Over the past few years, but especially this year, I’ve been working on consciously simplifying my pantry to reduce food clutter and waste, spend less on groceries, and feel more inspired to cook. My main observation, which might seem counterintuitive, is that having fewer ingredients in my pantry actually makes me enjoy cooking more, not less! Opening the doors to a cabinet packed with an overwhelming number of bags, jars, and cans of things I know I should be cooking with, but rarely do, often left me feeling guilty and at a loss for what to cook.

Now, my pantry doesn’t look perfectly beautiful, with decanted and labeled containers (maybe one day!), but it’s simple enough that it gives me so much peace. It’s felt freeing to cook with just our favorite ingredients on hand, eat what we have, and I actually really enjoy the challenge of making something out of very simple ingredients. Plus, we’ve consistently been spending less on groceries.

What we keep in our pantries is deeply personal, and the volume of food we need will depend entirely on our style of cooking, household size, season of life, and so on. The goal isn’t to have a perfectly minimalist pantry, but one that’s functional for your specific needs, and where the ingredients are actually being used. I think we could all benefit from a little more intention around our pantries, so here’s how I simplified mine.

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Identify your true pantry staples

Do a little detective work to identify your true ingredient workhorses - the things you actually cook with and reach for again and again (I’ve included my list below.) Be honest with yourself about which ingredients actually serve you. Sometimes, we shop for our fantasy lifestyles and selves rather than our real needs. These are the ingredients that will become the foundation of your pantry, while everything else should be carefully considered before buying.

• Pull everything out of your pantry and wipe down the shelves. Pay attention to what’s in front or on top - those are likely the things that you reach for the most.

• Organize the items into these categories:

  True pantry staples - things you regularly use and want to keep stocked

  Use soon/donate - ingredients that are still good but need to be used up

  Toss - expired, stale, spoiled, or otherwise unusable ingredients

• Make a list of your true pantry staples and maybe put it on your fridge, in your Notes app, or notebook, somewhere you can quickly reference it.

• You might be out of some pantry staples, so make sure to add them to the list as they come up.

• Keep doing this every few months, or as the seasons shift to reevaluate and note any changes to your cooking style.

Shop your pantry before the grocery store

Do an inventory check of your pantry before making your grocery list, then plan your meals around whichever ingredients you have a lot of, or the ones that need to be used up. Rather than starting with a blank slate and planning whatever sounds good, look at what you already have and let those ingredients guide your meals.

For example, if you have three cans of chickpeas, a bag of rice, and some vegetables that need to be used up in the fridge, maybe that can become a curry or soup.

It’s helpful to do the same with the fridge and freezer, too!

Learn the art of making do

This takes some time and confidence building in the kitchen, but once I realized that I didn’t have to follow most recipes to a T and instead make them my own with what I had on hand, cooking became more exciting.

If you have a lot of one ingredient, look for ways to use it as a stand-in for something in a recipe you’re already making, like swapping one type of grain for another. Likewise, if a recipe calls for an ingredient that you don’t typically buy, see if you have something similar that’s already a staple in your pantry (for example, peanut butter instead of almond butter in a noodle sauce). You’ll probably still end up with a delicious meal.

These habits help prevent duplicate purchases, keep food from languishing in the back of the pantry, and help you save on groceries.

Managing the non-staples

Ingredients that aren’t staples will inevitably make their way into your pantry, that’s just how it goes. And sometimes, we just want to try something new and expand our palate! I’ve found it most helpful to accept this, while simultaneously having a plan for those ingredients, so they don’t end up being shoved to the back of the cabinet. Here are some ideas:

• Make a plan for how you’ll use the ingredient - keep it at the front of the pantry, and come up with some ways in which you’ll either incorporate it into your usual meals, or try making something new.

• Give the ingredient away to friends/family - but only if you know that they’ll genuinely use it and enjoy it. We don’t want to burden someone else with our clutter. You can also, of course, donate unopened foods, but these things tend to be open already.

• Toss - I know! Food waste is a serious issue, and throwing away food is of course not ideal. But sometimes it’s inevitable and happens to all of us, even when we have the best intentions. The point I’m trying to make here is that if you know in your heart that you’re never going to use or give away an ingredient, it’s better off in the trash than taking up space in your pantry well past its expiration date. The good news is that shopping for pantry staples more intentionally should help you waste much less food in general.

An example: We recently bought a bag of sushi rice because my husband really wanted to make sushi rolls. This isn’t a type of rice that we usually cook with (Basmati is our go to), but we’ve been making it work in our usual meals, like as a simple rice side (it makes a kind of sticky rice that’s delicious), or for thickening and bulking up soups, which I often do with Basmati. I also really want to try making onigiri. We won’t buy new rice until this one is used up.

A note on emergency food

The question that’s often brought up when it comes to having a minimal-ish pantry is: what about backups and storing food for emergencies? It’s an important point to consider, and what I’ve found most seamless is to store those ingredients separately (in a different cabinet, in my case). That way, they don’t get mixed in with your regular pantry goods and eaten prematurely, while your everyday pantry stays uncluttered.

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My belly is getting to that point where I can’t really hide the fact that I’m pregnant with our second baby - much sooner than with the first. I’ve been slowly telling everyone over the past couple of weeks, and I thought I’d finally share the news here, too. After all, this newsletter is the one thing I’ve managed to stay consistent with through the fog of my first trimester (I have yet to revive my Instagram page!), and I’m truly so thankful to every single one of you for reading. Writing weekly on Substack was one of the main creative promises I made to myself for 2026, and I’m happy that I’ve stuck with it so far.

I found so much comfort and solidarity in first-trimester recaps like this when I was in the thick of it, especially from second-time moms, since that’s the boat I’m in now. Did they feel better or worse than with their first? How is it possible to be as tired as I remember being, but with a toddler to take care of?

Now I’ve officially survived the first trimester. The nausea has thankfully started to fade, but the bone-deep tiredness remains. So here’s a little bullet point recap of my second first trimester, followed by a list of the little things that helped me get through it this time around:

• I really, really tried to keep busy (easy with a toddler at home) and on top of my daily routines like working out, housework, cooking, staying creative, so as to distract myself from feeling less than stellar. This worked up until 10-ish weeks, then I crashed and the routines became more sporadic.

• Symptom-wise, this first trimester has been a bit better than with my first baby. There’s hope! I didn’t get as nauseous as early, and the nausea has been a bit less severe. I also don’t think I’ve been quite as tired as last time, but…

• I have my toddler at home with me full time, and right as my symptoms started increasing at about seven weeks, my son stopped napping and never looked back. To say that I completely depended on that hour and a half midday break, even before I was pregnant, would be an understatement. It’s been a very challenging adjustment to make!

• First trimester for me has been characterized by a complete lack of motivation both times. It’s a kind of low energy mode that takes over my whole brain and being, and doing anything feels like I’m moving through molasses. I know I’m very much not alone in feeling this way.

• Then there’s the overall food weirdness that I maybe think is the hardest part of it all. Everything looks, smells, and tastes bad except for that one random ingredient you don’t have on just one random day (then it’s gross again). Yet you’re very hungry, and the hunger makes the nausea worse. I truly have no recollection of most of the things I ate or cooked this summer 😂

• Speaking of summer, I’ve heard that summer in the third trimester can be quite hard, which makes sense with the heat and physical demands of that period of time. First trimester summer was also not my favorite. I normally love New England summer, but I felt very sensitive to the heat and humidity, and the heatwaves felt never-ending. All I wanted was to nap in the AC. In my first pregnancy, summer fell on the second trimester, and that was pure bliss!

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All the oddly specific things that helped me feel better in first trimester

Decluttering and organizing

Unsurprising, since I already love those things, but nesting takes on a whole new level of satisfaction in pregnancy, at least for me. I would give myself one tiny, manageable task to do most days while feeling nauseous - something like clean out and organize the spice drawer - and that small feeling of accomplishment afterwards was huge for me mentally.

Walks

Parenting a toddler is way easier outside, so I had lots of motivation to get out for a walk every single day, even when I really didn’t feel like it. A walk almost always left me in better shape than when I started. I’d take my son in the stroller or on his beloved balance bike, we would stop at a park or the library, or meet up with friends. Being out in the world helped lift some of the fog and ground me back to earth.

The Big 6 Lymph routine

On the days when movement felt impossible, this very easy and quick lymph drainage routine helped me feel not quite as stagnant in my body. I now do it every single morning.

Salty, warm lemon or lime water first thing in the morning

Inspired by this note, I noticed that my nausea would be worse if I didn’t have this drink first thing. I still drink it every morning, and have come to love the flavor.

Being diligent about morning sun

We have a deck that gets direct sun in the summer, and going out there first thing to get morning light in my eyes has become another one of those cherished routines that made me feel more energized in first trimester. I could stomach caffeine (my drink of choice is matcha) at first. When the matcha became too much, I switched to hojicha, which is an even lower caffeine, roasted green tea powder that’s absolutely delicious, but, a few weeks later, couldn’t tolerate that either.

Instead of using those drinks to wake up, my new routine became getting outside with my lemony water, basking in the sun, and doing the lymph Big 6.

Knitting

The methodical, repetitive nature of knitting was a great comfort to me in both my pregnancies. This time around, I finished my very first adult-sized sweater in record time (for me), and started another. Any idle moment where the nausea or exhaustion felt overwhelming was made lighter by the clicking of my needles.

Getting ready (on the days it felt possible)

Even if it’s just changing from one comfy outfit to another and braiding my hair, putting myself together in some way has been an instant mood lifter.

Cozy soups!

Even on the hottest summer days, the one thing that I could reliably stomach was a cozy, mushy soup. My favorites have been Molly Baz’s Get-Well Soup (I do 1 less cup water and add a can of coconut milk instead), this lemony soup that’s a staple for us, and curries of all kinds.

Black bean brownies and chocolate mousse

I haven’t been craving sweets very much, which is surprising because I’m normally a dessert person. But these two healthier, less-sweet treats have really been hitting the spot. I alternate between these black bean brownies and these ones (I do 2 eggs in place of the flax eggs). And I’ve been loving this chocolate mousse.

Magnesium/trace minerals

I’m always a fan, but I’ve been extra diligent with taking trace minerals during pregnancy, for improved sleep and digestion, and a million other factors. I’ve also been dreaming of magnesium baths every evening, but the bathtub in our rental does not exactly offer a spa-like experience. I’ve found the next best thing to be magnesium foot baths with these bath flakes. Those, combined with an early bedtime make me sleep so deeply.

Books instead of scrolling

Looking at social media and the sheer speed of it made my nausea worse in first trimester, so I’ve had to replace it almost entirely with reading (although I do want to get back to posting on my IG!). What I’ve been reading and re-reading: Real Food for Pregnancy, Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, Reclaiming Childbirth as a Rite of Passage, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, The Red Tent. I usually read in bed before going to sleep, and using my clip on red light makes me feel like I’m reading by firelight.

I’m planning to share more about preparing for a new baby in the simplest way I know how: rethinking what we already have instead of buying more, budgeting, getting hand-me-downs ready, and being very intentional about what we actually need. I’ll share what I’m not buying, along with the few things I am getting new or making, so stick around if you’re interested!

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Thank you so much for reading!

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Living below your means, having less stuff, and valuing simplicity aren’t exactly the defaults in today’s fast-paced world. Speaking from personal experience, even when you feel deeply convicted about this way of living, it can feel pretty lonely and isolating at times. That’s why I find it so helpful to seek out people who live similarly and share about it thoughtfully, then curate my feeds around them.

Today, I’m inspired to share all the people who encourage me to live simply and get back on track whenever I feel myself slipping into less-than-ideal habits. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten plenty of favorites, but these are some of the resources and creators I’ve resonated with the most over the years. We’d all absolutely love if you shared yours in the comments as well!

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Youtube Channels

• Minimal Mom - Dawn is so wholesome and down-to-earth, shows real life, and makes minimalism seem super approachable. I learn something new from every video. A few favorite videos: Whole House Declutter, On ‘Hushing’ the Kids’ Room, Minimalist Cleaning Routine.

• Madisun Gray - Absolutely beautiful videos on minimalism and slow living, plus her family is traveling the world right now (3 kids included) and sharing their journey. A few favorite videos: Minimalist House Tour, Homeschool Week in the Life, A Month in Italy

• Paper Town Home - Erika is steering away from minimalism content now, but I still love her simple living and parenting videos. A few favorites: The 30-min Method to Ditch 99% of the Toys, Declutter 500 Items in 30 Days, My Organized Minimalist House.

• Christina Mychas - A newer to me channel, so I don’t have any favorite videos as of yet, but it’s very much about mindful spending and minimalism.

Underconsumption/Mindful Spending/Personal Finance

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Apologies for a midweek newsletter instead of my usual weekend one. Life has been demanding lately, and writing time has been more limited. Thank you for reading and being here :)

I was recently away from home for two weeks, and coming back brought on the most soothing, full-body exhale. We’ve been living in this modestly sized second-floor rental for six years now. The two-family house was built in the 1920s, and it definitely shows its age. There were few things I would have called nice about the apartment when we moved in: plenty of grime and quirks from years of being rented, and the ugliest green linoleum I’ve ever seen covering the kitchen floors. But it also has bits of old-school craftsmanship that you rarely see in modern builds: ornate hardwood floors, French doors, plaster walls, broom-finished ceilings. Our goal, as we slowly made this space into a home, was to let those details come forward without adding too much visual noise.

