modern life is rubbish

Speak to sociologists, eco nomic forecasters, and the wily minds that advise companies on where to extend their tentacles, and one fact recurs time and again: our Stress Spend - the amount we pay in an attempt to streamline our lives and reduce the ever-increasing mountain of modern clutter - is set to go through the roof.

"Time poverty", that ludicrous-sounding concept that allows any harried professional to feel saintly and disadvantaged, is now an accepted part of the modern vocabulary. Seventy-five per cent of people in full-time work go along with the statement "I never seem to have enough time to get things done"; even among the retired, supposedly indulging in a languid mixture of package holidays, coach trips and gin and tonic, the figure is 47 per cent (and, if all that sounds like a startlingly obvious statement of the human condition, bear in mind that these figures have been rising steeply for 15 years).

The upshot, very often, is that our houses look like small-scale municipal tips. Little wonder that an army of authors and advisers are in a race to tell us not only how to tidy up, but to streamline, simplify and get back in touch with what self-help books call our "inner essence". The aim is to jettison piles of paper, ready meals and dashed ambitions, and make our lives a garden of order, creativity and evening classes. Who wouldn't be attracted?

In the US, the simplification industry - and it is an industry - is in full bloom. There are a mountain of manuals - How To Handle 1000 Things At Once, Organise Your Stuff The Lazy Way, Live In Your Garden Shed - It's Just Easier (one of these is made up, but you get the point). Their authors have managed to turn themselves into veritable gurus - and in addition to writing books, they tend to double up as one-on-one "clutter counsellors", charging handsome fees for life-changing consultations. Every time a bulging bin bag hits the sidewalk, it seems, someone is gleefully trotting off to the bank.

And now this booming sub-economy has its own magazine. The People group, responsible for such newstand titans as In Style and Martha Stewart Living, has just launched the heartwarmingly titled Real Simple. Via creamy paper, large amounts of white space, and pictures of cups of tea, it aims to assure its stressed-out readership that clutter and confusion need not be an inescapable part of 21st- century life. Among its first spate of features are "why one credit card is better than 10", "how to get off the junk mail circuit - permanently", and "the fastest, easiest way to clean your bathroom". There's nothing about new approaches to putting CDs back in their boxes, but it's probably on the way.

Managing editor Susan Wyland says the magazine was born out of her own piled-up lifestyle. "I had this feeling that women in particular were looking down at these incredibly full plates and thinking, `Wait a minute - if my plate's so full, why do I still feel like there's something missing?' It came from my sense that we're doing more, but enjoying life less. Women wake up and go like they've been shot out of a cannon and then fall into bed thinking about all the stuff they have to do tomorrow. Making choices is an ongoing battle. We have too many."

Like a true Manhattan media-ite, she says the magazine is aimed at a "psychographic" rather than any particular social category - if you feel like you're only just keeping your head above the lifestyle water, Real Simple is probably a required buy. But does she ever feel as if she's addressing a constituency of lifestyle inadequates? Reading parts of Real Simple, like the bathroom story - "a clean bathroom says that you're in control of your life and home," it says, rather piously - you can't shake off the feeling that people should really know this stuff already.

"Well," she considers, "that story has been controversial. Some people have said `Cleaning your bathroom? I know how to clean my bathroom'. But the point of the story is the fastest, easiest way to clean your bathroom. A lot of us are looking for a way to do the dumb stuff more efficiently, so we'll have time to sit in that chair with a cup of coffee. People have even said, `I ripped that story out and handed it to my eight year-old. Now he can do it'."

At the top of the simplification tree are the true gurus. They range from one Don Aslett, a no-nonsense Oprah regular whose approach is distinctly militaristic, to the kind of quasi-mystics who stray close to our old friend feng shui. Somewhere in the middle sits Michelle Passoff, the New York-based author of Lighten Up! Free Yourself From Clutter, a book whose strap-line indicates a vague spiritual bent, along with a reassuring emphasis on bog-standard reality: "Create the space for miracles by freeing yourself from too much stuff."

Her own account of her life history is no less bathetic. "As a child of the Sixties," she says, "I questioned everything about the established thinking. And instead of just rebelling, I looked at it all: what is it to be human, what is it to be a woman, what is my relationship with God? And after hours and hours of workshops and retreats and listening to gurus, I came to a conclusion." Which was?She sounds positively evangelical. "For a successful life, clean your clutter!"