How scaling down can simplify your life and make outings with your children easier. When our first child was born, my husband and I were committed to being as minimalist as possible. We eschewed most of the baby accessories deemed “necessary” and put away many of our son’s unwrapped birthday presents from friends and family, eventually reusing them the following year. He’s a child, we thought. There’s a big wide world to explore. He didn’t need stuff. Yet when we moved to Japan, we realized how very far we were from the life of simplicity we wanted to instill in our family. While struggling on…