So, upon thinking about why this very imperfect rental makes my nervous system instantly relax, I realized that it’s just as much about what’s not in our home as it is about what is. No: clutter, artificial fragrances, ‘smart’ home gadgets, bright LEDs, excess toys, clothes we don’t wear, or decor simply for the sake of filling a space. And this isn’t coming from some snooty place. It’s really just the result of slowly learning what makes us feel good and what genuinely serves us, versus what just adds more things to maintain, organize, clean, or think about.

But there are plenty of things in our home that we adore, too, that make daily life easier, healthier, or more enjoyable in some capacity. My favorite category is when something is genuinely utilitarian and works beautifully: it looks nice without being intrusive, does its job well, and ideally saves money in the long run by being made to last. Below, I thought it would be fun to go room-by-room and list off all of those things, plus some other firm favorites.

Bedroom

• Avocado mattress with this organic cotton mattress protector

• All season down-cotton comforter and pillows

• Cotton and linen bedding

• This clip-on red/amber light, so excellent for non-circadian disturbing nighttime diaper changes, potty trips, or bedtime reading. I always take it with me when I travel, too.

• Air purifier

• This non-ugly fan for white noise/breeze while sleeping

• Dehumidifier bags in closets (we have very humid summers, so these help a ton with keeping our clothes fresh)

Bathroom/medicine cabinet

• Unscented products: jojoba oil for moisturizing and cleansing, Dr. Bronner’s baby bar soap, Under Luna shampoo.

• Shower filter

• Dry brush for lymph support

• Facial cups - my number one skin health/beauty practice

• Adult and kid nasal spray for cold season

Kitchen

• Stainless steel ice cube trays - these are so sturdy, I think I’ll be passing them down to my grandchildren + one less plastic/silicone thing in constant contact with our water is a win.

• Wood-and-steel dish brush that I’ve had for years and won’t stop talking about. It looks so much nicer than a neon sponge, and I love that the handle is metal, so it doesn’t mold from getting wet + and the brush heads are replaceable.

• Reusable Swedish towels that I use to curb my paper towel habit. They blend in with my sink and look very unobtrusive.

• Carbon steel pan that I found to be a great, more lasting alternative to a non-stick pan. Once you get it seasoned and start using it consistently, it becomes truly non-stick. I can fry eggs, scramble eggs, fry blini or dosas on mine without any sticking.

• Water filter for drinking and cooking water - we currently have a Berkey shell with these filters.

• Glass food storage containers - mostly just various Mason and Weck jars I’ve collected over the years, plus two bigger glass Pyrex ones for larger food quantities.

• Toaster oven - we found this one to be very much worth the price & use it everyday not just for toast, but for cooking and reheating all kinds of food. I also appreciate that it claims to be free of PFAS and other nonstick coatings, which was a big consideration for me when choosing a toaster oven.

• A pantry stocked with true staples - this is one I’ve been working on hard this year. The goal is to have a pantry that’s not overwhelming to look at, and where every ingredient is something we love and use often. Maybe I’ll do a post on this if anyone is interested!

• Stainless steel drinking lids - I love popping these onto glass jars when taking drinks to go. If you’re like me and don’t love collecting a million travel mugs, these are awesome.

Living and dining areas

• Beeswax candles - we light a candle at dinnertime, as well as during breakfast when it’s gloomy out during the fall and winter. The honey glow and gentle scent of beeswax candles is the coziest thing. We get ours semi-locally from Danica Candles in Maine.

• Wool rug - we got a vintage wool living room rug from a Turkish shop on Etsy, and it’s been the best! It keeps us warm during the winter, feels neutral in the summer, and is so easy to clean. We’ve spilled everything from coffee to wine, to nettle tea on it, and the stains have come out and magically disappeared every single time.

• Sheepskin - my son’s sheepskin that was gifted to him as a baby comes with us everywhere we want to feel cozy - reading time, blanket fort, even in bed in the winter.

• A minimal toy shelf - our living room is also our playroom, so we keep toys to a functional minimum and rotate them often. I really don’t think my son is missing out by having fewer toys - if anything, I’ve found that he plays better this way. Simplicity Parenting is my favorite book on the subject.

• Warm, incandescent lightbulbs in our lamps (all throughout the house, whenever possible).

Related posts:

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Thank you so much for reading! I’d love to hear about the things in your home that have improved your life.

Follow along on Instagram for more ideas on simple living and mindful spending. This is the budget spreadsheet I use to track our spending in one calm, organized place (MASHA10 for 10% off).

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This post is inspired by a note I read by Jodi Wilson titled Five ways to be frugal this week. It got me thinking about the small, almost invisible ways of being frugal that I’ve built into my own life, and how many of them have turned out to be surprisingly fun to practice, in a deeply satisfying sort of way.

It’s likely that most of us could benefit from being a little more intentionally frugal in our lives, especially considering the constant onslaught of targeted advertising we experience while consuming everyday media. Speaking from personal experience, it can feel like a perpetual push and pull between what we see others have and think that we need, and what we actually need as whole, unique individuals.

The reason I wanted to take this list in a more lighthearted and almost gamified direction is because frugality tends to come with the connotation of deprivation and a sober kind of strictness, where no fun is allowed. What I’ve learned since deciding to change my shopping patterns and say goodbye to the consumerism treadmill is that being frugal can actually feel like the opposite of deprivation. When you train yourself to spend on and save for your true values and goals, while ignoring the passing indulgences that will mean very little to you in the long run, saving money can become naturally enjoyable (at least a lot of the time!).

Make your home a place you enjoy being. Set up living areas that feel comfortable to you, declutter excess stuff, create a corner for doing your hobbies - anything that helps you feel content at home and keeps you from feeling like you’re missing out when you’re not out spending money.

My home is always a work in progress, but putting time and energy into learning how to make it a space my family and I truly love being has been so worthwhile.

Create rituals at home that you genuinely look forward to. My husband recently grabbed me a strawberry matcha at a cafe, and it was so good I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Turns out, I was able to easily recreate it at home by making my own strawberry syrup.

It can be a morning drink that’s as good as the one you’d get at a café, a special home cooked pizza night, a movie night, Sunday pancakes. Knowing how to create your own little world that you love, without always having to outsource it, is incredibly empowering, and will definitely help you save money along the way

Shop your fridge and pantry first. End the week with a clean-out-the-fridge meal before you go grocery shopping. Make sure you don’t already have the spice you need for that one recipe tucked away in the back of your spice cabinet. Challenge yourself to finally use up that bag of dried beans that’s been sitting in the pantry.

Some of my family’s favorite meals I’ve ever made have come from clean-out-the-fridge nights - soups, stews, stir-fries, frittatas. It’s also become one of my favorite ways to cook. Making something delicious out of seemingly nothing feels deeply fulfilling, almost like a fun little game.

Become a regular at the library. I feel genuinely giddy every time I enter the library nowadays - so many possibilities! Make a little outing of browsing the shelves, putting books on hold, and picking them up. As a bonus: many libraries have movies, audiobooks, magazines, and even museum passes that can be checked out.

Come up with a list of free or nearly free outings you can reference. Some ideas: the library, farmers market, local trails, playgrounds, beaches, museums on free days, or even coffee from a thermos on a cool morning walk can get you out of the house without turning into a spontaneous $100 day.

The ‘one in, one out rule’ for new stuff. This one is pretty self-explanatory and doesn’t have to be super strict, but just having that awareness will make you so much more selective when buying things. For me, this rule especially helps when it comes to clothes and keeps me from having an overflowing wardrobe that stresses me out.

Keep a running list of actual wardrobe gaps to look for when clothes shopping. When I changed my clothing wish list from 'cute things I like' to specific pieces I’d identified that I genuinely needed, shopping became much more purposeful, and I’ve spent shockingly less on clothes over the past year.

Learn to make a few of your own favorite snacks. Packaged, store-bought snacks are a sneaky category that can quickly skyrocket your grocery bill. With those, you’re not only paying for the processing and packaging of the food, but also the branding and marketing. Many snacks are also surprisingly easy to make at home, and are much healthier as a bonus, since you’re in control of the ingredients. Some of my favorites to make right now are sourdough crackers and gelatin gummies.

Learn how to fix or mend something instead of replacing it. I recently patched and mended my linen pillowcase, which started growing a hole in it. It was so fun to do, and I actually love how the visible mending turned out (this is a great tutorial). Not only did this save me from spending good money on a new linen pillowcase, but it also saved me from acquiring an extra one I don’t need, since pillowcases mostly come in sets of two.

It doesn’t have to be sewing, either. Oil your wooden cutting boards, sharpen your kitchen knives, mend a favorite sweater, refresh your hobby tools. It feels so gratifying to learn the pleasure of maintenance.

Get comfortable with rest and doing nothing. Free time doesn’t have to be filled with paid activities, and I think it’s safe to say that we’re all lacking true rest in today’s society. Learning to enjoy a slow, unstructured day at home can be surprisingly luxurious when you stop feeling like you need to be doing or buying something. A day off puttering around the house? A dream, if you ask me.

Spend money on things you genuinely value and be frugal about the rest. This one has been key for me personally. Frugality gets much easier when it isn’t an attempt to optimize every single dollar, but rather to notice what things don’t actually matter to you and trim the fat there. For us, food is one category where the quality and supporting local farmers are very important, but we’re not particularly extravagant about much else.

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Thank you so much for reading!

Follow along on Instagram for more ideas on simple living and mindful spending. This is the budget spreadsheet I use to track our spending in one calm, organized place (MASHA10 for 10% off).

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Over the years, I’ve found that making certain things myself has become one of the simplest ways to not only save money, but also make everyday life feel a little richer and more beautiful. There's a unique blend of accomplishment, satisfaction, and quiet confidence that comes from making things with our hands. It's such a deeply human skill.

At the same time, as someone who greatly values simplicity, anything I make instead of buying has to be simple and/or enjoyable enough to become part of my routine. I'm definitely not making everything from scratch, but the things below are the ones that have stuck over the years and genuinely made my life better in the process. I’d love to hear about yours as well!

Kitchen

• Bread - I learned to bake sourdough back when everybody else did, during Spring 2020, and it’s become such a cherished weekly ritual. Around here, our homemade bread is every bit as good as, if not better than, what we'd get from the local bakeries, so making it ourselves is an easy choice. It saves us money, gives us incredible bread, and is an such a relaxing, tactile experience. I wrote a more in-depth post about my sourdough routine, recipe, and tips here.

• Salad dressing - Salad dressing is so easy to make at home, and as a huge bonus, you have complete control over the ingredients and don't have to deal with all the preservatives, stabilizers, emulsifiers, and other additives that are so common in store-bought dressings. Learning the ratio for a simple vinaigrette alone can change your cooking life for the better, it’s such a versatile dressing: 2 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, plus a spoonful of Dijon mustard, sweetener to taste if preferred, minced shallot or garlic, salt & pepper.

• Broth and stock - I got into the habit of saving stock-friendly scraps like onion skins and ends, carrot peels, celery tops, herb stems, mushroom stems, garlic skins, chicken bones, and leftover meat bones in a bag in the freezer. Once the bag is full, I simmer everything with a whole onion and carrot or two into a rich homemade broth that’s worlds better than what’s at the store.

• Granola - Amanda’s recipe is my favorite, and is great for gifting, too. I love that I can control the amount of sweetener when making granola, as I find most store-bought ones a little too sweet.

• Ghee - Homemade tastes so good, and I’m able to infuse it with different spices/herbs if I want.

• Certain seasonal condiments like preserved lemons, apple sauce and apple butter, pesto to freeze, etc. - These come out cheaper than store-bought, yes, but I especially love how these small preserving projects help me mark and celebrate the seasons and the passage of time.

Home

• Cleaning spray - A 1:1 mixture of vinegar and water, sometimes infused with citrus peels or pine needles, is what I use as an all-purpose cleaning spray. It's so simple, very inexpensive, and works well for nearly all of our everyday cleaning.

• Dishwashing spray - A drop of Sal Suds in a spray bottle full of water is how we wash our dishes. For anything that needs to soak, I add a drop of Sal Suds to a sink full of water instead. It's a very concentrated product, so a little goes a very long way. As a bonus, I love how an amber glass bottle looks on the counter vs a branded bottle of dishsoap.

• Seasonal decor - This is where I either lean heavily on treasures gathered from nature or go all out making family heirlooms. For example, last winter, I quilted and cross-stitched Christmas stockings for our family, pictured above.

Kids

• Play dough - I use this recipe, and making the play dough has become a fun activity in itself.

• Crafts - I rarely buy craft-specific materials, and instead, we get creative using what we have, which is usually old packaging material, scrap paper, gift wrap, and Washi tape.

Clothes

• Simple summer tops (within reason) - We love linen bedsheets, but I’ve also found that they have a shorter lifespan than cotton and end up tearing a few years in. I like using the old sheets to make flowy tops for myself - they often end up being my most worn and favorite summer pieces.

• Sweaters - Ever since I learned to knit, I usually look at a cute sweater in a store and think, I could probably make that. That feeling is especially strong when it comes to sweaters for my son. Children's clothes are tiny, don't require much yarn, and are therefore relatively quick to knit. While I might still buy some sweaters, knitting has become my first instinct whenever I see one I'd love to have.

Health/beauty

• Facial masks - There are so many common kitchen ingredients that make for the most lush facial masks. My favorites are honey and yogurt.

• Herbal infusions and tea blends - I love buying loose leaf herbs (either from our local herb store, Mountain Rose Herbs, or even Amazon carries brands like Starwest Botanicals and Frontier Coop) to make custom tea blends and blends for the nutritive herbal infusions that I drink almost every day. They taste so much more flavorful than tea bags and are far more cost-effective than buying specialty loose-leaf teas. Homemade tea blends also make for thoughtful gifts!

Thank you so much for reading! I’d love to hear what things you’ve come to like making instead of buying.

