Meh. This read like a bathroom companion. Tiny two page chapters with no substantive meat, usually unrelated to the surrounding chapters. If you want to dive deep into the subject, this is not for you, but it's great if you have no attention span.

Some of the items are dated, but this is a very good reminder of how to pare down the things that make us anxious and burdened.

I sincerely enjoy this book and refer to it whenever I need to remind myself of keeping things simple. I have also read other books by this author that have been equally enjoyable.

Life

The three star rating is for my enjoyment alone
Meaning
I'm a big fan of simplification and simplifying your life so I've read a bunch of these books
If
you've never read any other books about living simply then this book really would be a five star book
But
I've read a bunch of them and have been working on living simply for a while now so there were no new ideas here but the book is well written and has great ideas so it gets a solid three stars even though the only thing I got out of it was reminders.

Most of the book covers the experiences of the authors and their readers, so the tips are mostly anecdotal. The book is simply a list of these tips that you can implement to simplify your life. Since this is book was published in the late 1990's, a lot of the advice and tips are over-simplified.

Very easy reading. Good to take time to think out one's priorities and how "stuff" gets in the way.

This book is a great refresher for New Year's Resolutions. It helped me clean the clutter out of my life!!

i like the ideas and information. worth reading

Granted, this book may have dated (it was written in 1996), but for someone who is firmly entrenched in living simpler - this was just frustrating, mind numbing and terrible. Perhaps her other books have more substance, but I found this to be the stereotypically bad "self help" book. Essentially a list of nothing statements about living simply and no substance or real advice about how to actually start the process of simplifying or how to understand it.

Perhaps I just have a different definition of simplicity. I find that most people these days use the idea of simplicity to mean living closer to a more natural life, more in tune with nature and the environment and where our life actually comes from. It is not just a matter of reducing stress, but about realising that what we NEED to SURVIVE is actually very different to what we want or do. Whereas here, there was a lot of simplifying while still maintaining a lot of the ideology of the standard American dream and the lifestyle that accompanies it. Albeit, reducing a lot of that - hence why I gave it 2 instead of 1 star.

The thing that really got to me though was her thoughts on advertising, that it was the evil cause of her consumer driven lifestyle. Maybe in the 90s, still so close to the hey day of mass advertising and excess of consumption and media consumption of the 80s, people weren't as intelligent or aware that the media is only one piece of the hegemonic puzzle, and more often just a mirror of it than the cause. Oh yeah, because Gramsci was only around in the teens and 20s, and Marx definitely wasn't well known in the 80s and 90s.

There are a ton of better books about simplifying, or you could even just ask yourself the questions of how to simplify, I would not waste my time with this one.

Do you often wonder why there never seem to be enough hours in the day to get all the things done that you need to accomplish? This book instructs us on ways to identify what is really important, and tasks that we can do less often. Do we need to change the sheets on our bed weekly? Must we have a t.v. in every room? Can we spend less time talking on the telephone? Each chapter shares ways in which the author and her family simplified their lives. She talks about the benefits gained by having fewer posessions taking up room in your house. Spending less time at your job will open up more hours to share with your spouse and children. Even though this book was published in 1996 and some of the ideas are a bit dated - like giving away your Walkman and VHS player - it still contains a lot of common sense advice and is worth the time spent on this quick read.

Nothing brilliant that I didn't expect. Almost felt like reading six months' worth of a Reddit sub on general advice, productivity, or minimalism.