Simple Living for Overwhelmed Women: What Mainstream Wellness Gets Wrongs

What is your vision of living simply? Do you picture a cottagecore aesthetic with linen aprons, a sourdough starter, a garden and a flock of chickens? It does sound lovely, especially if you’re neck deep in everyone else’s needs, wants and expectations and trying to keep your head above water without collapsing from exhaustion.

But what if I told you that simple living has nothing to do with aesthetics and everything to do with dropping some of the mental load so you don’t have to fantasize about running away to a yurt?

It’s understandable to be drawn to the idea of simple living. Not the raising chickens and baking bread, necessarily, but having the time and freedom to do things that bring you joy. It’s understandable to want to live with less emotional labor and less “handling everything for everyone all the time”.

Who doesn’t want more life in their life?

Dismantling the Myths About Simple Living

Here are the lies we’re told about simple living — and the truths that reflect what it means to live more simply without a financial investment in organization products or a major closet purge.

• Lie 1: You must declutter until your home looks like a magazine.
  Truth: A functional, calm space looks different for everyone. The goal is usable ease, not Instagram approval.

• Lie 2: Simple living requires extreme frugality.
  Truth: Simplicity is intentional spending aligned with values. You may spend more on what matters (better food, time-saving services) and cut wasteful expenses that are simply for keeping up appearances.

• Lie 3: Simple living is a one-size-fits-all lifestyle.
  Truth: Simplicity is personal. What lightens one woman’s load may feel restrictive or chaotic for another. Design it around your life and obligations.

• Lie 4: If you simplify, you’ll instantly be less stressed.
  Truth: Simplifying reduces friction, but habits, relationships, and mental patterns still need to be reworked to reduce the stress levels in your life. Simplicity is a tool, not a cure-all.

• Lie 5: Simple meals mean bland, boring food.
  Truth: Simple cooking can be flavorful, nourishing, and fast. Think straightforward recipes that respect your time, taste and your hormones.

• Lie 6: Simple living requires giving up pleasures and comforts.
  Truth: It’s about trading obligation and mental load for meaningful comforts by removing what drains you.

• Lie 7: Simple living is selfish.
  Truth: It’s self-preserving. Setting boundaries and reducing overwhelm helps you show up better for yourself and for others.

• Lie 8: Simple living means doing everything from scratch with quiet, blissful mindfulness.
  Truth: Mainstream wellness often turns "simplicity" into a performative second shift. If spending two hours kneading sourdough or brewing elaborate herbal tonics leaves you utterly exhausted at the end of the day, it isn't simple living, it’s just another method of performance lifestyle wearing an aesthetic costume. Real simplicity prioritizes your energy, even if that means buying the pre-chopped veggies or taking the shortcut.

What Is the Real Meaning of Simple Living?

Simple living isn’t about perfection, it’s not minimalism as a matter of moral superiority, and owning fewer things does not necessarily make your life easier.

Simple living is practicing the act of Essentialism: choosing what truly matters and removing everything that distracts, drains, or dilutes your life, both physical AND mental. It’s not about deprivation or aesthetic extremes; it’s about clarity, energy, and purpose.

When you simplify, you create space — for rest, for relationships, for the work and habits that actually sustain you. For overwhelmed women who over-function and people-please, simple living is an intentional refusal to be constantly “on” for everyone else. It’s the daily practice of doing less, better, and on your own terms.

To learn more about Essentialism (which I practice in my own life), check out Essentialism: Decluttering Your Life, Not Your Closet after you finish this read.

Why Essentialism Replaces Minimalism

When you stop treating your energy like an infinite resource and start applying essentialism to your days, something shifts deeper than your schedule: your body finally gets the memo that it’s safe to step out of emergency mode.

• Focus on purpose, not scarcity: Minimalism often starts with “less.” Essentialism starts with “what’s essential.” Instead of stripping possessions to create a stark look, essentialism asks: Which things, commitments, and rituals produce the highest value for my life? That shift moves you from depriving yourself to protecting what matters most.

• Make decisions guided by meaning, not aesthetics: Minimalism can become about style—clean lines, empty spaces, trendy capsules. Essentialism centers on meaning. You keep what supports your values, goals, and wellbeing, even if it’s not “minimal” in a design sense.