Follow along on Instagram for more ideas on simple living and mindful spending. This is the budget spreadsheet I use to track our spending in one calm, organized place (MASHA10 for 10% off).

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This is Part 2 of my wardrobe reset series, where I’ll walk you through my entire thought process as I work toward building the wardrobe that supports the personal style of my dreams. You can read Part 1 here.

Sometime around becoming a first time mom and entering my mid thirties, I found myself with a wardrobe that felt disjointed, uninspiring, and in need of some sort of shake up. But instead of going on a shopping spree to rebuild my closet, I decided to take a completely different approach - I quit clothes shopping for an entire year. At first, it was a pause that I took more out of frustration of not knowing what to buy than anything else, but the longer I went, the more benefits I discovered. The most surprising one being that my personal style became clearer without the shopping noise.

I catalogued my entire closet, got serious about selling nice pieces I never wear, and committed to only buying five new items of clothing in 2026. I also started identifying the true gaps in my wardrobe. This has been an incredibly slow process, and I’ve leaned into that slowness because building anything worthwhile takes time (and not to mention resources!).

Because this is an ongoing series that will probably never truly come to an end, I’ll continue sharing what I’ve been learning as someone who genuinely loves clothing and getting dressed. Here are a few things I’ve discovered and noticed in the six-ish months since my last post.

Being observant and honest with myself pays off

A big part of why taking a year off from clothes shopping has been so interesting is that it gave me the space to get quiet and observe how I actually use the clothes already in my closet with a detective-like curiosity. For the first time, I could clearly see which pieces were true wardrobe workhorses while also identifying genuine gaps. And when I say genuine gaps, I mean exactly that. In the past, I could see something cute online and immediately convince myself that I needed it, simply because I liked it. But without the context of how I actually live and dress, it was impossible to know whether it was truly missing from my wardrobe.

Now, I know, for example, that I specifically do not own enough comfortable yet well-fitting bottoms for taking my child to the park. That is the need and the requirement. Anything else that is merely cute doesn’t solve that problem, so I don’t even consider it as an option.

Once my no-buy year was up and I was ready to fill those wardrobe gaps with only five new clothing items for the year, I also had to start being very honest with myself. Does this actually fit me well, or am I trying to make it fit some imaginary version of myself? Is it comfortable enough that I’ll genuinely reach for it often? Does it work with the other pieces already in my closet? And to distill all of those questions down into one: is it perfect? If an item isn’t perfect for me, I return it. So far, I’ve kept one item and returned two.

Rediscovering what’s already in my closet

This wardrobe experiment has also allowed me to rediscover some serious gems that had been hiding in plain sight. One example is the softest pair of Italian linen pants that I picked up at TJ Maxx a million years ago. I barely wore them for years, and yet this spring and summer, I’ve reached for them nearly every single day. There’s something incredibly satisfying about realizing that you already own the very piece of clothing you thought you needed.

Taking the time to sell nicer pieces is very worth the effort

I think we all have those pieces in our closet that we spent a good chunk of money on but never wear for one reason or another. The result is often a little pang of guilt every time you scan past that hanger.

I’ve sold clothes before, but I always secretly felt that the few extra dollars I’d make weren’t worth all the photographing, listing, packaging, and shipping. Thankfully, modern resale apps have made the process so much easier.

This year, I took a few days to list all of the higher-value pieces I never wear on Vinted, and slowly but surely, I’ve sold hundreds of dollars worth of clothing. It has felt so good! The guilt is gone, the pieces have gone to people who actually want them, and I’ve made some extra cash in the process. Highly recommend.

I can probably make that

I know how to sew and knit and, given enough time and brainpower, could probably make many of the pieces needed to fill my wardrobe gaps. But I’m also home with a toddler full time, and most days the idea of pulling out my clunky, temperamental sewing machine that I’ve had since high school doesn’t sound very appealing. I really love knitting for that reason - it’s very portable, doesn’t make a mess, and can be easily put away, unlike sewing.

I’ve been trying to get strategic about which pieces are worth the time and effort of making. With sewing, the projects need to be simple and look good in their simplicity, like this top or this this shift. I’m not going to spend my energy making structured trousers because I know my skills and tools won’t yield the kind of polished result I’d be happy with.

With knitting, the fabric itself needs to be something special. I heavily gravitate toward natural fibers and want to create pieces that are better than what I could easily find in stores - which, in this age of acrylic sweater domination, is not too difficult. My next project is a cream Sevilla blouse knit with a beautiful blend of cotton, linen, and silk. I think it will become the perfect summer sweater.

And sometimes it’s the smallest things. Could I replace the buttons on a blouse with vintage mother-of-pearl ones? Could I add a black ribbon to my straw beach hat? I’m continually surprised by the power these tiny details have to transform something I already own into something that feels entirely new and special.

I’m also practicing enjoying the process of making clothes. This comes more naturally to me with knitting than sewing, but I’m working on it. In the end, the feeling of wearing something beautiful that you made slowly with your own hands is truly unmatched.

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Thank you so much for reading!

Follow along on Instagram for more ideas on simple living and mindful spending. This is the budget spreadsheet I use to track our spending in one calm, organized place (MASHA10 for 10% off).

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One of the biggest revelations I’ve had as an adult is that if I can’t easily maintain my house, it just means I have too much stuff. Once I simplified my possessions, cleaning my house also became simple. I wouldn't say I absolutely love doing it (I would still choose to do most things over cleaning), but it has felt manageable and free from the cleaning overwhelm that used to haunt me.

Below, I gathered up all of the cleaning tips I've learned from years of being a dedicated homebody and working to create a home that my family and I truly love. The tips are small on their own, but when stacked together, they add up to make a big difference.

1. Own less to clean less. A tidier, less cluttered home is easier to clean. The fewer things you have on your floors, counters, shelves, and surfaces, the fewer things there are to dust, move, organize, and maintain. Decluttering won't eliminate housework altogether, but it can dramatically reduce the time and effort required to keep your home feeling clean and manageable.

2. Don’t save all cleaning for one day. If possible, break cleaning into bite-sized tasks instead of leaving everything for one massive cleaning day. Smaller, more frequent sessions feel less daunting and are easier to fit into everyday life. They also help prevent your home from reaching a point where it feels completely overwhelming. I wrote more about my cleaning schedule and how to create one that works for you here:

3. Know your daily maintenance tasks. Every home has a handful of tasks that need regular attention in order to feel manageable. This might look like doing the dishes daily, completing one load of laundry from start to finish, wiping down kitchen counters, making beds, and spending a few minutes straightening up the main living areas. Even if other areas of the house are less than perfect, keeping these high-impact spaces in daily order can make your entire home feel calmer and more under control.

4. Clean from top to bottom. Dust shelves and wipe counters before vacuuming or sweeping so that anything that falls ends up on the floor only once. This saves so much time and prevents you from cleaning the same area repeatedly.

5. Keep surfaces as clear as possible. The fewer items you keep on counters, dressers, and tables, the easier everyday cleaning becomes, as there are fewer things to move every time you need to wipe or dust. Less visual clutter also makes your home feel instantly calmer.

   

6. If it takes less than three minutes, do it right away. Hang up the jacket, wipe the spill, put the dish into the dishwasher, or return the scissors to the drawer. Tiny tasks have a tendency to snowball when postponed, but take almost no effort when handled immediately.

7. Clean as you go. Most people are familiar with this concept in the kitchen, but it can be applied to the entire house as well. Before leaving a room, take a quick look around and see if there is anything you can put away or bring back to its home. Quickly wipe down the sink after brushing your teeth, etc. These tiny resets throughout the day can dramatically reduce the need for larger cleaning sessions.

8. Simplify your cleaning tools and products. Having multi-purpose tools and products saves so much money and cabinet space. It also removes decision fatigue and makes it easier to get started cleaning. I wrote about my favorite, multi-purpose cleaning tools here:

9. Keep cleaning supplies where you use them. Store bathroom cleaners in the bathroom, kitchen cloths in the kitchen, and cleaning tools close to where they are most needed. This removes as much friction as possible from cleaning - a task that already carries plenty of inherent friction for most people.

10. Clean alongside your kids. This can feel hard and counterproductive at first, but once your kids get used to a cleaning routine, you won’t have to wait until naps, bedtime, or an empty house to get things done. Involving children in age-appropriate cleaning tasks, or just having them observe you cleaning, also helps normalize caring for the home as an ordinary part of everyday life from an early age.

11. Habit stack cleaning tasks whenever it makes sense. Keep a cleaning cloth in the shower and quickly wipe down walls or glass while you’re already there showering. Or clean the bathroom during the kids’ bath time. Look for small opportunities to pair cleaning with activities that are already happening rather than creating separate blocks of time for every task.

    

12. Set a 15-minute timer when you don’t feel like cleaning. When motivation is low, set a timer and just begin cleaning without overthinking it. See how much you can get done in those 15 minutes by making it into a little competition with yourself. Once that time is up, you may have enough momentum built up to keep going. If not, your home is still 15 minutes cleaner.

13. Take advantage of waiting time. Once I started using small pockets of waiting time for things like wiping down counters (while the water boils) or unloading a few dishes (while my tea brews) instead of defaulting to scrolling, my house became so much cleaner in the everyday. These little moments often add up to far more than we realize.

14. Don’t stress if you miss a week of cleaning, but try not to miss two in a row. As James Clear writes in Atomic Habits, “Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.” The beauty of a consistent cleaning routine is that your home won’t completely fall apart if life happens and you skip a few cleaning sessions.

15. Try saying I get to instead of I have to. Cheesy, maybe, but it works! Saying I get to take care of my home and the things I love in it makes it feel much less like a burden and more like an act of care for yourself and those who live with you.

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Further reading:

Thank you so much for reading! I’d love to hear any cleaning tips you swear by in the comments.

Follow along on Instagram for more ideas on simple living and mindful spending. This is the budget spreadsheet I use to track our spending in one calm, organized place (MASHA10 for 10% off).

If you prefer to skip email updates, toggle ‘in app only.’

Some of the biggest improvements to my finances came from correcting surprisingly small mistakes. Once I started noticing these less-than-ideal habits and changing them one by one, saving money became much easier. These are all things I wish younger me had learned sooner, and I'd love to hear if you have any of your own in the comments.

Not tracking my spending
I used to think that tracking and budgeting would be too restrictive, limiting, and rooted in scarcity.

Now: I manually track and budget all our spending, and I love the clarity and freedom that it brings to my family’s finances. We’re learning to live simply while still prioritizing intentional spending & making more room for what matters to us. (I use this budget template to track our spending in one calm, organized place, MASHA10 for 10% off).

Read more

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I love reading lists like these and always come away with new ideas, so I thought I’d compile my own. Since drastically simplifying my home and possessions years ago, I’ve realized that many of the everyday things I used to buy almost by default were either unnecessary or could be replaced with more lasting alternatives. Not only has this been more economical, but in many cases it’s also brought more beauty into my life - and I think of beauty as an important nutrient.

I hope the list below gives you some fun ideas, but it’s by no means meant to be prescriptive. Different things work for different homes and lifestyles, and I’d love to hear what you’ve stopped buying in the comments. I still haven’t been able to give up paper towels, for example, even though they’re usually front and center on lists like these (I have been able to significantly cut down my use with these). With that said, here are the things I've happily stopped buying, and what I do instead.

Home

Separate cleaners for every surface
Instead: 1:1 white vinegar and water spray, diluted Sal Suds, or Bon Ami for most surfaces.

Disposable mop pads
Instead: I use this E-Cloth mop with reusable, washable mop pads. (I love this mop for being lightweight and for its ability to clean with just water, but one problem it has is that the handle gets annoyingly creaky, just an FYI!).

Liquid detergent
Instead: Country Save or Molly’s Suds powdered detergent, which I find much more economical.

Dryer sheets
Instead: Wool dryer balls (you can add a drop of essential oils to them to yield a nice scent, too).

Seasonal decor
Instead: Nature treasures, simple crafts, or family heirlooms as seasonal decor.

Storage Solutions™
Instead: Whenever I find myself ‘in need’ of more containers, it’s usually a sign that I need to reevaluate my possessions instead. Otherwise, thrift store baskets!

Related article:

Kitchen

Dish sponges
Instead: I’ve been using this wood-and-steel dish brush for years now. I love that the handle is metal, so it doesn’t mold from getting wet, and the brush heads are replaceable.

Dish soap
Instead: I use diluted Sal Suds. Before that, I used to use a bar of Savon de Marseille (olive oil soap), which worked very well and looks so chic imo.

Non-stick pans
Instead: It’s so frustrating when you seem to finally find a non-stick pan with a truly non-toxic coating to soon learn that there are issues with that coating, as well! I’ve been a carbon steel pan convert for years. Once you get it seasoned and start using it consistently, it becomes truly non-stick. I can fry eggs, scramble eggs, fry blini or dosas on mine without any sticking.

I love that carbon steel pans are lighter than cast iron (although I do have a great cast iron skillet too, but for everyday use, lighter is more manageable). They also only get better with time and don’t need to be replaced every few years like a non-stick skillet, when the coating wears off.

Ziploc bags
Instead: Glass jars or glass tupperware for most food storage, including in the freezer (just leave 1” at the top of jars for frozen food to expand). Plus, I have these silicone food storage bags for when I really need something like a Ziploc.

Plastic wrap
Instead: Mostly glass jars and such. A quarter of a raw onion left? Glass jar. Need to cover a large bowl? I just place a plate that fits on top and wrap it in a kitchen towel, if needed. For the rare event that I need something like cling wrap, like for wrapping dough, I use bee’s wrap (you can also make your own!).

