Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity!

I was going through our mail the other day, and I came across a magazine that my mom subscribes to entitled "Real Simple". The tagline for the magazine is "Life Made Easier. Magazine and TV show about simplifying your life. Includes home solutions, meals , special features". I found it funny that in today's world we need a magazine to tell us how to simply our lives. It seemed almost ironic to me that in order to start simplifying, you must add reading the magazine to your routine first to tell you haw to go about doing it. I thought of the quote I had just read in Thoreau: "Our life is frittered away by detail...Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand" (Thoreau 73). Our lifestyles have become so complex, and we are often lead to feel that every tiny detail is of utmost importance. Thoreau would be disappointed that we have to have magazines telling us how to simplify our lives because we cannot do it on our own. The whole point of simplifying your life is supposed to be thinking through your own thoughts, not conforming to what others say to do with your life. However, Thoreau would definitely agree with the morals behind the magazine, that peoples' lives today are far to complex and busy, that they need to real focus on what is important. I tried to take this ideal and apply it to my own busy life, but it is quite difficult. I do not want to cut out anything that I enjoy doing, instead I would rather make more time to do those things, but that involve giving up time that is spent to homework and chores, things that are necessary that I do. In what ways can we follow Thoreau's advice in our own lives?