Save. Live. Be Minimal.
Frugal chic is the art of living beautifully while spending less. Learn how to embrace intentional living, simplify your home, and create a stylish life on a budget without sacrificing what matters most.
Today we’re going to unpack one of the biggest misconceptions about simple living: the idea that you can’t be a minimalist with a family. We’ll talk about what minimalism actually looks like in a real household, why parents often feel like it’s impossible, and practical ways to start decluttering and creating systems that make everyday life easier.
There’s a quiet kind of happiness that doesn’t get a lot of attention in a loud and hectic world. It’s called contentment — and it grows best not when we buy more, but when we learn to love and care for what we already have. Often what is right in front of us, is what is best for us.
Let’s chat about what that actually looks like for our very real, not-so-perfect lives. Not the perfectly curated, minimalist-white-house version. I mean real homes, real budgets, real closets, real life.
Thinking about a no buy year? Learn how underconsumption and intentional spending can save money, simplify life, and ditch consumerism.
Owning more stuff won’t make you happier. Once a need is met, continuing to meet that need by buying more stuff doesn’t actually increase happiness or fulfillment.
If you find yourself on social media very often, you may have heard of this little trend called “deinfluencing” and “underconsumption”. Deinfluencing is meant to be the opposite of influencing, or getting people to buy things or buy into things. In the same vain, underconsumption is mean to highlight a normal or minimal level of consumption, primarily in the US. In the social media world where being an “influencer” is a coveted thing, deinfluencing is rocking the boat. While I’ve been largely absent from my social media for the last two years, even I’ve been influenced to buy things online. So let’s dig into the world of why deinfluencing is so important and what we can learn from our new favorite trend.
In this part of Minimalism Myths, we talking all about “just in case” items. All minimalists think just in case items are bad. Right?! Yes and no. It is true those just in case items can clutter up your home, but it’s also good to be prepared… just not for every single scenario!
Getting all done can be completely overwhelming! Jessalynn Jones from Doable Simplicity has come to rescue us with 10 tips on how to get more done at home and how to boost productivity.
The holidays can be the least minimalist, least sustainable time of year. Everything from the amount of gifts we buy (the US spent an estimated $886.7 billion last year) and the debt we incur (31% of Americans still haven’t paid their holiday balance from 2021), to the 25 million tons of garbage the US produces during the holiday season and the $16 billon in unwanted gifts that are sent straight to landfill – it’s pretty easy to see where we can make improvement for ourselves and for the environment!
This year, we’ve aimed to make the holidays more sustainable. While we aren’t the perfect zero wasters (or anywhere near zero waste), any step we take to reduce our waste is a step in the right direction. Maybe you want to take all of these sustainable holiday tips on this year – good for you! Maybe the idea of changing your spending habits is just too hard – I feel that too. Remember a small progress is still progress!
Several months ago, I felt in a weird slump. After settling into our beautiful new home and starting a new job, you would think that my life would feel… more put together. Better, in some way. Our home was bigger and brand new, my job paid significantly more than my previous position. But yet, I felt unsatisfied. I felt the withdrawal from reality and was escaping into my phone. After a long hard think about what could be wrong, I realized that my problem wasn’t my real life – it was my virtual one. So I did a social media detox for what was intended to be just a few weeks that is now going on over 90 days.
This isn’t a “how to” guide or how a social media detox works (you should visit my blog post HERE for that). This post is meant to be my push for you to think about how social media makes you feel. From ads, to influencers, to what your friends are posting. It all makes you feel something – whether that be good OR bad.
Read my experience and then take stock of your digital life. Are you spending too much time online and then too much time offline comparing your life to someone else’s?