Single purpose kitchen tools
Instead: The only single-purpose tool I can think of that I own is a glass citrus juicer I found at an antique store, and I do find it genuinely useful. Otherwise, I steer clear of gadgets like apple corers, popcorn makers, and egg slicers. I'd much rather spend a few extra seconds cutting an apple with a knife than clutter my drawers with yet another little plastic gadget that only does one thing.

Travel mugs/tumblers
Instead: My trusty glass jars + stainless steel drinking lids.

Related article:

Self-care/beauty

Separate products for every body part (foot, hand, eye, etc.)
Instead: Jojoba oil for everything.

Facial masks
Instead: Honey and yogurt masks using the two ingredients that are always in my kitchen.

Perfume
Instead: Nothing at all. I broke up with most scented products (both personal and household) years ago for health reasons, and it's amazing how sensitive you become to fragrances once your sense of smell recalibrates. These days, I genuinely prefer the unscented life.

Trendy supplements
Instead: I’m a big fan of herbal infusions as a simple way to nourish my body with vitamins and minerals in a form that’s easy to absorb. I love that they’re often more cost-effective than supplements and can be adjusted based on what my body needs in different seasons.

Related article:

Clothing

Overly trendy pieces that don’t fit my lifestyle
Instead: For 2026, I’ve challenged myself to only buy five new pieces of clothing (so far I’ve bought one, these white shorts). Needless to say, I’m learning to be very considerate of what actually makes sense for my season of life, what looks good on me and not just someone else I saw online, and how the pieces will work with what’s already in my closet.

Acrylic sweaters
Instead: Walk through most clothing stores and you’ll find sweaters made from acrylic or other synthetic fibers like polyester, polyamide (nylon), and elastane. These fibers are derived from petroleum and are essentially forms of plastic.

What surprises me is that many of these sweaters are still quite expensive! Acrylic can feel soft at first, but synthetic sweaters often don’t breathe as well as natural fibers, can trap odors, and tend to pill over time. Like other synthetic textiles, they can also shed microplastic fibers during washing.

I’ve learned that I’d rather save up for a year for a well-made wool sweater than buy several cheaper synthetic ones. Otherwise, thrift stores are often full of affordable cashmere sweaters that have tiny moth holes that are super easy to fix.

Another revelation has been learning to knit my own sweaters. Right now, I’m knitting a sweater using two yarns: an organic cotton-merino blend and a mohair-silk blend. A ready-made sweater using similar materials and construction would be hard to come buy, and cost hundreds.

Synthetic underwear
Instead: Similarly to my point above about acrylic sweaters - most ‘cute’ underwear nowadays is made of synthetic fibers. Since underwear sits against the most sensitive skin on our bodies all day long, I prefer natural fibers whenever possible.

I’m obsessed with Oddobody’s French Cut cotton underwear, I wait for their sales to stock up.

Related article:

Entertainment

Streaming services
Instead: Intentional movie nights, often utilizing the library’s free streaming service.

This one coincided with having a low-sleep-needs toddler who doesn’t go to bed until 9 p.m., which means my husband and I don’t have the time to make it through the latest shows. And even if we did, we’ve found ourselves less and less interested in most new movies and series coming out recently.

Now, when we do watch something, we’re super picky, since it’s a special event. We usually rent or borrow through the library instead of paying for yet another subscription we’ll barely use.

New hobby supplies before completing my current project
Instead: I wish I were one of those women who can effortlessly have multiple works-in-progress going at once, but I’ve learned I’m the complete opposite. I’m a slow maker, so the only way I actually finish something is by going all in on one project before moving on to the next.

I’ve learned the hard way not to buy supplies for my next hobby project while I’m still working on the current one. Interests change, seasons shift, and what I’m excited about today might not be what I want to make six months from now.

This also keeps project clutter from accumulating - and few things stress me out more than unfinished crafts and piles of unused supplies sitting around the house.

Further reading:

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Thank you so much for reading! I’d love to hear what things you do without, and what you’ve replaced them with in the comments.

Follow along on Instagram for more ideas on simple living and mindful spending. This is the budget spreadsheet I use to track our spending in one calm, organized place (MASHA10 for 10% off).

If you prefer to skip email updates, toggle ‘in app only.’

This post contains affiliate links.

Does your home ever feel like it’s working against you? Before simplifying, I used to feel like I was constantly cleaning and tidying, yet somehow never living in a clean house. And if you have young children, it’s easy to assume that a peaceful home is off the table for this season of life. But I’ve found that there are small shifts that can make a home feel noticeably calmer and steadily contain the chaos of everyday life instead of directly mirroring it.

We’re home a lot as a family. I stay home with my toddler son while my husband works from a home office. We cook and eat most of our meals at home and use every room to its fullest on a daily basis. Working to create a calmer home environment has proven to be a deeply worthwhile pursuit for me - it’s made motherhood even more enjoyable and opened up space for creativity again, after a season when I couldn’t quite find it.

A peaceful home is not about having one specific aesthetic, but I do think there are some universal practices and rhythms that can help most households feel calmer, more orderly, and inspiring to live in. As someone deep in this pursuit, I'm sharing the things that have made the biggest difference in our home.

Rhythms and routines

A household thrives with simple rhythms and routines. They give everyone something to come back to and rely on, to feel safe within a soft structure of how things are done daily. Consistent routines also help keep a home orderly, ensuring that the tasks and spaces that need attention are cared for regularly, rather than only when they become urgent.

Here’s an example of our basic daily rhythm as it relates to both child and home care:

6:30 am - wake up, cuddle, brush teeth, make bed
7:30 am - clear clean dishes from night before, make and eat breakfast, clean up after breakfast, quick vacuum, start laundry if needed
8:30 am - at home workout for me, independent play for toddler
9:30 am - make a morning beverage for myself & breakfast for my husband (he prefers to eat later while working), read while enjoying my drink
10 am - walk, playdate, or outing
12 pm - make and eat lunch, then a quick tidy of the kitchen
1 pm - nap time, while I quickly tidy the house, rest, and work on the newsletter
2:30 pm - wake up from nap and cuddle
3 pm - snack time while I start whatever dinner prep needs to be done
4 pm - do my daily cleaning task while my son plays independently or helps (more on my cleaning rhythm below)
5 pm - finish dinner prep and any other outstanding tasks like laundry / sometimes there’s some downtime before dinner so we read books, play, or I knit
6 pm - family dinner
7 pm - shower and wind down for me while my husband and son go for a bike ride, listen to music, or play
8:30 pm - toddler bathtime, brush teeth, get ready for bed
9 pm - I put my son down while my husband does dinner dishes and resets the kitchen for tomorrow

I wrote all about my cleaning routine (one small task a day) in this letter:

Less but better things

I often talk about how my goal is for my home to take no more than 15 minutes to tidy. I learned a long time ago that a simple but beautiful home base is invaluable to me as a woman, and even more so now that I’m a mom. Simplifying my home has been the biggest ‘hack’ for general tidiness. Less stuff lying around means less visual noise, less cleaning, and less to manage.

At the same time, I believe beauty is a nutrient, and having a home that feels beautiful and cozy to you shouldn’t be taken lightly. The goal isn’t to own as little as possible. It’s to have just the right amount: enough to enjoy and use, but few enough that your belongings largely stay organized on their own.

My favorite, easy way to beautify my home is to select utilitarian objects that also look nice. For example, instead of a bright plastic dish sponge, I use a wood-and-steel brush. Instead of a branded dish soap bottle, I mix my own dish soap an amber glass dispenser. A lovely bar of soap replaces branded hand soap containers in the bathroom, and thrifted baskets provide pretty storage wherever things need to be corralled.

These tiny things might seem insignificant, but to our perceptive brains, they add up to create a calmer, more harmonious visual environment that allows us to relax. I use the same principle for bigger objects too, like furniture and decor, but I’ve found that starting with small, everyday items is much easier, more affordable, and surprisingly impactful.

Having a home for everything

Once I implemented this ‘rule’, my home instantly became a more peaceful, beautiful, and easy to clean place. When every item in your space has a place to return to, things don’t pile up, linger on surfaces, or turn into visual clutter. Disorder has a way of raising our cortisol, which is why a tidy, orderly home feels so calming to be in.

I know right away when I haven’t come up with a home for an item because it ends up floating around the house, from shelf to table, without a clear landing spot. When that happens, I either find it a place, or I question whether it belongs in our home at all. More often than not, these “floating” items aren’t truly needed. This is when I pass them on or let them go. And if it’s something I do want to keep but can’t find space for, I look at what else I can release to make room. The one-in, one-out rhythm has served me well.

Light & fresh air

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I finally paid off my student loans this month. Beyond the obvious relief of being done with years of debt payments, I was also left with extra money in my monthly budget that suddenly needed a job.

This got me thinking about lifestyle creep, because moments like these are exactly when it tends to sneak in. Lifestyle creep happens when your spending gradually rises alongside your income (or whenever money is freed up in your budget). It’s when raises, bonuses, paid-off debts, and lower expenses that should improve your financial position somehow disappear into everyday spending. You’re earning more, but it never feels like you have more.

For example, in my case, I can think of three options of what to do with this newly freed-up monthly sum:

1. Do nothing and let the money quietly disappear into miscellaneous spending, as it does.

2. Increase spending in existing categories like groceries, clothing, or household purchases. I don’t need more money in these areas because I’ve been living without it, but it would certainly be nice.

3. Keep my spending exactly the same and direct that money toward higher-interest debt (car in our case), savings, or investments.

If you’ve been reading for a while, you’ve probably guessed I’m choosing option three. But I understand the temptation of number two, and I’ve made the mistake from number one plenty of times as well. After years of trial and error, I’ve learned to watch for lifestyle creep like a hawk and catch it before it becomes a habit that’s difficult to reverse.

The reason I’m so mindful of it is simple: living below your means is one of the most reliable paths to financial freedom, regardless of income. Someone earning a generous $500K a year can still feel financially stressed if every dollar is already spoken for, while someone earning far less can build significant wealth by consistently creating a gap between what they earn and what they spend. That’s why learning to recognize lifestyle creep early is half the battle.

In this letter, I’ll be sharing how I avoid lifestyle creep, while still using money as a tool to enjoy life and make intentional upgrades when they’re truly needed.

Learn to identify lifestyle creep early

The earlier you notice lifestyle creep occurring, the easier it is to reverse.

Common types of lifestyle creep (more widespread than luxury cars and bags):

• Subscription creep (streaming, apps, memberships)

• Convenience spending (delivery, takeout)

• Gradual upgrades (slightly nicer clothes, restaurants, vacations)

• Inflated ‘normal’ spending after a raise

Some key signs that lifestyle creep might be happening:

• You aren’t aware of your average monthly spending.

• Raises or paid-off debts don’t increase your savings/investments.

• ‘Once in a while treat’ purchases become routine.

• You feel richer, but your actual net worth isn’t growing.

Practical steps for catching lifestyle creep before it happens:

• Get clear on your financial goals: This will give you purpose and something tangible to work towards.

• Track your spending (this is crucial!): Tracking will give you a clear picture of your spending, and whether it aligns with your actual goals.

  I use this budget template to track our spending in one calm, organized place (MASHA10 for 10% off). But it doesn’t matter what kind of budgeting tool you use, as long as it works for you. Go analog with just pen and paper, make a spreadsheet, use a budgeting app, or utilize the budgeting system within your bank app (many banks have some version of this now).

Give extra money a job before it arrives

Before a raise, bonus, tax refund, or paid-off loan frees up cash, decide where that money will go, so it can work toward your goals instead of getting absorbed into everyday spending.

This is the priority order I like to use:

1. High-interest debt

2. Emergency fund (until fully funded with 3-9 months of expenses, depending on circumstances/lifestyle)

3. Retirement/investing

4. Long-term goals

5. Intentional lifestyle upgrades

Set up systems that make lifestyle creep harder

I love this James Clear quote:

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

- James Clear, Atomic Habits

Willpower and motivation can only take you so far. One day they're there, and the next they're gone, or you just get swept up in the demands of everyday life. That's why I'm a much bigger fan of setting up a system once and letting it work in the background. Automation has been one of the biggest game-changers for my family's finances. It removes the need to make the same decision over and over again, helps us stay consistent, and makes life easier, which I'll always welcome.

Examples of systems that make lifestyle creep harder:

• Paying yourself first, aka treating your savings like a bill you must pay before anything else (instead of: income – expenses = savings, it’s this:
  income – savings = expenses).

• Automate paying yourself first, by setting up monthly payday transfers to savings and investments (or whatever works for your pay schedule).

• Use separate, high-yield savings accounts (or a savings account with different ‘buckets’) for specific goals (emergency fund, travel, home repairs, etc.) so extra money already has a job before you can spend it elsewhere.

Upgrade intentionally

Not all spending increases are bad, of course! Some purchases genuinely improve your life, and even when they don’t, some are simply wants that bring joy. Money is just a tool after all. The closer we can get to using it to support a life that aligns with our values, priorities, and unique needs, the more contentment we’re likely to find.

Upgrades can be a wonderful thing if they make your life easier, more beautiful, or simply more enjoyable. The key is being honest with yourself about whether you can truly afford them (not just the monthly payment, but the full cost over the years!) and approaching upgrades with intention rather than impulse.

Run some numbers

Before making an upgrade, take a few minutes to calculate what it will actually cost you over time.

Ask yourself:

• How much will this upgrade cost each month?

• How much will it cost each year?

• How much will it cost over the next five years?

A $50 monthly subscription doesn’t feel like much in the moment, but it’s $600 a year and $3,000 over five years. A $300 higher car payment is $3,600 a year and $18,000 over five years.

