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after admiring the day’s creation, Marie’s mother and Marie would take them down, talking as they folded the cloths, unpinned the pins, and put the materials in their basket, ready for the next day.
    This was just the first step in a simplification process that included several levels and unfolded over many months. Yet this first step, the change in Marie’s room, signaled a kind of sea change, a new awareness that expanded through the family’s house and their days; the space and time of their daily lives. This sea change was not just the result of “tidying up.” It was a conscious move, both practical and philosophical, toward a more rhythmic, predictable, child-centered home life. By that I do not mean that the home and everything done in it are oriented toward the child, but I absolutely do mean that the home and everything in it are not exclusively oriented toward adults. A certain pace or volume of “stuff” may be tolerable for adults, while it is intolerable, or problematic, for the kids.
    Children are such tactile beings. They live so fully by their senses that if they see something, they will also want to touch it, smell it, possibly eat it, maybe throw it, feel what it feels like on their heads, listen to it, sort it, and probably submerge it in water. This is entirely natural. Strap on their pith helmets; they’re exploring the world. But imagine the sensory overload that can happen for a child when every surface, every drawer and closet is filled with stuff? So many choices and so much stimuli rob them of time and attention. Too much stuff deprives kids of leisure, and the ability to explore their worlds deeply.

    Over the years I’ve seen remarkable, very moving transformations among the families I’ve come to know and work with. Very simple principles, gradually incorporated into a home, produce dramatic shifts in a family’s emotional climate, in their connection to one another. In thiswork, I often think about a stream, dammed by a pile of rocks that has accumulated gradually … so gradually that the rocks have gone unnoticed, but the imbalance is felt. By reducing mental and physical clutter, simplification increases a family’s ability to flow together, to focus and deepen their attention, to realign their lives with their dreams.

The Changes
    When I first started my simplification consultation work, the transformations I was seeing were unprecedented in my professional experience. As simplification became the heart of my work I felt out on a limb professionally. I had not arrived at these methods through my training or schooling, not through developmental psychology or school counseling, and not through what I knew about psychoanalysis. The schooling and training I had had were complicated, but the simplification approach I was developing was not tricky. It was very, very simple.
    At this professional point—some ten years ago—my family and I were living in the beautiful New England college community of Northampton, Massachusetts. My private counseling practice was expanding rapidly as word about this work was getting out. To this day I have the nickname there of “Dr. Trashbag.” Given that, you might think this was a low period in my career! Not so. It was very gratifying to see firsthand how effective simplification could be in restoring a child’s sense of ease.
    Others were noticing as well. If you know the area, you know there are probably more therapists per square block in Northampton than anywhere else in the country, except perhaps Manhattan. I was receiving referrals not only from the families I worked with, but also from the psychologists and psychiatrists in the area. They were finding that their own treatment methods—whether cognitive behavioral therapy, art therapy, or talk therapy—were much more effective once a simplification regime had taken hold in the home. Simplification prepared the space in a child’s daily life for changes to take place. As one