6 ideas
Property is defined not by possession but by use: a flute is wealth to someone who can play it or sell it, and useless to someone who can do neither. Money, horses, or even friends count as wealth only if the owner knows how to use them well; in unskilled hands they become liabilities that destroy the estate.
Ischomachus compares a well-ordered house to a trireme or a chorus, where every item and person has an assigned place so anything can be found and deployed instantly. Disorder turns abundance into scarcity because unfindable goods are effectively absent, and arrangement itself, even of pots and shoes, gives things a visible beauty.
The household is split into an outdoor sphere (plowing, sowing, herding, acquiring) and an indoor sphere (storing, rationing, weaving, rearing children, managing slaves). The wife is cast as the queen bee of the interior who receives income, budgets it so a year's supply lasts a year, and trains and rewards servants. Her authority is justified as a partnership where each partner's distinct competence makes the joint enterprise work.
A good steward is made, not found: first instill goodwill toward the master by sharing his prosperity, then diligence, then knowledge of the tasks, then the ability to command others. Honest conduct is secured by rewards and punishments adjusted to character, with honor-seeking men motivated by praise and baser ones by food and material incentives.
What separates profitable estates from ruined ones with the same land and labor is the owner's capacity to make workers eager rather than grudging. The mark of a born leader is that when he appears, workers intensify their effort from a sense of shame and ambition, while mere tyrannical rule produces only compliance under watch.
Agriculture is easy to learn because its principles are visible in nature and in neighbors' fields, so anyone can know what to do. Farms fail because owners do not apply what they know, making agriculture a test of character that exposes idleness more clearly than any other occupation.