If you really want to dissect the decision, plug that amount into a compound interest calculator and see what it could become if invested instead. Sometimes seeing the future value of that money is enough to make you realize the upgrade isn’t worth it after all.

Of course, this doesn’t mean every dollar should be invested, and the goal isn’t to optimize every single financial decision for maximum returns. But it’s nice to understand the tradeoff. To put it very simply, every dollar spent on an upgrade is a dollar that can’t be used for something else, whether that’s investing, paying down debt, saving for a goal, or creating more flexibility in your life.

Pause and create some friction

I’m one of those people who takes forever to make a big purchase. I scrutinize the decision, research all the options, hunt for the best quality at the best price, and try to make sure the desire is actually coming from me (or my family), and not from advertising, social media, or what everyone else seems to be doing.

This is pretty annoying if you’re my husband, but over the years I’ve found that creating friction around purchases has saved me from a lot of unnecessary spending and lifestyle creep.

A few ways to create that friction:

• Pause: Allow yourself a 24–48 hour cooling-off period before making any upgrades, and maybe even a longer period for bigger ones, a week or a month. Taking a pause allows you to come back to neutral and decide from a more grounded place.

• Keep a Wants list: Keeping a Wants list (whether in a notebook, Notes app, spreadsheet, or Pinterest board) can fulfill that desire to ‘collect’ upgrades without turning them into actual purchases.

  It can be a fun motivator to do a monthly tally of how much you’ve saved by keeping these items on your list and out of your cart. I also love asking myself if I’d even remember about these items if they weren’t on my list.

  And as someone who tends to freeze when asked what I want for my birthday or the holidays, it’s a surprisingly useful list to have.

Other questions I ask myself before upgrading

• Would I still buy this if no one else knew I owned it?

• Will this matter to me in a year?

• What am I giving up by spending this money (every yes to something is a no to something else)?

• Does this purchase support the life I’m trying to build?

• Will it make my life easier or add more complexity?

What to do if lifestyle creep has already happened

Downgrading can be hard, but the good news is that lifestyle creep isn’t permanent, especially when you reframe it from ‘downgrading’ to aligning deeper with your goals. Just like clutter that has accumulated in a home can be decluttered, spending habits can be edited and simplified over time.
Lifestyle creep usually happens gradually, and reversing it is often gradual too. You don’t need to overhaul your entire life overnight. A few intentional changes can free up hundreds (or in some cases thousands!) of dollars each month while having far less impact on your happiness than you might expect.

A few places to start tackling lifestyle creep:

• Track your spending to identify where lifestyle creep has taken hold.

• Review your biggest expense categories first, as those make the biggest impact (housing, food, transportation, subscriptions, dining out).

• Make a list of potential cuts, even if you’re not ready to make them immediately.

• Give yourself time to adjust to the idea of spending less, and make a game plan for addressing your list. Start with one to a few categories at a time so as to not overwhelm yourself.

• Revisit seasons of life when you were spending less and ask yourself what you actually miss, and what you don't.

• Spend time with people who live happily below their means.

• Look for creative ways to reduce costs rather than simply depriving yourself.

• Define your idea of ‘enough’ and rethink raising your baseline every time your income increases.

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Thank you so much for reading! I’d love to hear your tips for avoiding lifestyle creep in the comments.

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Grocery prices are out of control, yet we all need to eat three or so meals a day, every day. And if you're anything like my family, you'd also like those meals to be nourishing, inspiring, and not overly complicated, all while staying within budget. That can feel like an impossible balance to strike.

After housing, food is our family's biggest monthly expense. I've been focusing on bringing that number down without sacrificing the quality of the food we eat for the past year. The challenge is that we care about food, a lot. My husband grew up in restaurants owned by his parents, and I used to develop recipes professionally. We love cooking, prioritize local and seasonal ingredients whenever possible, and view high-quality food as one of the best investments we can make in our family’s health.

At the same time, we do many of the things that are supposed to keep food costs down. We cook nearly every meal at home, bake our own bread, make many staples from scratch, and rarely buy packaged snacks. Yet I’ve learned that even with those habits in place, food spending can quickly get out of hand without a system.

Over the past few years (and the past year especially), I’ve gradually built a rhythm around meal planning, grocery shopping, ingredient prep, and meal rotations that has helped us spend less while still eating the kinds of meals we genuinely enjoy. It isn’t too restrictive and provides just enough structure to simplify decision-making and make food a joyful part of life.

In this letter, I’m sharing that system, along with our flexible meal rotation framework. My hope is that you'll come away with a few ideas to make your own.

A predictable meal framework

I've found that having a predictable structure around meals makes food feel simpler without making it feel repetitive. Instead of planning every breakfast, lunch, and dinner from scratch, I rely on a flexible framework that provides just enough guidance while still leaving room for spontaneity.

Breakfast

We eat basically the same breakfast every day, changing it up based on the seasons. For example:

• Spring/summer: smoothies and eggs

• Fall/winter: eggs, beans, and greens

• Weekly special breakfast (Fridays or weekend): French toast, pancakes, or chia pudding

There’s still room for variation - like how we cook our eggs, what berries are in our smoothies, what beans we’re having that week - but it’s also contained enough so that there’s no overwhelm.

Lunch

Lunch is usually one of two options:

• Leftovers from dinner: The best hack is to double your dinner recipes so that you don’t have to worry about lunch (or dinner) the next day.

• Component ingredient lunch/snack lunch: This can look like whatever prepped components we have on hand, mixed and matched. For example, a bowl of brothy beans with sauerkraut and buttered sourdough, or roasted sweet potatoes, seasoned ground meat crumbles and kimchi. Another similar option we often lean on is a snack lunch, featuring things like tinned fish, veggies, cheese, fruit, olives, sauerkraut, crackers/bread, etc.

Dinner

Keeping breakfasts and lunches uncomplicated leaves dinner as the only meal that truly needs to be planned out. This is where we like to have fun and cook according to our cravings, the seasons, and what’s on sale that week.

• I have a general dinner rotation framework that I can pull from for inspiration every single week - more on that below.

• I try to make sure that our plates include the following components (most of the time!):

  • a source of protein (meat, fish, dairy, beans, tofu, etc.)

  • seasonal vegetables

  • a source of carbs (potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice, sourdough, beans, fruit)

  • ferments and/or fun sauces

A locked-in grocery routine

I’m not exaggerating when I say that I’m a little bit in love with my grocery routine. It keeps our kitchen and my brain organized, combats food waste, prevents the fridge from descending into chaos, and sets the tone for the entire week. And it all starts the day before the actual grocery day.

1. Weekly fridge clean: I wipe down and organize my fridge weekly on Fridays, which is the day before our grocery shopping/farmers market day on Saturday. This gives me the gift of a clean fridge to put things away in. The more often I do a fridge reset, the less daunting it feels because my fridge stays essentially clean. An organized fridge also makes it harder for me to waste food by forgetting about it.

2. Inventory check: While cleaning and organizing the fridge, I take inventory of the fridge, freezer, and pantry before making my grocery list. I either incorporate ingredients that need to be used up into Friday’s dinner or build the following week’s meal plan around them.

3. Plan for the weather & life: I check the week’s weather and my calendar when planning meals. I always thank myself when I’ve planned soup for a rainy evening or arranged for enough leftovers for busy evenings.

4. What’s in season?: I like to plan our meals around what’s in season, as much as possible. Seasonal food is often more affordable (because it’s more abundant and usually travels shorter distances to reach us), but it’s also far more flavorful, inspiring, and special.

5. Utilize free grocery pickup: Our grocery store offers pickup for free, and I love to take advantage because this allows me to see how much everything will be before checkout, and I’m less tempted by extra treats in store. I save my browsing for the farmers market instead.

6. Put away groceries in an organized way & do light ingredient prep: I've grown to genuinely enjoy putting away groceries, and all the credit goes to cleaning the fridge the day before. There's something incredibly satisfying about stocking a clean, organized fridge. If I have the time, I'll also do some light ingredient prep to make the coming week run more smoothly.

Ingredient prep

I don’t love full-on meal prep, but I do love a simple ingredient prep session. It strikes the perfect balance between planning and flexibility - enough preparation to make meals come together easily, without locking us into a rigid plan for the week.

Some things that I like to prep weekly (not all at once):

• a pot of beans or lentils

• roasted or steamed seasonal vegetables, sometimes marinated

• seasoned ground meat or meatballs

• marinated, broiled tofu or tempeh

• bread dough (I freeze half to bake later in the week)

• cooked grains

• quick pickled onions

• a fun sauce

Dinner rotation

This is my very flexible and customizable dinner rotation framework. It changes with the seasons, and I don't always follow it to a T, but it has been incredibly helpful in taking the guesswork out of cooking and meal planning. I'll also close out this letter with a few tips for creating a meal rotation framework of your own.

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Hands down the best advice I got before becoming a mom for the first time was this: let it be simple. The way I’ve come to interpret it is that so much of new motherhood won’t feel easy, so when you have the opportunity to let parts of it be simple, the best thing to do is lean in.

I was already drawn to minimal living before having my son 2.5 years ago, but motherhood has only deepened my appreciation for the skill and muscle of simplifying. When we subtract what doesn’t matter, we have the opportunity to make more room for what does. In motherhood, that can mean more time, more presence, and more connection with our babes.

Choosing to become a stay-at-home mom also meant transitioning to a single income, which required us to become far more intentional with our spending. My love of simplicity helped immensely here as well. As moms, we’re constantly met with messages about the sheer amount of things we supposedly need for our children, but I’ve found the very opposite to be true - babies and small children need very little to be happy.

For us, living below our means has not only simplified the baby and toddler years, but also helped create a lifestyle that feels more aligned with our values. And interestingly, I’ve never felt more abundant.

In this letter, I’m sharing all the small ways I’ve found to simplify motherhood, many of which also happen to save us money.

Less stuff & a simplified home

Motherhood is already so full! I don’t want to fill our home with more stuff than we need, too. These days, I look at the inflow of things into our house through this lens: this is one more thing I’ll have to manage, store, maintain, and clean around. Is it worth it? Sometimes, totally. But most of the time, what I value more is the space to breathe, clear surfaces, a sense of calm, and a home that takes 15 minutes to tidy. This mindset naturally leads to less shopping too, because I know that every new purchase costs us not only money, but also time, energy, and space.

For some easy decluttering wins and a lighter-feeling home, I wrote this list:

Less toys for more play

I think about it this way: if a certain amount of toys scattered across our home can make my husband and I feel overstimulated, imagine how much more overwhelming it feels to a toddler, whose brain is still learning how to filter stimuli, regulate attention, and process their environment.

I’ve intentionally kept my son’s toys very minimal and low stimulation, and I can probably count the times I’ve bought him new toys on my two hands. That doesn’t mean I don’t love creating a magical home environment that fosters play, though. If anything, I’ve found that having fewer toys is actually more conducive to deeper, more imaginative play, and that anything can become a toy.

I wrote all about my approach to less toys here:

Under-scheduling & entertaining less

Children embody presence and unhurriedness so naturally, and motherhood has felt like an invitation to slow down and see the world differently. We all crave a slower life in theory, but are we willing to pause and watch ants on the sidewalk when we’re in a hurry? It’s not always possible, but I’ve found that slowing down often gets things done faster than stressing about ‘wasting time.’

That perspective has shaped how I approach scheduling and entertainment, too. We haven’t felt the need to do any baby classes yet - there will be plenty of classes and a generally fuller calendar later in childhood. In these early years, we’re protecting slowness and unstructured play. We do lots of outdoor time, and otherwise, our son is simply included in the family’s everyday routines. I don’t think it’s our job as parents to constantly entertain our children, either. More often, they just need time, space, and a bit of boredom to access their own creativity and play.

More about slowing down and managing ‘having no time’ in motherhood here:

A small kid wardrobe & sizing up

I share a dresser with my son, and he has one dedicated drawer for his clothes. I’ve found that this physical constraint works so well for us. When that drawer starts to feel too full, it’s my cue to phase out anything he’s outgrown or that no longer suits the season. Similarly to my own wardrobe, this makes me highly selective when purchasing clothes for him, and I’m much less likely to impulse shop for his clothes.

Another favorite thing I do is buy a size up in kids’ clothes whenever possible (though sometimes it’s not, like when a sized up pant waistband is too loose). It helps us get more than one season out of clothes, makes higher-quality pieces feel more justifiable, plus, oversized fits are so cute on little ones.

I shared all the baby and toddler “must-haves” I skipped and never missed in this post:

Limited & boring snacks for better mealtimes

Limiting snacks, keeping them simple, and having a set time for snacking has genuinely made motherhood feel easier. My toddler comes to meals with a much better appetite, and I’m not constantly preparing and cleaning up snacks throughout the day because he knows when snack time happens (usually between nap and dinner for us). And when snacks are needed, we keep them very simple: fruit, cheese, beans, nuts, olives, sauerkraut/pickles - things that don’t end up replacing proper meals.

Packaged snacks are also one of those sneaky grocery categories that can quickly inflate a budget. Since we mostly stopped buying them, I’ve found it much easier to stay within our grocery budget.

A simplified cleaning routine

Just having a routine around cleaning in the first place has been so beneficial for me in motherhood. I used to clean only “as needed,” but once my main focus became caring for a little human, that quickly devolved into chaos. Having simple rhythms for our home has made daily life feel so much calmer and more manageable. I wrote all about my cleaning routine and how to customize your own here.

I’ve also greatly simplified the cleaning products I use. I prefer non-toxic, multi-purpose, budget-friendly products that last for months and actually work well without cluttering up our cabinets.

