What a beautiful book! Watkins' Simply Living Well is a great coffee table book, and starter kit for any new home-owners attempting to live a more sustainable, minimalist lifestyle. The images are of high resolution and quality, and I felt the inspiration leap off the pages. The perfect resource for anyone starting a zero waste lifestyle.

I received a complementary copy of this book from the publisher and Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

A book for our current times, or any time of the reader is trying to make some life changes to simplify. The information is presented beautifully and this book serves as both a reference and an inspiration.

A great book for someone trying to enter a minimalist life starting with their home. The images were beautiful and inspiring and I felt like the recommendations weren't too out there or intimidating for someone getting started.

Julia Watkins provides the perfect resource for anyone interested in the zero waste lifestyle. Tips and tricks to ease the beginner into it while giving the advanced reader a fresh new look.

Simply Living Well is a lovely beginner's guide coffee table book for those dipping their toes in a more sustainable lifestyle.

List of projects and recipes at the beginning. Good tips and information [not much information] explained. Decent things to do. Things to do rather than the information. Essential oils, cleaning supplies, homemade nut milk, swaps, saving seeds, and more. Good book.

This is a great reference book for those interested in a zero waste lifestyle. It was full of interesting tips and ideas. “Simply Living Well” would be a great addition to a home library.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for my digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

What drew me to this book was the cover. I am really into minimalism, the color green, wood accents, AND white walls so this picture is beautiful to me. Fortunately, the entire book is full of pictures like this and even better. So in that aspect, I really loved this book. The book, itself, is all about showing the reader ways to reduce their environmental impact on the World. It has recipes(so many), tips on how to clean in a more green fashion, tips on how to get and remain healthy, and how to create a low waste lifestyle for yourself. This book is so full of information on how to make most everything you use to clean with from scratch, which is better for you and the Planet. I would definitely recommend checking this book out if you are at all at a place in your life where you are thinking about changing things up in a good way. What can it hurt?

I was not able to download this in time and the book ended up being archived. It seems it was archived pretty quickly after I was approved. I emailed the publisher to ask if I could receive an ebook again and apologized for the delay in downloading. I have not heard back! Would still love to review if given the chance!

Wonderful ideas to try and live a simpler life. I really enjoyed this book. Very extensive and covers a lot of different areas. I can’t wait to start implementing some!

One of my favorite hobbies is learning how to make my home a nicer and more efficient place, or, more shortly, housewifery. I got into this initially because one of my family’s highest values is thrift, and Andy and I have always had somewhat limited budgets. I love finding new ways to do things that save money. Over time, I added other goals to my household management schemes. I want to save money AND create less waste AND be healthier AND have a more beautiful life.

The gold standard project I can learn is something that helps me do all four. One such project is learning to ferment sauerkraut. Right now the accepted knowledge is that probiotics are great for your system. Lacto-fermented sauerkraut is an excellent source of probiotics, but a jar at the grocery store costs 8 or 9 dollars. But I can make it myself for the cost of some cabbage and a little salt. I can make it over and over again in a mason jar, creating less packaging waste. And let’s be real, fermenting your own cabbage is sexy. It’s tasty and tangy and I usually use purple cabbage to add a bright splash of color to my meals. Voila, a more beautiful life.

In my spare time I like to read blogs and books about all of this stuff and then try to do the related projects: budgeting, decluttering, meal planning, organizing, mending, crafting, cooking, cleaning, gardening, home design. It’s relaxing for me.

The most recent book I read in this category is Simply Living Well: A Guide to a Natural, Low-Waste Home by Julia Watkins. She shares my goals, wand she has experimented and tinkered longer than I have and is happy to share her results. In the introduction she sums up all the different things she has learned to do and concludes: “Of course, none of this happened overnight. And not all of it stuck. Really, I just tried to follow my interests and experiment with whatever piqued my curiosity—taking little steps here and there, using what I had, doing what I could. It’s remarkable how much joy can be found in making even one small simple change.”

When I read that, I said, “Yes! Exactly! She knows exactly what makes these projects so satisfying.”

She also helped me realize another reason I love doing this: for some reason, my perfectionism doesn’t apply to these projects. While I struggle with perfectionism in almost every other area of life, home projects are where I give myself the grace to experiment, to fail, to try something new. At the beginning of the chapter on maintaining a low-waste kitchen, she writes, “I do what I can and give it my best, remembering that living sustainably has to feel sustainable. In this chapter, I hope you’ll find ideas and support for reducing waste in the kitchen, while remembering to be gentle with yourself. As John Steinbeck wrote in East of Eden, ‘Now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.’”

