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" I&amp;#039;ve been making pillows. Pink quilted pillows, with periwinkle and lime shantung trim, the materials for which I picked up at garage sales, cheap, cheap, cheap. What am I going to do with these pillows? Sell them, of course. You see, I&amp;#039;ve decided I want to live by my own hands, recycle everything, and maybe even grow my own food, sort of a pioneer woman for the millennium. Never mind that my pillows aren&amp;#039;t very good, especially around the corners. Never mind that I&amp;#039;d have to make something like 5,000 of them just to pay for my daughter&amp;#039;s nursery school. The point is, at 3am, I&amp;#039;m no longer fretting about my 401(k); I&amp;#039;m thinking about simplifying, cutting back, doing something -- anything -- to let some air into my crowded life.  How did I get here? The same way you did: by collecting all manner of things over the past decade or so, things like a career, a husband, a few kids, a house, a car or two, a computer or two, a Cuisinart, several automatic coffeemakers, clothes in every size from 6 to 14 -- need I go on? No, I don&amp;#039;t think so, because I&amp;#039;ve got a good idea that at 3am, you&amp;#039;re not thinking about your 401(k) either. You&amp;#039;re thinking about what it would be like to live in Alaska, about what kind of market there might be in basket weaving, about moving the whole family to a dairy farm miles from even a minor city.  I&amp;#039;m not clairvoyant. I know this because at this very moment, a book about simplifying your life sits astride the USA Today bestseller list, and several more are hogging shelf space in bookstores around the country. Clearly, clutter -- psychic and real -- is the ailment of our generation, and unloading is the panacea. That said, I don&amp;#039;t want to tell you the ridiculous suggestions I&amp;#039;ve read in some of these books: Get rid of your cars, your house, your lawn.  Oy. And yet, I have discovered a few cool nuggets scattered among the pages -- and plucked a few more from friends further along the simplification path than I am. Here are the best ones that allow us to keep what, in our hearts, we know we want: our careers, husbands, kids...and Cuisinarts.  1. Embrace your insignificance Even if you&amp;#039;re a CEO, you&amp;#039;re still only one spoke in the big wheel. Quit thinking everything depends on you.  2. Let go Something&amp;#039;s got to give if you want to be serene. What&amp;#039;s it gonna be? &amp;quot;Coming of age has a lot to do with letting go of what you were told were the right things and finding out what are the right things for you,&amp;quot; says Judy, a first-grade teacher in Vermont who&amp;#039;s also an accomplished artist.The author of Keeping Life Simple suggests making two master lists, one of your responsibilities at work, the other of those at home, starting with the most important tasks at the top. (Just make one if you don&amp;#039;t go out to work.) Now draw a horizontal line through the middle of each list. Rarely, if ever, do the things beneath that line. Do not waver. &amp;quot;The thing about being a stay-at-home mom is that people know they&amp;#039;ve got you -- there&amp;#039;s nowhere to run when they call asking for something,&amp;quot; says Alison, a mother of two children, ages 7 and 9, in Connecticut. &amp;quot;So I only say yes to the people who need me most. For example, I&amp;#039;m more inclined to volunteer at my son&amp;#039;s school because most of the kids&amp;#039; mothers are working moms. At my daughter&amp;#039;s school, where the PTA is being run by a bunch of former executives, I ask myself when they call for help, &amp;#039;Do they need me or just want me?