My narrowed-down list of favorite cleaning products is here:

Holding off on screens

I know this one might be annoying, but it’s what we actually do. We haven’t introduced screen time yet, and don’t plan to anytime soon. Part of it is that I believe children will have plenty of time to figure out their relationship with technology in this screen-dominant world when they’re older. But I also think that no screens is easier than ‘a little bit’ of screens, which would be our next choice. Since screens simply aren’t an option in our home universe, there’s no begging, negotiating, or power struggles around them.

Interestingly, this has positively affected my husband and I, too. Our own screen time is much lower now. We eat dinner at the table instead of in front of the TV, we canceled our streaming services, and we take choosing a movie for movie night very seriously - it has to be good, because we don’t watch them very often!

This article articulates many of my thoughts on screens and childhood better than I ever could.

Creating more, consuming less

Focusing on creating and giving every day some kind of creative assignment, (even the smallest things, like making a fun dinner, rotating toys, beautifying the house, or knitting) has made me so much more content as a mom. In this day and age, it’s so easy to fall into a constant cycle of consumption, with several algorithms feeding us content we didn’t even choose ourselves, that creating anything at all feels like a small act of rebellion. I know for sure that when my ‘creation cup’ outweighs my consumption for the day, I have a better day, week, month, and year because of it.

I also like to remind myself that as a mother, I get to set the tone for our home and create an atmosphere that feels good for everyone in the family. That thought always makes me smile.

Thank you so much for reading! I’d love to hear about the ways you’ve found to simplify motherhood for yourself in the comments.

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Last summer, without any travel plans and with other financial priorities in place, I began wondering what it would look like to embody a European summer while just…being at home. When I thought back to the time that I did actually travel to Italy in the summer, what stood out wasn’t anything grand. All of my most cherished, most sensory memories were surprisingly simple: ripe fruit at its peak, sparkly beach mornings, dinners outside, light summer clothes, slow evening strolls, market shopping, cooking, reading, and all of it softened by a slower pace.

I live in New England, where we persevere through long, cold, gray winters for the brief, honeysuckle-laced magic of coastal summer. While I do have access to places that feel like a vacation, the truth is I still live in a normal neighborhood and have to drive an hour to reach a proper beach. Even so, I tried to lean into that deliciously lazy summer energy, even while mothering a toddler full-time, and it was lovely (I made a reel about this, and it resonated with many). The pleasantly surprising part was that being intentional about summering made me naturally forget about my phone and want to be on it much less than in the colder seasons.

This coming summer, we don’t have any big vacations planned either, and I’m wanting to double down on this ‘boring girl summer’ idea. I want to forget about my phone as much as possible and let myself fully experience the two key things that summer is meant for: pleasure and rest. Somewhere along the way, big international trips became the marker of a life well-lived. And of course, travel can be expansive in all the best ways. But for those of us who aren’t in a traveling season of life, a beautiful summer is still entirely possible with a bit of intention.

Below, I’m sharing my analog itinerary for summering at home.

Crowd out phone use with things that feel even better

Because there’s so much to enjoy in the summer, it feels easier to crowd out phone use with the small luxuries of everyday life:

• Come up with a new ritual to replace looking at your phone first thing in the morning: get an analog alarm clock, and commit to something pleasurable you can default to instead like reading a few pages of a book, journaling morning pages, watering your herbs, stepping outside for a moment, or spending ten quiet minutes practicing your craft. For me, this is either snuggling my son or stepping outside on the deck.

• Bring a book, notebook and pen, or portable craft everywhere: be prepared with something other than scrolling while taking your kids to the park, sitting on the beach, or even waiting at the dentist’s office. One of the reasons I love knitting is that it’s so easy to bring with me anywhere, which is what I’ll be doing.

• Treat housework as an opportunity for moving meditation: I find it much easier to romanticize chores in the summer, with the windows thrown open and sunshine streaming through the house. It’s a chance to practice meditation in motion - a balm for an overstimulated brain. Try doing the dishes or folding laundry without a podcast on, hanging laundry outside to dry in the sun, or fully admiring the beauty of your ingredients while cooking dinner. I often listen to podcasts while doing housework, which can be nice, but the constant background noise does burn me out. I’ll be going without this summer!

• Use your hands to make something: I always feel inspired to sew in the summer, but this could be any craft that gets you into your hands and off screens like needlepoint, knitting, baking, woodworking, gardening. Our linen fitted sheet tore pretty badly recently, but since it’s a king size, there’s still plenty of usable fabric left. I’m planning to turn it into a few simple summer blouses instead (I linked the patterns I’m considering below).

• Create ‘default boredom’: leave your phone inside during short walks or backyard time and let your brain itch a little. The itch is often where creativity sneaks back in. Whenever I feel like I have nothing to give or say, it’s usually quiet that helps me untangle myself, while ‘looking for inspiration’ online tends to do the opposite - there’s just too much distraction.

  

Less, on purpose

If you’ve been wanting to simplify, summer is the perfect season to exercise that muscle in so many ways.

• Do less: Since I’ve distilled the two key pillars of my dream summer down to rest and pleasure, at the core of that is doing less, but on purpose. And that can feel surprisingly uncomfortable at first. Most of us are so unaccustomed to doing less because even the tiniest idle moments get filled by reaching for a nearby screen. I’ll be practicing pausing, moving slower, and simply resting without trying to optimize my time.

• Simple cooking: I find summer to be the easiest season for cooking because the ingredients are abundant, juicy, and charged with the energy of the sun. Think tomatoes, stone fruit, berries, herbs, melons. So much summer produce is already perfect as is, or with a livening up of olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper. Look for a farmers market or a farm stand, and see what looks good to you there. I promise you’ll taste the difference! I keep my cooking so so simple in the summer, mostly thanks to and based on what’s for sale at our local farmers market (I’m sharing my go to summer recipes below).

• Capsule wardrobe: summer clothes tend to be less bulky, so I think it’s a great time to practice editing your clothes to a manageable amount and making your closet into something that actually inspires you to get dressed. I’m slowly working on doing exactly that with my own wardrobe, and I wrote all about it here.

• Low stakes gatherings: I love hosting and cooking for people, but I’m also guilty of wanting the food to be elaborate, the house super clean, and the vibes perfect. As a classic introvert, that usually means gatherings leave me completely drained, and not eager to host again for a while. This summer, I want to practice more frequent, casual hosting with an emphasis on very simple food and less pressure for everything to feel special in order to bring people together. It’s the people that make it special in the end.

• Time in nature as a constant: maybe it’s living in New England, but I want to fill up my outdoor time quota and charge up my solar battery as much as possible while it’s easiest in the summer. I’ll be asking myself, where can I simplify my routines so that I have more time to be outside? What tasks can I do while outside?

• Less scheduling: leave specific days or afternoons unclaimed often enough to create room for spontaneity, an essential quality of summer. I’ve noticed that when every day is planned out in advance, even good things can start to feel rigid and rushed. This summer, I want more space for last-minute day trips, slow mornings and restful afternoons, impromptu dinners, or simply following whatever pace the day seems to want to take.

Make your phone more boring

I’ve found a few simple ways to make my phone feel much less appealing, and more like a useful tool than a constant distraction.

Tidy up your Home Screen: Delete the apps you don’t need or use. I only keep the most essential apps that I use daily on my Home Screen to reduce visual noise (8 apps max). The rest of the apps can quickly be found through search (on an iPhone, just swipe down and a search bar comes up).

*To go an extra step: move distracting apps off the first page of your Home Screen to introduce some friction.

Grayscale during the day: Turning your phone to grayscale instantly makes it less appealing. I love this because it’s so incredibly simple to do and so effective. (You can set it up so grayscale turns on with 3 clicks of the side button on iPhone).

Red after sundown: Similarly to the grayscale, a red screen takes away that dopamine hit that you’d get from scrolling on a full color screen. I like the red after sundown specifically to reduce blue light for circadian health.

I wrote more about dumbing down my phone in this note:

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Money, wealth building, and even frugality are just as much about mindset as they are about numbers - sometimes it’s simply a different way of seeing life that was never modeled or taught to you that then leads to better financial habits.

As a stay-at-home mom making less money than I ever have before, I also feel more abundant than I ever have. Reducing our household to a single income pushed me to re-examine what living well actually means for me and my family. It led me toward a version of frugal and simple living that feels deeply aligned with our values, rather than restrictive (for the most part!).

In this letter, I’m sharing the three perspective shifts that have most transformed my sense of abundance, from the deeply practical to the more philosophical. I’m also breaking down the real, tangible ways I apply these shifts in my everyday life. I hope they spark a few ideas for you too!

Making Money vs. Building Wealth

This way of thinking about money isn’t taught to most of us by our parents or in school, because relatively few people actually approach wealth this way. I certainly wish I had taken it more seriously when I learned about it in my twenties.

The two ways to look at money:

1. Most people use their career to fund their lifestyle:

   • Make more money

   • Buy more expensive things

   • Keep trading time for money

2. The alternative is using the money you make to secure investments:

   • Earn money through your career or business

   • Use part of it to buy investments instead of only upgrading your lifestyle

   • Let compound interest grow your money over time (play around with this compound interest calculator to get an idea of actual numbers)

   • Your money will gradually start making money on its own, without you trading your time for it - this is how true wealth is built

In other words, being successful in your career is not the same thing as being financially successful. Someone can make $500k a year and still live paycheck to paycheck if they spend everything they earn instead of using it to build wealth.

As Ramit Sethi writes in I Will Teach You to Be Rich:

“It’s ironic that people are afraid of ‘possibly’ losing money in the stock market, when they will certainly run out of money if they don’t invest.”

Investing can sound intimidating (it definitely did to me) and like it’s only for wealthy people, but the truth is, investing is how you build wealth, and anyone can do it. Plus, the earlier you start, even with small amounts, the more time compound growth has to work in your favor (see chart below).

I laid this out in very simplistic terms, of course. Everyone’s circumstances are different. You need an emergency fund before using that money to invest, and not everyone has the means to do it right away. But I’ve found that shifting your mindset to see money as something that can eventually work for you, even before you fully have the means, is so powerful for healthy finances. I started with just $50/month in my twenties while making very little. Now we’re a single-income family while I stay home with my son, so saving and investing still requires sacrifice. But it’s something we prioritize because we value the long-term freedom and security it can create.

For further reading on why, how and where to invest, I find Ramit Sethi’s book I Will Teach You to Be Rich to be a very approachable, step-by-step guide (it’s how I started).

Where in my life do I already have abundance?

This is such a key question. Try asking yourself this every morning as you wake up, or whenever you feel yourself slipping into a scarcity spiral, and watch how it changes the way you move through life.

Maybe that sounds a little dramatic, but if we don’t learn contentment with what we already have and who we already are, we’ll never feel content, even after getting everything we thought we wanted.

And when we do feel content and whole, we’re able to act from a more peaceful, regulated place instead of from stress, fear, and urgency. A whole life trajectory can change when you’re putting one foot in front of the other from peace instead of scarcity.

Contentment doesn’t arrive after all our dreams are achieved, it’s what makes the dream life (or parts of it) feel full when it does arrive. I’ve observed that the most abundant people I know live like they already have enough.

Subtracting what doesn’t matter makes room for what does

Everything changed when I stopped looking at frugality as a restriction on the things I loved and valued, and started seeing it as a way to, almost ruthlessly, cut back what doesn’t matter, whenever possible. At this point in my life, subtracting almost feels like a fun game. I love looking at my home, my habits, and our finances through an editor’s lens and noticing where there are leaks in the structure, like clutter, excess, and mindless spending.

I truly believe that living frugally is conducive to living well and actually being present to the many luxuries of life. Frugality is a practice of discernment, of knowing what is enough and letting the rest fall away. Having less to manage means fewer decisions, less upkeep, and more presence in the everyday. Constraints sharpen creativity, and buying less but better teaches you to value what you already own and choose new things more intentionally.

Actual steps I take to put these ideas into practice

Making Money vs. Building Wealth

• Opened a high-yield savings account with buckets for an emergency fund and sinking funds. High-yield savings accounts pay ~3–5% APY as of 2026, helping your cash keep up with inflation more effectively than traditional savings accounts or just having it sit in checking.

• Opened a Roth IRA in my twenties (the earlier the better!) and bought into a target date fund. My husband and I have always been freelancers hence the Roth IRAs, but if you’re a W-2 employee, retirement savings are often done through your 401(k) at work. We also have a brokerage account for any spillover after maxing out our Roths, but the Roths are the priority because of their tax-free growth and tax-free withdrawals in retirement.

• We pay ourselves first monthly, which means that we have automatic transfers set up to go into our savings and retirement accounts after being paid. After funding a six month emergency fund, our goals have been to max out our Roths every year, have sinking funds for things like car maintenance, gifts, dentist, plus save for bigger goals like a house (a whole other story!).

Where in my life do I already have abundance?

• I’ve made a practice of asking myself this question every morning as I wake up, and also anytime I’m sinking into scarcity. It shifts my energy pretty instantly, which is why I love asking it in the morning. I just do this in my mind, but it could also make for a great daily or weekly journaling practice.

• The number one answer I always come back to is health. After almost losing a parent in a car accident last year, it’s crystal clear to me that health is the ultimate wealth.

Subtracting what doesn’t matter makes room for what does

I’ve made a practice of continually looking at the main areas of my life to see where I can trim the fat and simplify for a more easeful everyday life:

• I declutter seasonally to make sure that I’m not spending my time managing possessions that don’t bring any value to my family.

• I budget to ensure that our spending is aligned with our goals as a family.

• I’m constantly scheming small but mighty ways to simplify our home and kitchen.

