Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Relevant, insightful, useful, and comforting
Real Simple is a wonderful solution for anyone looking for a useful and enjoyable magazine. Inside you will not find any pictures of underweight models wearing clothes that you will never buy, but instead tips for saving time and simplifying your life while getting more out of it. Informative articles on everything from delicious easy-to-cook meals to unique (and useful!) gift ideas to online investing and banking. Every issue offers something that is truly helpful for making your life simpler and more pleasant.
Rating: - Upscale, worldly but domestic mag for women
I LOVE "Real Simple". When I was growing up, my mother read "Family Circle" and "Women's Day" -- magazines that seem hopelessly dated. For me, this is the modern, classy equivalent. RS offers cleaning tips, decorating tricks, and recipes, but the recipes span American classics and a wide range of ethnic cooking. It provides practical advice that many of us should have learned from our parents but didn't, like how to handle a confrontation or comfort a grieving friend. The photography is gorgeous and the amount of content has been increasing as the magazine gets to its feet (I've been a subscriber from the first issue). Sure, some articles are simplistic and naive, but I don't mind paging through them to find the gems.
Rating:  - Keeping it simple.........too simple
To hear the editors of REAL SIMPLE, this magazine's mission is to assist the reader in streamling life's minutae, reducing stress, saving time, and offering inspiring ideas about food, health, work, family, etc. Sounds great, right? Well, not so fast.Although presented in top flight fashion, the content of REAL SIMPLE is just that, simple. This magazine fails miserably relative to inspiring, unique ideas, which is its self-described mission statement. Each issue has a potpourri of ideas but most lack intelligible and usable content thus rendering the function of this magazine impotent. Now, don't get me wrong, my indications are general in nature and should not be taken to mean that REAL SIMPLE has nothing to offer but its offerings are certainly nothing new, creative or unique. This magazine has potential but short of the editorial staff scouring the nooks and crannies for new and inventive ideas being employed by creative individuals/companies/organizations, my opinion is that this magazine is doomed to fail. If you only subscribe to one periodical, REAL SIMPLE "might" fit the bill as it does provide broad strokes relative to daily life and tips on "making it better" (the only reason I've given this product 2 stars as opposed to 1 star). However, if you subscribe to several magazines, you may find REAL SIMPLE just another one to toss on the coffee table or trash as the majority of its stories and tips lack originality and substance. My subscription just came due for renewal....I didn't.
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