&amp;#039;&amp;quot;  3. Do nothing -- alone Ask your husband to take the kids out for the afternoon, you don&amp;#039;t care where. Then stay home and do nothing -- nothing planned, scheduled or productive. If you end up asleep in front of the fire, great. Maybe you&amp;#039;ll read old love letters. Maybe you&amp;#039;ll paint your nails red. Whatever. Savor the rich pleasure of a timeless day.  4. Do nothing -- with your family Memories are spun of minutiae -- the marshmallows in the hot cocoa, the shared blanket on the couch in front of the TV. So you weren&amp;#039;t productive. Ask the kids if they care.   5. Follow the money trail We have to keep the job because we have to make the money because we have to pay for the car, the clothes, the restaurants, the vacation, the new hot-water heater, the new roof and...yah, yah, yah. No wonder we dream of chucking it all and escaping. &amp;quot;When I realized I was making tons of money and still didn&amp;#039;t have a lot in the bank, I knew I had to take a look at where I was spending it: You want to go out to dinner? Go. You want to take a cab? No problem,&amp;quot; says Christie, a former Wall Street broker. &amp;quot;Here I was with a big salary but no money and no time. So I started to think, Less money, more time. It became like a mantra.&amp;quot; Four years ago Christie quit her job and went to school to train as a massage therapist. Now she works in her hometown and makes about one-fifth what she did in New York, but also has proportionately fewer expenses. 6. Keep an old quilt in the car Trunk In case you want to stop and smell the roses along the way to wherever you&amp;#039;re going.   7. Buy no colored socks If you buy only white, there&amp;#039;s no hassle of chasing orphans. Plus, in a pinch, the kids can all share.   8. Eat the feast in your refrigerator According to the excellent book Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master&amp;#039;s Lessons in Living a Life That Matters, in Buddhist monasteries, it was the cook&amp;#039;s duty to make the most sumptuous meal possible out of whatever ingredients were available -- to use what he had rather than complaining about what he didn&amp;#039;t have. The spiritual allegory is hard to miss, but there&amp;#039;s a useful literal bit here, too: Instead of thinking about dinner in terms of what you want to eat, think in terms of what you&amp;#039;ve got and work with it, so you don&amp;#039;t have to run to the store every night.  9. Practice gratitude When you&amp;#039;re grateful you&amp;#039;re less impatient -- you&amp;#039;re not constantly thinking you should be doing or getting something else. It&amp;#039;s all about being in the moment -- being happy with what you&amp;#039;ve got.   10. Grow things  You will learn patience, peace and awe. 11. Express beauty Through your music, needlepoint, the cake you make, the flowers you arrange. Simplicity, beauty, comfort and harmony flow in and through one another.   12. Pretend you have just three friends I know, I know, you could never narrow the list down that far. But ask yourself: How many of these relationships are fulfilling? How many are habits? Before you turn all guilt-ridden about pruning your social circle, remember, we&amp;#039;re talking about your sanity. &amp;quot;I had to learn that it&amp;#039;s okay to not keep in touch with everyone,&amp;quot; says Judy. &amp;quot;At first, I thought to myself, I have no loyalty. I&amp;#039;m not social. But I can&amp;#039;t accommodate that many people and still have a life. I had to realize that letting go of some friends didn&amp;#039;t make me a bad person.&amp;quot;   13. Spoil your husband &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve made it a rule that Saturday night is adult time -- that&amp;#039;s when my husband gets my undivided attention, and I get his. But when we&amp;#039;re all together as a family, neither of us can expect that attention so we don&amp;#039;t get frustrated wanting it,&amp;quot; says Betts, a 36-year-old mother of two, ages 5 and 2, in San Francisco.  14. Paint one room Call it a sneak attack on clutter: &amp;quot;When I repainted my living room, all the books had to come down from the shelves, which forced me to go through them and throw out those I no longer wanted,&amp;quot; says Judy. &amp;quot;Then, when I was done with that room, I saw that the room next to it looked shabby in comparison, so I had to clean it out, too. It&amp;#039;s like a pebble in water: The rings keep moving outward until I run out of steam or things become acceptable.&amp;quot;  15. Make pillows The solution to a full life isn&amp;#039;t to run from it. But to embrace it. One pillow at a time.   For more tips when you&amp;#039;re feeling stressed, see &amp;quot;How to Feel Rested on Too Little Sleep&amp;quot;. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/how-to/a193/simplify-your-life-yl/>