• I try to frequently reevaluate whether the things I’m doing in motherhood are truly aligned with what my child, I, and our family need, or if they’re just based on societal norms that don’t make any sense for us.

If you liked this letter, you might find these helpful as well

Thank you so much for reading! I’d love to hear about the mindset shifts that have helped you feel more abundant.

Follow along on Instagram for more ideas on simple living and mindful spending. This is the budget spreadsheet I use to track our spending in one calm, organized place (MASHA10 for 10% off).

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If you, like me, have been in a spring cleaning mood and want to do some easy decluttering along the way, there are some no-brainers to let go of that are likely cluttering up your space.

I’ve been decluttering regularly for years, and I especially love doing a seasonal reset. Over time, I’ve noticed there are certain ‘quick win’ items that are almost always easy to pass on. They help build momentum and might even inspire you to do some deeper decluttering. That list, along with a step-by-step for actually getting them out of your house, is below.

General

• any obvious trash or recycling like empty products, packaging, appliance boxes (just do a quick walk through your home with a trash bag and gather anything that clearly needs to go)

• duplicates - having a few duplicates can be useful, but too many quickly turn into clutter when only one is actually being used (check your kitchen, bathroom, and anywhere you keep tools or supplies)

• ‘floating’ items that don’t have a home (or find them a home!)

• decor that’s become clutter

Junk drawer

• old cords and chargers to electronics you no longer have

• random buttons and snaps that came as extras with clothing

• random screws, nails, bolts, etc.

• takeout menus you can find online

• mystery keys

• old batteries

Kitchen

• expired food and pantry ingredients

• expired supplements or ones that don’t work/you’ll never take

• old teas and spices that you’ll never use

• duplicate kitchen utensils

• single purpose tools that don’t get any use (examples: a grapefruit knife or an apple slicer)

• scratched nonstick pans

• chipped dishware

• excess glass jars, bottles, and to-go cups

• Tupperware or jars with missing lids

• stained or torn kitchen towels and napkins beyond repair

• takeout condiment packets or utensils

Office

• old electronics

• empty boxes from electronics (we’ve all kept that nice iPhone box or two)

• instruction manuals (you can find them online!)/old warranties

• dried out pens and empty pencils

• old business cards

Bathroom

• expired personal care or beauty products

• products you don’t like/never use

• empty or almost empty bottles

• old razors

• toiletry sample packets

Closet

• clothes that no longer fit

• clothes that don’t make sense for your lifestyle

• clothes and shoes that are worn out beyond repair

• free merch that you’ll never wear

• worn out underwear and swimsuits

• single socks that are missing their pair

• excess tote bags

• closet organizers or storage containers that are always empty

Kids’ stuff

• clothes that have been outgrown (and aren’t being saved for another baby)

• toys that are broken or missing pieces

• toys that have been outgrown/are no longer played with

• crafts that don’t need to be saved

Miscellaneous

• old magazines

• junk mail or old/irrelevant mail

• knickknacks that make dusting harder

• old cleaning supplies or ones that don’t work well

• stretched out hair ties

• old greeting cards

• old pet toys

If you’d like to go deeper

I wrote a decluttering deep dive post, sharing everything I’ve learned from years of consistent decluttering (which completely transformed my life).

For paid subscribers, I’m sharing the exact step-by-step process I use to actually get clutter out of the house, so it doesn’t just sit around and end up needing to be decluttered again later. Thank you for your support!

Read more

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Maybe this sounds familiar: always having a package on the way but barely remembering what’s inside, feeling a sense of urgency during a big sale only to end up never using what you bought, buying things and then realizing you already own something almost identical, and shopping for entertainment or to define your style. It’s not just you.

We all live in a world where our attention is currency, constantly sought after in the hope of converting it into sales. And if we’re not careful, we can slowly get pulled into a cycle of quick dopamine hits from ‘fun’ purchases. Those feel good in the moment, but add no value over time, while pulling us further away from spending on and saving for the things that actually matter to us.

It’s been almost a year since I’ve decided to change my shopping patterns and very intentionally hop off the consumerism treadmill. The more I practiced, the less interested I became in spending money on passing indulgences or anything that didn’t align with my family’s values or long-term goals. I was never a big spender, but even so, I realized how much of my identity was secretly tied up in what I bought, and how I used purchases to validate a version of myself I wanted to believe in. Letting go of that has been nothing short of revelatory. I’ve found so much beauty and contentment in living simply and only buying non-essentials that truly support my true self and the kind of life I want to live, while letting go of the cheap (and not so cheap) distractions.

To determine whether a non-essential is truly worth buying, I’ve developed a sort of filter I run all my purchases through. Today, I’m sharing what that looks like, in hopes that it might spark some ideas for you as well.

Get clear on your values & goals

It becomes so much easier to know what’s worth buying when you’re clear on your (or your family’s) values and financial goals, because every misaligned impulse purchase takes you further away from them. For example, our big financial goal this year is to pay off our car, which means every non-essential purchase gets weighed against that: is this worth delaying that sense of freedom?

On a similar note, one exercise I’ve found especially helpful is defining your ‘pillars’: four or so points that capture what matters most to you/your family in this season of life. Then, before you buy, you can cross-reference any non-essential against them. These pillars are particularly useful if you’re prone to keeping up with the Joneses or feeling like you need to own certain things just because you’re in a particular stage of life. It helps you uncover your internal compass instead of being guided by external expectations.

For example, our current pillars are:

• Contentment in living simply

• Time in nature

• Creative pursuits

• Quality over quantity

Use these questions to help distill your pillars:

• What do I want our everyday life to look and feel like?

• When I feel most content, what is present in my life?

• What am I trying to create or prioritize in this season?

Why

This might sound obvious, but I think many of us forget to ask ourselves why we want to buy a non-essential in the first place. And that ‘why’ can be an incredibly powerful guide, especially when asked consistently.

The key is to keep going. Don’t stop at your first answer. Keep asking why after each response, peeling back the layers until you reach the real root of the desire.

Here are two examples, using something as simple as a T-shirt:

1. Aligned

   Why do I want this T-shirt?: I need a new one.
   Why?: All my t-shirts are getting old and no longer fit well.
   Why this one?: I like the fabric and how it feels.
   Why?: It’s made with natural fibers, and it looked good on me when I tried it on.
   Why?: It went well with what I was already wearing, which means that it will work well within my existing wardrobe.

2. Misaligned

   Why do I want this T-shirt?: I need a new T-shirt.
   Why?: I’m bored of my current ones.

   Why?: I want to feel different, more like the version of myself I have in mind.
   Why this t-shirt?: It looked good on an influencer I admire.
   Why this influencer?: I’m drawn to the kind of life she seems to have.
   Why do I want that life?: Because certain parts of it reflect what I’ve always imagined for myself.
   Why will this T-shirt give me that?: It won’t.

   So is it really about the T-shirt, or is it an invitation to get clearer on what I actually want, and how to move toward it?

You get the gist.

Pause

Allow yourself a 24–48 hour cooling-off period before making any non-essential purchases. We’re often so precisely targeted by ads that speak directly to our desires that we hit ‘buy’ almost on autopilot. Taking a small pause allows you to come back to neutral and decide from a more grounded place.

It’s amazing how many times I’ve completely forgotten or stopped caring about a purchase I wanted to make after pausing.

Keep a Wants List

For those of us who approach shopping as a form of dream-life curation, keeping a Wants list (whether in a notebook, Notes app, spreadsheet, or Pinterest board) can fulfill that desire to ‘collect’ without turning it into an actual purchase.

It can be a fun motivator to do a monthly tally of how much you’ve saved by keeping these items on your list and out of your cart. I also love asking myself if I’d even remember about these items if they weren’t on my list.

And as someone who tends to freeze when asked what I want for my birthday or the holidays, it’s a surprisingly useful list to have.

Quality

Quality over quantity is a core value in our family. My husband and I are both trained designers, and having our home and the things we own feel beautiful to us is essential. Quality plays a big role in that.

At this stage in my life, I only want to buy the best quality available to me, within reason. There are, of course, exceptions, but very often, even the quality of the smallest things makes a difference. Having the goal of less but better gets me to carefully consider my purchases, helps keep clutter at bay, and ensures that what we bring into our home has lasting power.

These are the questions I ask myself to assess quality before buying:

• Is this the highest quality of this item that’s financially available to me?

• Is this a dupe or the real thing? Is it well made?

• If it’s a dupe, can I wait and save up for the real thing or find it secondhand?

• If not, are there higher quality dupes available, or can I find something similar that’s better made?

• What is the approximate cost per wear? (Price of the item ÷ number of times you wear/use it.)

  

Is it worth the space it will occupy?

As someone who doesn’t enjoy having too much stuff to manage, I’ve started to see every new object I bring into our home as its own time commitment, one that needs to be worth it. These are the questions I ask to decide if it is:

• Is this item worth the time I will need to spend managing it: storing it, cleaning it, maintaining it?

• Do I already have something that serves the same or similar purpose?

• Will I be able to find a dedicated home for this item in my living space?

• Is it worth the space it will occupy?

• Will it improve my life (even in the smallest of ways) or complicate it?

Further reading and resources

• I wrote a step-by-step guide to how I budget here:

• My in-depth letter on decluttering - a practice that’s incredibly helpful for becoming more mindful about what you buy and bring into your home:

• Tracking your spending has a way of showing you exactly where you’re overspending on the unimportant things, and where the important ones are being neglected. This is the budget spreadsheet I use to track and budget in one calm, organized place (MASHA10 for 10% off).

This filter can be applied to so many things in life, not just purchases. It’s all about living and acting in alignment with what’s true to you and choosing, moment by moment, what reflects who you are and what you’re working towards.

I’ve officially turned on paid subscriptions, and I’m so grateful you’re here. Free posts aren’t going anywhere, but paid subscribers will get more of my deep dives and framework-focused posts. If you’d like to support the work, the annual plan is over 30% cheaper than paying month to month. A small thank-you to anyone willing to commit early.

Thank you for making this possible!

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Thank you so much for reading! Follow along on Instagram for more ideas on simple living and mindful spending.

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This post contains affiliate links.

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It feels counterintuitive in our culture of more to give our children less. But what I’ve found as a first time mom who’s hardly bought my child any new toys is that less toys often leads to more. More calm, more imaginative play, more connection, more exploration, more boredom, and more time to just be, which is something that’s quickly disappearing from modern childhood. Any time I find myself thinking I need to buy a new toy to make my child happier or make parenting easier, it’s usually a sign that we have too much, not that we need more.

Thinking back to my childhood, I remember having plenty of toys, yet often feeling overwhelmed with the volume, and like I had nothing to play with. I also have a visceral memory of how it felt to finally get my little paws on a toy I’d been coveting, only to feel a strange emptiness upon realizing it was just another inanimate object, no different from the ones I’d already grown bored of. The anticipation and the promise of all the play I imagined was far more exciting than the toy itself. Looking back, I think I was beginning to notice the gap between what the toy was and what my imagination had to supply to make it feel magical, like I’d hoped.

We’ve all seen a version of this: a child is given a beautifully wrapped gift, only to spend more time playing with the box and crinkled paper than what’s inside. Or, they’re handed a set of carefully curated toy kitchen tools, yet reach instead for the real kitchen utensils. This all makes sense with the understanding that play is the most natural thing a child can do, it’s how they learn about the world around them. To them, there’s no right way to play and no hierarchy of objects. In fact, the more open-ended the toy, the more play can be accomplished with it, as opposed to one with a very specific and singular function. If we think back to how we evolved in nature, there was always play, even before the invention of toys. Rocks, sticks, sand, acorns, mud, and puddles were all playthings, and children will always find a way to explore through play, providing we give them the space.

At the same time, we’re parenting in a culture that makes more feel like the default - more toys, more options, more stimulation, especially in the disappearance of the village. What I’ve come to believe is that the goal isn’t some strict version of minimalism, but creating enough space for play to unfold naturally and without overwhelm. Below, I’m sharing what that looks like in our home: how I keep toy clutter at bay (while staying flexible), how I handle gifted toys that don’t align, and a list of the toys that facilitate the most open-ended and imaginative play in our household.

Why less is better

First, I want to clarify that having fewer toys isn’t just an aesthetic choice to make your home look better. It’s been proven (and makes so much sense!) that a calm environment with a few simple, open-ended toys is more supportive for children because it reduces overwhelm and allows their nervous systems to settle in. It’s the same for adults, too, as clutter raises our cortisol and makes us feel uneasy in our own homes.

With fewer choices, children are more likely to engage in deeper, more sustained play, rather than quickly switching from one thing to the next. Simple, open-ended toys invite imagination, while overly detailed, single-purpose, and battery operated toys can limit it by doing the playing for the child. Without a constant influx of new toys, children learn to find satisfaction and creativity in what they already have. In this way, less doesn’t diminish play, it actually very much strengthens it.

My favorite book on the subject: Simplicity Parenting

“Children need time to become themselves--through play and social interaction. If you overwhelm a child with stuff--with choices and pseudochoices--before they are ready, they will only know one emotional gesture: More!”

―Kim John Payne, Simplicity Parenting

Letting go of the guilt of less toys

At this point in my motherhood, I truly don’t feel any guilt about not buying my child tons of toys and keeping his collection minimal. As a first-time mom, I wasn’t sure if the ‘less is more’ approach that made so much sense to me in theory would actually hold up in real life. But now, two and a half years in, I feel confident that it’s not just okay, it’s genuinely good for him, based on how I’ve seen him interact with his toys and respond to his environment. I’m sure this will evolve as he gets older and if we have more kids, but I’ve also heard the same from more experienced parents of older children.

