Elaine St. James is the author of several bestsellers, including “Simplify Your Life” and “Living the Simple Life.” Her simple life is not the Paris Hilton kind we see on a reality show. Instead, she and her husband made a decision to dramatically simplify their lives.
Her books are interesting reads, and you can certainly get some good ideas. But she does overdo it some. My family would never go for eating the same menu every week, day in and day out. For one thing, some of the menus are a little strange. Blue corn chips and guacamole are dinner one day; apples, cheese and popcorn are dinner another! Just can’t see this one happening at my house. She also has limited her wardrobe to black. While I love black clothes and I actually build my wardrobe around that color, I do have some other colors to liven it up a bit.
But what I do like about her books is that she consciously looked at every aspect of her life to see how she could scale down. Think before you buy; do I really need something else to clutter up my house? Lower my expectations; the kitchen sink does not have to shine like Martha Stewart’s every day. Cancel the newspaper subscription; most of it is depressing anyway and we can certainly get all the news we want from the Internet. I especially liked “sell the damn boat.” We have ours for sale now. It requires way too much work and way too much money.
I can’t go all out for Elaine St. James’ thinking, but I like the way she gets ME to thinking.
Tags: elaine st. james, martha stewart, simplify
