Rating: 
Summary: Advice to live by!
Review: This is an excellent and helpful book. Elaine St. James does a wonderful job of presenting the material in a way that's interesting and helpful. This book has tons of methods on how one can simplify their lives while making them more rewarding and less stressful. Ideas featured in this marvelous book include, stopping junk mail, maintaining a simple wardrobe, giving simple gifts and many other useful tips. The best part is that you don't have to implement all of these methods in order to live a simple life. One can just pick and choose the methods that are the most helpful in their own lives. The book has sections on work-related issues, personal finances and extreme simplification. Go out and purchase this book, it's a good investment that will surely pay off.
Rating:
Summary: Great Investment
Review: This is my second purchase of "Simplify Your Life." I recommend this to any person who is feeling a little overwhelmed by the day-to-day hassles in your life. Elaine offers simple solutions and ideas to help create and keep a less hectic life and allow more time for pleasure and enjoyment. I love this book.
Rating: 
Summary: A mixed bag
Review: You'll enjoy this book if you are just getting started in the process of simplifying your life, or if you're looking for a little extra inspiration. However, the book is too limited to use an an overall guide. To understand why, remember that this is really a collection of ideas that St. James and her husband have already put into place in their lives. They were hard core yuppie materialists in the 80's and decided to simplify their lives to have more time for each other. The author's recommendations reflect this orientation. "Get rid of your boat" is obviously not going to apply for everyone. Some of the suggestions to limit your time with others also probably assume that you've already found a life partner; single folks should keep this in mind as they read. The format of this book also makes for a strange alternation between huge, life-changing choices (move to where you can be close to your workplace), and weirdly specific recommendations (stop using nail polish). I found this to be a little odd, but if you are just looking for ideas, it probably won't bother you. I also found the suggestion to "change your expecations", which turned out to mean, "avoid doing difficult things" to be defeatist and unhelpful. There are some great ideas in this book in every section. Some of the suggestions are challenging, but could yield great results. Each one, although not helpful to EVERYONE, will probably be helpful to SOMEONE. For these reasons, I'm giving it three stars. The book could be very useful as a way to provoke thought about what is really necessary in your life. Just don't look to it as an all purpose guide, and keep in mind the backgrounds of the authors as you read.
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