• Sustainability over sacrifice: Minimalism’s purge mentality can feel like punishment to someone already running on empty. Essentialism offers a sustainable approach: regularly evaluate commitments and possessions through the lens of priority. You reduce burnout without the pressure to conform to a look or rulebook.

• Boundaries before bare walls: For women who over-function, the core problem is often lack of boundaries and overcommitment — not clutter. Essentialism teaches boundary-setting: say no to nonessential tasks, delegate where possible, and create clear routines. Those boundaries protect your time and energy far more than an empty closet ever will.

• Practical, not performative: Essentialism is a toolkit: meal choices that save time and nourish you, routines that conserve mental energy, and choices that make life manageable. It’s not a social media performance of minimalist living. It’s about systems that keep you well.

Simple living, redefined through the lens of essentialism, is empowerment. For the overwhelmed woman, essentialism is the fierce choice to protect your life, your meals, your time, and your peace.

You can learn more about Essentialism in this post: Essentialism for Overwhelmed Women: The Art of Focussing on What Matters.

Why Your Nervous System Needs Essentialism

Here is the hormonal truth we aren't talking about enough: in midlife and perimenopause, shifting estrogen and progesterone levels directly lower your threshold for stress. The exact same mental load you used to muscle through in your thirties now sends your cortisol spiking and leaves you flat on your back with bone-deep fatigue.

Essentialism in midlife isn't a trendy self-care preference or a nice-to-have luxury—it is a non-negotiable biological intervention to protect your health.

When your nervous system became dysregulated, when the burnout came, when your body started sending signals that could no longer be overridden with energy drinks and willpower, it was not a failure. It was your body alerting you that something is wrong and you need to address it.

A chronically dysregulated nervous system is not a personal weakness. It is a logical, biological response to an illogical situation. When everything in your life requires your attention, when there is no genuine rest because even rest comes with a to-do list, your nervous system does not distinguish between a deadline and a threat. It registers both as danger and it responds accordingly with exhaustion and high cortisol, especially if you’re over 40 and in perimenopause

That’s when the running away from home fantasies show up. Those dreams of moving somewhere small, starting over, or disappearing from your life are not signs of dysfunction or failure. They are signs of a system trying to locate an exit from a situation it was never meant to sustain indefinitely.

On the other side of that oversized life you have been juggling like an unpaid circus clown, in that smaller and quieter life you’ve been dreaming about, something extraordinary will happen: your nervous system starts to regulate.

You will begin to hear the parts of yourself that went silent under the noise you’ve been living under for so long. You will remember what YOU want for breakfast or what movie YOU want to watch or where YOU want to go on vacation.

But hear me on this: simple living is not a retreat from reality. It is not giving up.

Simple living is the radical, defiant, deeply rebellious act of building a life that is actually sized for you, not for your capability, not for other people's comfort, and not for a version of success that you’re afraid to let go of because of the optics.

It’s about asking yourself: which parts of this life are actually mine? And which parts am I maintaining because I was told this is what a woman does?

It’s not just the big crises that burn you out; it’s the hundreds of micro-decisions demanding your cognitive bandwidth from the moment you wake up. What to cook, whose schedule needs adjusting, which email needs an urgent reply—every minor choice drains your glucose and keeps your stress response simmering.

Streamlining your meals, routines, and daily commitments isn't lazy or uninspired. It is a protective, strategic shield against decision fatigue so you can save your mental energy for what actually matters."

If you’re exhausted from over-functioning and people-pleasing, I want you to understand that simple living is the permission to choose fewer obligations, clearer boundaries, easier meals, and a life designed around your energy and your capacity. No checklists required.

What would you let go of first?

If you could remove one obligation, expectation, or possession from your life tomorrow, what would it be?‍ ‍

Don’t just choose something because it’s practical, but because your gut already knows it is draining you.

I would love to hear your response, so please leave it in the comments because sometimes saying it out loud for the first time is the beginning of actually doing it. And another woman reading this at midnight might need to know she is not the only one who wants to run away to a yurt and change her name.

Melissa