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Minimalist Parenting: Enjoy Modern Family Life More By Doing Less (2013)

by Christine Koh(Favorite Author)

3.11 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1937134342 (ISBN13: 9781937134341)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Bibliomotion

review 1: It felt like reading an extremely long blog post. There are a few good tips but most of it was fairly obvious filler material. There were so many times when I thought they must have written this using their shared dropbox to do list while standing in line at the grocery store. And if their photo bubbles were removed from all the pages, the book would be about 50 pages long. It is a good intro to minimalism but if you already consider yourself a minimalist, you've probably come across these ideas before.
review 2: probably more like 2.5 stars.ironically, this book really stressed me out. there was so much, "okay, you are a parent & your life is just so hectic between laundry & work & getting your kids to soccer & helping with homework & making time to connect wi... moreth your partner...". obviously some of these things are not relevant to me because my baby is just a baby & therefore not yet playing soccer or doing homework. but i was like, "whoa, is this what's on the horizon for me? i thought i was doing okay-ish with this mom thing, but maybe it just snowballs as the kid gets older & eventually i'll be totally overwhelmed!"it's worth noting that this book is pretty irrelevant to people who only have babies. it's definitely for parents of older kids...elementary school age, as far as i can tell. which is fine. kids are in elementary school for a lot longer than they are babies, & in my experience, parenting a baby is really just a long process of attending to basic needs & there's not much to simplify/minimalize there.this book was docked points for the incredibly played "put your oxygen mask on first" metaphor. people who write about parenting: STOP IT WITH THE OXYGEN MASK. they also use the phrase "inner bus driver" a lot, which grated on my nerves. i think i must have been spacing out when they explained what they even meant by that. obviously they mean "follow your instincts" or whatever, but it was such an incomprehensible turn of phrase given that a bus driver has a proscribed route to follow & doesn't get to follow his/her instincts even if there's a different route that s/he thinks might be faster/more scenic/whatever. but probably my biggest complaint is that a lot of their tips for simplifying & minimalizing sound like they are a fuck of a lot of work. setting up apps (i still don't know how to use apps...i'm one thousand years old), spreadsheets, filing systems, color-coded folders or basket systems, etc etc etc...i was exhausted just reading these suggestions. maybe i'm an incompetent adult. it's kind of like this book was about how to be the best type A perfectionist at the game of being minimalist! i mean, obviously a person could just pick & choose the tips that are most relevant or resonant to them. there's no rule that you have to do everything the authors suggest. but it was still overwhelming. less

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