Book Review
Rama Gaind
By Rama Gaind
PS News Books

The Simple Things: Creating an organised home, a happy family and a life worth living
   By Antonia Kidman and Sally Collings (ABC Books, $35.00, hardcover, 231 pages)

While Antonia Kidman’s life is anything but simple, it’s enlightening to find out the many ways in which she makes time for the things that matter in life.
   It lends credence to the fact that life’s most jubilant pleasures are often the simplest. Dispense with the unnecessary things that clutter your life and you’ll have a liberating experience.
   Even co-author Sally Collings elaborates on how living simply can be the answer to time-management problems.
The Simple Things: Creating an organised home, a happy family and a life worth living by Antonia Kidman and Sally Collings
The Simple Things by Antonia Kidman
and Sally Collings.
   Dreams and expectations are often a contrast to reality, but both authors encourage the importance of embracing the simple life.
   Antonia, a parenting and lifestyle broadcaster, author and journalist, is a busy, independent woman, but getting older she realises that “life slips away”.
   Expecting her sixth child, she is open about savouring and appreciating “what I have right here, right now rather than obsessing over what the future holds or what I could be”.
   This insight into her life is far from expectations. A famous sister is also somewhere in the mix.
   Sally, a writer, editor and publisher, points to a new movement sweeping the western world that is drawing us back to basics and we’re not losing out.
    “By stripping away the non-essentials, we stand to gain a life that is less stressed and fraught, more in touch with the natural world and our community.”
This manual also includes meal plans, becoming an economical cook, the clever gardener, tips for decluttering, diet and beauty, doing your tax and the three R’s—reduce, reuse, recycle.
   The women speak fondly about children, make you laugh, reminisce and, yes, they admit that their lives do at times get out of control.  
   The Simple Things is about cherishing the things that matter, of attaining life’s uncomplicated joy. It’s uplifting!
Edition 338, 6 November 2012

To find out more about Rama Gaind click here.
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