who would enjoy subscribing to and contributing comments to this blog? Will you make any commitments to me and to So Much More Life in 2012?

I’ve also successfully restarted my writing career, changed a toilet flapper and sort of fixed my front steps.

I’m presenting this brief year-end post a bit early because I won’t be bothering you again on So Much More Life until after the first of the year. On January 3, I’ll return with new blog posts and a new commitment to serving our needs better than ever before.

Before I wrap up this year, however, I have a few more things to say.

First, if you’re wondering what I want for Christmas, you can be sure that I don’t need any more things. You probably don’t either.

If you’re inclined to give me a gift, however, please send a quick email to three of your friends who may not know about So Much More Life and tell them about our conversations here. When I return on January 3, I hope some new commenters will join those of us who are already devoted to this project’s success.

Many bloggers offer holiday wishes in their year-end posts, but I already did that last week. If you believe in a simple, deliberate life, please re-read last week’s post and behave as if you believe in those things.

If you want to know what else I like to talk about, I’ve relaunched an old and forgotten blog project called Gip’s Front Yard. It’s a place where I put things I write that don’t belong anywhere else. The topics are diverse and some of the opinions are controversial, but the posts are sometimes worth reading. Sometimes, they’re just leftovers warmed up. Post are irregular in every way and infrequent, but I want you to know about this project if you don’t already.

If you follow me on Facebook, you already know about Gip’s Front Yard because I’ve mentioned some of the posts to my followers. If you don’t follow me on Facebook and would like to, visit Facebook and friend me. I don’t really use Twitter and I haven’t bothered with Google+, so Facebook is my only social networking vice.

Finally, I hope you’ll re-read my Christmas day post from last year. Even if you don’t believe in Christmas, the day can be a magical and amazing one for you.

This is a busy time of year, but if you’d like something interesting to do for a few moments, please click some of the links in this post to read and interact with me even more than you already do.

I won’t bother you here again until the new year, then we’ll get on with what we were doing.