A stack of a half-dozen books and a few magazines are piled neatly next to a chair in Molly Cooley’s tidy apartment. Among the titles are Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” and one of Cooley’s favorites, “Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered” by E.F. Schumacher.

She intends to use these books in the ENCORE class she’s teaching this summer, “Unclutter Your Life; Do More With Less.” The class will focus on voluntary simplicity, a topic Cooley has been interested in since the 1970s.

“It doesn’t mean you have to get rid of everything,” she says. “It doesn’t even have to be neat.” She laughs as she says her students shouldn’t be expecting housekeeping advice. Cooley asserts that simplicity is all about organizing your priorities and, ideally, having only things you care about.

ENCORE (Exploring New Concepts of Retirement Education) is an association of retirement-age people interested in learning. Cooley’s is one of several summer courses offered for those 50 and older.

With this senior crowd, she expects some of her students to remember the Great Depression or rationing during World War II, and hopes to build upon everyone’s experiences. In wake of the current economic recession, she says voluntary simplicity can be useful. “You don’t feel deprived,” she says.

“I feel that our patterns of buying things should be consistent with our values,” she says, listing time, money and possessions as points of focus. “I don’t collect anything anymore … I certainly have all that I need.”

But she wasn’t always that way. Cooley, who turns 56 this week, remembers a time in her early twenties when she was newly married and had gone shopping at some of the first “big-box” stores. When her sister visited, Cooley detailed her bargains, saying, “Look how much I saved!” Her sister replied, “How much would you have saved if you had stayed home?”

“We get trapped into buying stuff we don’t need all the time,” Cooley says. Obsessed with looking for bargains, people tend to accumulate things until they’re “prisoners to their stuff.” At around the age of 50, Cooley says, many people start wanting to get rid of all that extra “stuff.”

“You realize you have all this freedom, but your things are tying you down,” she says. When Cooley decided to simplify her Portland home, she had to work not only to clean up her stuff, but things her son and daughter had left with her.

Sometimes Cooley’s habits are difficult for friends to understand. For a while she was into Zen and arranged her home according to a sparse and spacious style. But when visitors came, they tried to offer her furniture and televisions. “They couldn’t stand the emptiness,” Cooley says.

In October, Cooley, now single, moved from a three-bedroom house in Portland where she lived for 14 years to an apartment in Astoria. She had to get rid of enough stuff to fill two garages. But, she says, “I haven’t missed any of it. None.”

She moved to escape the complexity of the big city. “I’ve always wanted to live on the coast,” she says. Impressed by the environmentally minded community of Astoria, as well as its focus on preservation and restoration of historical sites, she decided the city was the place for her.

Part of Cooley’s goal is to build a tighter community. She emphasizes buying locally to support small businesses and sharing with neighbors. With a touch of spirituality, her class will be just as much about the community and environment as it is individuals. She also hopes to begin the discussion. “A lively debate would be fine,” she says.

Molly Cooley’s four-part class will be held Thursdays from 10 a.m. to noon beginning July 17 and continuing through Aug. 7. For more information, contact Helen McDaniel of ENCORE at 325-8933 or visit (www.clatsopcc.edu/programs/encore).

– Tehra Peace