Review: All You Need Is Less by Madeline Somerville

All You Need is Less: The Eco-Friendly Guide to Guilt-Free Green Living and Stress-Free Simplicity by Madeleine Somerville

Link to buy All You Need Is Less: The Eco-friendly Guide to Guilt-Free Green Living and Stress-Free Simplicity

Rating: 4 out of 5

At the beginning of Madeleine Somerville's All You Need is Less: The Eco-Friendly Guide to Guilt-Free Green Living and Stress-Free Simplicity, the author says that there should be more emphasis on the "reduce" segment of the environmentalists' "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" war cry. To that end, she focuses on strategies designed to help people acquire and use less stuff. Some of those strategies are more realistic and practical than others.

Everything lands on Somerville's chopping block, from personal care items, to home cleaning supplies, to clothes driers. The idea is that all the everyday products we purchase at the grocery store can be replaced with less expensive, more environmentally friendly alternatives. For instance, you can shampoo your hair with baking soda, shave with coconut oil, clean your home with vinegar, and hang your laundry on a clothesline outside to dry.

It almost goes without saying that Somerville is an advocate for rain barrels, backyard gardening with heirloom seeds, and cloth diapers, but she goes a step further with a chapter about how to improve your relationships and "green" your pets. It's all written in a friendly, easy-to-read style that usually tries to avoid inflicting crushing guilt trips on readers. 

A few things particularly stood out about this book:

1) The author is deeply infatuated with vinegar. She uses it for everything from first aid to housecleaning to hair conditioner. She admits that after using apple cider vinegar as conditioner, her hair might smell a little vinegary if it gets wet and you stick your nose in it, but she believes it's a small price to pay for not having to buy actual hair conditioner that's full of chemicals.

2) Some of the author's ideas are excellent and entirely possible for some people. Drying clothes on a line outside, for example, would work fine during dry, warm weather for people who have backyards with clotheslines. People living in apartments and/or in Minnesota in January are still going to need a drier. Plus there are plenty that are beyond the realm of how much trouble the average person will go to. For instance, traditional leg waxing is out. Instead, you're supposed to mix up a concoction of hot, sticky sugar and reusable cloth strips. Uh, no.

3) This book isn't just about using less stuff – it offers a new lifestyle. A reader can pick and choose which specific techniques work for him/her, but an environmental zealot can use the book to transform every aspect of his/her life.

As thorough and interesting and potentially useful as this book it, it did have a fundamental flaw. Many of the tips and techniques don't actually result in using less stuff; they just change which stuff you're using. For instance, let's say you want to use a skin moisturizer. Somerville says that instead of buying moisturizer which is specifically for that purpose, you should use coconut oil. And if you've got a cat, you shouldn't buy regular cat litter, but instead either buy the more expensive natural kind or make your own using shredded newspaper that you wet then mush together then dry in a process that takes 1-2 days.

Basically, you're not reducing anything. You're still buying and using stuff. You're just using stuff that's not as good as the stuff that you used to use. It's not necessarily even cheaper. Take coconut oil, for example. It's expensive and it comes in jars that you have to throw away, just like the skin lotion that it's supposed to be replacing. So why bother? I've tried to use coconut oil as a skin moisturizer. It's greasy and it gets oily spots on my clothes. The author advises readers to avoid that problem by toweling themselves off after using it, but that adds another step to my post-shower routine. And I smell like coconut, which isn't bad exactly, but it's not as nice as the fragrance in my skin lotion. So, to recap, people are supposed to stop buying expensive skin lotion which moisturizes their skin and smells nice. Instead they should buy expensive coconut oil, which moisturizes skin but leaves a greasy residue that needs to be removed and smells like coconuts. What exactly is being saved here? Especially if the skin lotion you already use is a natural kind that doesn't contain parabens or test on animals.

Overall, All You Need Is Less contains a lot of excellent tips. It's helpful to keep it in perspective, though, and remember that every little bit you do will help the planet. You don't have to follow all these guidelines to make your life a little greener. Realistically, there are a finite number of hours in the day to grow your own food, make your own baby wipes, and give your partner deep tissue massages instead of buying him/her anniversary gifts. And as for me, life's too short to have hair that smells like vinegar.

Reviewed by Peter