Simpler Living by Jeff Davidson (2010, Hardcover)

Simpler Living is a coffee table book filled with tips on how to make life a bit less hectic. As one would expect, the book contains hints about how to declutter. However, the author’s focus isn’t living in a bare house with absolutely no personality. Instead, the entries focus on functionality and being organized. This perspective is probably far more realistic for people with children.

The book includes a little bit of everything. There is a wide variety of advice from ways to make small spaces look larger and choosing furniture for functionality and easy clean up to safety issues and how to teach kids to clean up (good luck on that one). There are also some low cost cleaning products and methods. Accompanying each set of tips are pictures, for inspiration and motivation.

As a coffee table book, Simpler Living is meant for readers to flip through a page or two at their leisure. While there is some organization to the book, for the most part the tips are pretty random. Taken in small doses over time, this is fine but I don’t suggest reading the book from cover to cover as it all becomes rather overwhelming.