Plus, I can’t shake the feeling that most modern toys aren’t actually designed with a child’s well-being or imagination in mind. Whenever I walk through a toy aisle, the thin plastic and neon colors feel more like a reflection of profit margins than any kind of thoughtful design - how to make something as bright and attention-grabbing as possible, as cheaply as possible. Of course, there are beautiful, heirloom-quality toys out there, but I don’t believe you need to spend a lot of money on those to create an engaging environment for your child either.

Hold off on buying new

It’s pretty astonishing how quickly toys make their way into your home once you have children, even if you buy none. Having gotten this tip from more experienced moms, I held off on buying any toys for my newborn until he could hold things and started teething, which is when I got him a rubber teether to chew on. And still, even before he was born, we were already gifted toys.

I’ve carried this approach into my son’s toddlerhood. When I do see a genuine need for a specific toy, I either pass the idea along to grandparents if a holiday is coming up, or I look for it secondhand, on Marketplace, eBay, Buy Nothing, and similar places, before considering buying new. It’s honestly amazing how many toys and baby items are already circulating, and how many parents are more than happy to pass them on once their children have outgrown them.

Redundancy

One of the best ways I’ve found to keep toy clutter at bay is to be mindful of redundancy. Meaning, if my kid loves his toy car, it doesn’t mean I need to get him ten more. Or, if my kid loves playing with a toy dump truck at the playground or a specific puzzle at his friend’s house, it doesn’t mean he needs those same things at home. He can look forward to going to the playground and his friend’s house to play with those very exciting toys. This can feel counterintuitive since as parents, we want to delight our children, but excess only makes toys less special.

Of course, there will be many exceptions, and a child’s passions should be nurtured. But I’ve found that, as parents, we can usually tell the difference between a fleeting interest and something deeper, and it’s often worth waiting a bit before responding, to see which one it really is.

Cultivating contentment

Having a sense of contentment with what we already have is a big family value of ours, and I think this is an amazing life skill for children to develop. When there are fewer toys, it becomes easier to truly care for what we own, to notice when something breaks, to try to mend or fix it, and to extend its life rather than immediately replacing it. It shifts the mindset from constantly acquiring to learning how to value and maintain what’s already there.

Gifted toys that don’t align

People gifting children presents that don’t align with the family’s values is a common pain point I get asked about all the time. And who doesn’t feel joy when giving gifts to children? My approach here is to graciously accept the gift and acknowledge the love that went into it. Then let the child play with it as much as they want, and when the novelty fades or something breaks (which usually happens quickly with the less open-ended, plastic, battery powered type of toys), pass it on or throw it out. We currently have a toy like this, it’s pretty big and doesn’t fit our living spaces, and it’s kept in the closet until my son asks to play with it. I’m letting him lead and will pass it on once he loses interest and stops asking.

I’ve found that people genuinely want to gift things that are needed and useful. If you feel comfortable, give some gift ideas that are experiences (gift cards to museums, botanical garden, beach pass, etc.), consumables (crayons or watercolors, chalk, bubbles, etc.), books, clothes, or a contribution to savings/college funds to help lighten the gift load.

There’s also the question of family asking after their gifts, and here, I think it’s helpful to introduce them to the concept of toy rotation.

Rotating toys

Rotating toys, when you keep only a small selection of toys out at a time and periodically swap them with others stored away, can be very helpful for some families, depending on the amount of toys and age of the children. I rotate my son’s toys, even though we have a small collection, because I’ve observed his play enough to know his sweet spot before too much starts to overwhelm him. Rotating toys truly brings back that sense of novelty, and can make old toys feel brand new again.

Toy rotations don’t work for everyone: sometimes there aren’t enough toys to rotate, or kids catch on to the whole system and keep asking for the stored away toys, but it’s worth a try.

Reframing ‘entertainment’

I don’t think it’s our job as parents to constantly entertain our kids. That might sound harsh, but it comes from recognizing that we’re simply no longer in that stage of life. Play belongs to the child, it’s their natural language, and when adults step in too much, we often end up interrupting or directing it, even unintentionally. The idea that children need to be constantly entertained is relatively new, shaped by the way modern life is structured. But play comes so instinctively to children. What they really need is time, space, and a bit of boredom to access it. When we’re overly involved, it can shift play from something self-led to something dependent on us, which can limit their imagination over time.

This doesn’t mean that my son is a perfect angel who just plays independently all day. Protecting time and space for his play to blossom hasn’t come without its challenges, lots of whining, and doubting myself in the process. The simplest way that I’ve been slowly fostering my son’s imaginative play from when he was a little baby is through this one concept: don’t try to make a happy baby happier. If I see him sinking into a world of his own making, I try not to interrupt with my own suggestions or comments, and it’s a seed that has grown over time. What’s also helped is having a steady rhythm to our days, so he has a sense of what to expect and when it’s safe to relax into play.

Of course, I still play with my son, but I try to keep it mutual, choosing things we both genuinely enjoy, like drawing or crafting. And there’s so much connection potential beyond play that’s woven into everyday life with our routines, time outside, cooking together, and seasonal rituals.

Nature and integrating the child into daily rhythms

I see spending as much time outside as possible and looking to nature as the ultimate playground as a huge part of this minimal approach to toys. Nature’s got all the sensory-rich stimulation a child needs, and that manufactured toys often can’t replicate. Time spent outdoors supports attention, emotional regulation, circadian rhythms, and executive functioning. The openness of natural environments encourages more complex, imaginative play. We make a point of spending time outside every day (many times a day in the warmer months), and on the rare occasion that’s it’s impossible (snow storms, downpour, etc.), I quickly see how it negatively affects sleep, appetite, and emotional regulation.

Another piece that I’ve found to be key is welcoming the child into completing daily tasks. In baby and toddlerhood especially, play often looks nothing like we imagine. It’s not always a child quietly sitting with toys, but something much more fluid and self-directed. Anything initiated by the child can become play, even if it seems boring to us as adults. I go about my daily tasks with my son alongside me, sometimes helping, and often creating his own version of what I’m doing. This took time and patience to build, and I started slowly. Over time, being included in real-life tasks has become the most engaging kind of ‘entertainment,’ something no separate, child-specific activity can quite mimic.

You don’t need a playroom

Nothing against playrooms here, but they’re absolutely not required to cultivate play at home. Younger children especially will likely prefer to hang out wherever their caretakers are, not in a separate play space.

Our main playroom is our living room, with a small toy shelf in the corner, where I rotate toys and books, a good amount of floor space, a balance board, and soft poufs that often get involved in play as well. We also have a bookshelf in the dining room, a play kitchen in our actual kitchen, and a mud kitchen on the deck to encourage play throughout the house.

Staying flexible

Ultimately, toys should be fun, and I’ve found that a non-rigid, lighthearted approach serves everyone best, even when trying to be intentional. Sometimes a cheap plastic toy from a fair, destined to break the next day, can bring immense joy, especially when it’s a true treat. And sometimes a child will fall in love with a toy that’s a total eyesore/assault to the senses for us adults, but very meaningful to them, and there’s no way we can get rid of it. At the end of the day, we know our children best, and with a bit of slowing down and observation, we can create a ‘just right’ collection of toys that feels genuinely magical and deeply supportive of play.

Open-ended toys

Here’s the list of the mostly open-ended, simple toys that have served us well and been played with the most so far (2.5 years in). Every child is different and this will evolve with age and personality, but these are the kinds of toys that tend to grow with them and get used again and again.

• Books - we have our own collection + use the library for more seasonal or interest-based books

• Mud kitchen - placed on our deck

• Play kitchen - placed in our actual kitchen and stocked with used spice jars, painted rocks, thrifted kitchen utensils, etc.

• Balance board

• Wooden blocks & Magnatiles

• Animal figurines

• Wooden vehicles like cars, buses, and trains - we love finding Montgomery Schoolhouse ones on Ebay

• Small, wooden construction site vehicles

• A good old bouncy ball

• Play silks

• Play dough - I like this recipe

• A few stuffed animals (ours are mostly from my/my husband’s childhoods)

• Harmonica (we like this one for long road trips)

• Beeswax crayons

• Random kitchen utensils

• Nature treasures!

• Balance bike

• We love our little toy shelf, too

Further reading & resources

• Simplicity Parenting, my favorite book on the subject

• The 30-MIN METHOD to ditch 99% of the toys - a must watch!

• When Toys Take Over via the Guardian

• Excess Creates Disregard - I love this whole Substack

• How Screens Make Underparenting Harder - this is exactly how I feel about screens

• What If the Harder Parenting Choice Is Actually the Easier One? - this, too!

I’d love to hear about your experience with acquiring toys and what have been your children’s favorites!

Follow along on Instagram for more ideas on simple living and mindful spending. This is the budget spreadsheet I use to track our spending in one calm, organized place (MASHA10 for 10% off).

If you prefer to skip email updates, toggle ‘in app only.’

This post contains affiliate links.

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The older I get, the more convinced I am that a simple life is a rich life. When we subtract what doesn’t matter, we tend to make room for what does. Having less stuff to manage frees up time, the most scarce resource in life, and constraints have a way of sharpening creativity, while having everything available at all times dilutes it.

Every time I make an effort to simplify and ‘trim the fat,’ I notice life becoming more abundant, not less, whether financially, time-wise, or in my overall sense of contentment.

Below, I’m sharing a list of tiny changes I’ve made to simplify my life when it comes to budgeting, motherhood, home, and self-care, in hopes that they spark some ideas for you as well.

Automated saving/investing

This is the easiest way to become one of those people who are ‘on top of their finances.’ I set up automatic, monthly payday transfers to our high yield savings and retirement accounts once and never looked back. The $ has been steadily growing without me having to think about it or do anything.

More on how I budget here:

Regular decluttering

As soon as I feel even the tiniest bit stressed or overwhelmed by my home, I know it’s time to declutter. And I feel better afterwards every single time. Regular decluttering has made me so aware of the stuff that comes into my house, which, in turn, has taken away the desire for retail therapy (for the most part!).

All of my main decluttering lessons and tips are here:

Encouraging independent play

When I learned that independent play is the cornerstone of early childhood development, I relaxed even more into motherhood. We emphasize unstructured, open-ended toys and activities over any kind of toddler entertainment or ‘classes,’ and it’s been truly wonderful to watch my son’s imaginative play steadily blossom.

Free grocery pickup

When I order my groceries online and pick them up, I know how much my order will be before checkout, can easily browse all the sales, and I’m not tempted by any treats in the store. And I still get my fill of browsing beautiful produce at the farmers market, which feels more inspiring.

Simple meals, rotated weekly

I have a list of easily customizable and very simple meal templates that I can pull from for inspiration every single week. This takes the stress and guesswork away from cooking, while still leaving some room for experimentation and seasonality.

You can read more on how I’m sticking to my grocery budget this year here:

Single ingredient skincare & minimal makeup

It hasn’t come as too much of a surprise that simplicity is what works best when it comes to my skincare. I have very sensitive skin that responds best to single ingredient products, which are usually very affordable and long-lasting. When it comes to makeup, an overfilled makeup bag feels instantly overwhelming to me, so I’ve simplified my routine down to the few products that make the biggest impact for my complexion.

I wrote about my approach to skincare and makeup here:

Working out at home

I know this approach isn’t for everyone, but it works very well for me. I feel more motivated to get on my mat daily when I know I don’t have to drive anywhere or go out in public first thing in the morning. Working out in my living room is so simple for me, and also free. I love Move with Nicole for pilates workouts, and also have a simple weights routine that I do interchangeably with the pilates.

Saying bye to complicated supplement routines

I’ve tried all kinds of trendy supplements, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt any benefits (except from magnesium). What I do feel immense benefits from are more fundamental habits like sleeping enough, moving my body, getting outdoors, and eating whole foods. My favorite way to get bioavailable vitamins/minerals is through herbal infusions, which I can easily tweak according to my needs.

Streamlined cleaning staples

I love a clean, uncluttered space, and get excited about multi-purpose, budget friendly cleaning products that will last me months and do their job well. Over the years, I’ve pared down my cleaning staples to just a few key products.

You can read all about them here:

Only keeping clothes that fit my current body and lifestyle

This has been a new wardrobe philosophy that I’ve been implementing over the past year - to only keep clothes that make me feel and look good right now (or next season, for highly seasonal items). This approach does away with impulse shopping for clothes and makes every new purchase highly considered.

I wrote all about how I’ve been auditing my closet here:

A single dresser drawer for kid clothes

I share a dresser with my son, and he has one dedicated drawer for his clothes. I’ve found that this physical constraint works so well for us. When that drawer starts to feel too full, it’s my cue to phase out anything he’s outgrown or that no longer suits the season. Similarly to my own wardrobe, this makes me highly selective when purchasing clothes for him. I don’t really fold his clothes either. That way, he can put them away himself, and I don’t have to spend time folding tiny outfits.

You can read more about my minimal approach to baby and toddler stuff here:

Limit & simplify snacks

Packaged snacks are a sneaky category that can quickly skyrocket a grocery bill because you’re not only paying for the processing and packaging of the food, but also the branding and marketing. I’ve found it much easier to stick to our grocery budget since we mostly stopped buying packaged snacks. Limiting snacks also leads to such a better appetite for my toddler at actual mealtimes. And when snacks are needed, we do very boring things like a piece of fruit, chunks of cheese, nuts, or olives that don’t compete with proper meals.

Thank you so much for reading! I’d love to hear about your favorite ways you’ve simplified your life in the comments.

Follow along on Instagram for more ideas on simple living and mindful spending. This is the budget spreadsheet I use to track our spending in one calm, organized place (MASHA10 for 10% off).

If you prefer to skip email updates, toggle ‘in app only.’

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