Kate Humble pours her enviable knowledge into attainable goals. It's a winning combination and the prize - a life in balance with nature - is definitely worth claiming.' - LUCY SIEGLE It was still quite interesting, as we get to see a lot of different points of view, and read about many things from gardening to cooking bread to building your own house to sewing…

So there are some things I’ve absolutely adopted, and some things I want to keep learning and some things that I’m not doing that often, like washing by hand.” What I particularly love is her philosophy for happiness, which is the subject of her new book, A Year of Living Simply . The clue is in the title. Remember the basics. Instead of barging through the day on autopilot, really stop to think about the tiniest little things that added a moment of joy. No, of course stopping and smelling the flowers won't cure all our ills and woes. But taking the time to savour the things that bring pleasure, really being in that moment and appreciating it, can r emind you that most days have moments that buoy your mood.' - JO ELVIN, MAIL ON SUNDAY YOU I have a garden and we spent a long time creating a vegetable patch, but I didn’t spend enough time in it. I looked at the resources around me and thought ‘how can I use them better in a way that will make me fully happy’? You can feel a bit disconnected and that we are like flotsam and jetsam being cast around.”So in the book Kate started to think about what she really enjoyed, but never seemed to spend enough time doing. A keen environmentalist, one of the other areas she considered was how she could reduce her impact on the planet and the amount of resources she was using by learning to repair and repurpose items like previous generations might have done. I’d still like to see any city/suburban working mums with kids under ten who can’t disappear off to the country and home-school them take up any of these ideas (other than an allotment). Now that would be a book worth reading*. PDF / EPUB File Name: A_Year_of_Living_Simply_-_Kate_Humble.pdf, A_Year_of_Living_Simply_-_Kate_Humble.epub

What I also absolutely loved were all the passages where she shares the simple things in life that make her happy—a gentle reminder to celebrate even the smallest things! In this book, Kate shares her journey to find out what it really means to live a simple life. Kate has a busy life, her tv career means that she travels around the country, often away from home for weeks at a time. Using a variety of different methods from death cleaning, to gardening and to meeting people who have changed their whole way of life to live a more simple existence, I found so much to relate to within this book. I often find myself at my happiest when I'm in my garden pottering, or with my nose in a book, and it looks at those simple pleasures and those distractions that help take you away from all the negatives and shift your mind into a happier state. There's plenty about "earthships" and about shopping too and I must admit, I love her attitude to shopping in a physical shop. It's also interesting reading about her gain knowledge on gardening.

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I just felt aggrieved that she was promoting this simple life, but much of it would only be possible if you had the time and the funds to pursue it. So not really so simple then! And I felt she was slightly judgmental of those who didn’t aspire to these things whilst at the same time trying to be self deprecating about her own abilities eg with making bread. Life felt more complicated than it needed to be,” she says. “I started out thinking about what I would change, but I realised that a better question to ask is ‘why’ change. When you have the why, it makes the how easier.” It’s full of wisdom and a lot of humour too. The section on finding her husband’s hordes of light bulbs and plaster to last a lifetime and beyond resonated all too much with my own household. Must be a male thing! Overall, an interesting if somewhat hypocritical view of minimalism, self-sufficiency and anti-consumerism. My views differ somewhat considerably but perhaps an interesting read for someone who is starting their own journey.