I had somehow never heard that quote before, and it struck me to my core. When I give up on perfect, I am able to struggle toward the good. When I’m holding onto perfect I can hardly get anything done at all. I need to take this attitude and apply it to the rest of my life.

Not only did this book on simple living give me intense therapeutic revelations, but she also has really great ideas for projects as well. She focuses on the kitchen, cleaning, wellness, and gardening. She strikes a good balance of having some easier ideas along with some I hadn’t tried yet. I’m very excited to make apple cider vinegar from apple cores, reusable produce bags, and fermented radishes.

I learned the most from the natural wellness and gardening sections. Gardening is the next thing I want to get into. I’m especially interested in herbs and how to use them medicinally. I’m cool with most of modern medicine (as is Watkins), so I don’t see this as replacement, but as a supplement. It’s always nice to have more tools in the toolkit. And in terms of making life more beautiful, I love the idea of having bundles of herbs drying in my house, storing them in jars, and using them to be healthier.

Over the course of the book Watkins shares how many of these practices she learned from her grandparents: “With almost everything I did, I sought out the wisdom rooted in traditional cultures and, especially, the habits and practices of my grandparents. Of course, what we call simple, natural, nontoxic, organic living, my grandparents just called life.” Her appreciation for her grandparents caused me to reflect on the projects of my grandparents: they had a huge garden, they bottled their own root beer, they designed an addition for their house. My grandma painted and knit and sewed. The cookbook my grandma made for her grandchildren includes recipes for pickles and sausage and pickled pigs’ feet.

Reflecting on these traditions made me feel prouder of my hobby and also more connected. Usually I think of myself as messing about in the kitchen alone. There’s nothing wrong with that, and that’s probably how I lost most of my perfectionistic tendencies in this area. I was just making things for Andy and me, none of my mistakes were very expensive, and once I got over my frustration I was excited to try again.

But this book reminded me that I am not alone, and there is so much value in feeling connected to communities who do these things, both in the past and in the present. There’s lots to learn from others, and this book and this author are beautiful companions to encourage you along the way.

So if you also enjoy messing about in the kitchen, trying new ways to do things that are good for the environment, beautiful, and satisfying, I highly recommend this book. It’s a great place to get started and a great place to help you carry on.

Thank you to NetGalley for a free review copy! All views expressed in this review are my own.

I was drawn by the cover actually. And I already like the idea of simplicity and living in a natural way. So, I said to myself, I'm sold and going to give this book a try. If you are into a zero-waste lifestyle or trying to be a minimalist or just simply a DIY-er, this book is right for you. The idea of this book is to introduce you to classic /old methods or recipes from your grandparents' lifestyle. While probably we are always want something new, this book reminds us of how the classics ways are often easier and effective. And I agree with that. This book has 5 groups. Starting with kitchen recipes, bathroom recipes, gardening tips, wellness recipes, and natural cleaning recipes. I like the bathroom and cleaning recipes parts because I need to try it myself. As for kitchen recipes, they aren't new to me, because I've been practicing zero-waste kitchen. I just need to step up to the next level by substituting my cleaning products and skincare products with DIY products, I think this is more fun. Thank you for sharing the recipes. I've tried one of the recipes in the book. It works!

Simply Living Well is a great read for the person who is interested in living a zero-waste life; it's filled with recipes, cleaning solutions, health tips, and more, all geared toward helping the reader reduce environmental impact. This particular title is divided into sections: low-waste kitchen, natural cleaning, natural wellness, natural bath and body, and kitchen garden. Most of the tips and tricks provided are really geared toward folks who are new to the zero-waste lifestyle, but there are some interesting takeaways for people who may be zero-waste literate as well (Furoshiki cloths!). All in all, this would make a great reference text for anyone venturing into natural living for the first time.

This book is nice for people that like everything homemade. It has lots of recipes of homemade cleaning products, natural cleaning tools, bath products, and some recipes of homemade sauces like ketchup and salad dressings. It's not something I would personally use because I don't really want to make everything from scratch but it's good to have it just in case we ever need it. For example, there's a recipe for homemade hand sanitizer and in times like this that it's hard to find, it's very useful to have this recipe and be able to make your own hand sanitizer at home.

This is a beautiful, helpful, encouraging book packed with ideas, recipes and tips to help you live sustainably in a really wonderful way. Watkins' ideas are not new to me and this is how our family has been living for a decade or two now in most ways (we're a little harder core in some ways, like relying on a lot of wild foods), but I still found ideas and projects to make note of and loved reading through it.

Watkins is never preachy and offers instruction on making your own cleaners, home products, beauty products and more. She says it's the type of book your grandmother would have given you and I agree (okay not mine -- she was the dean of education for Miami university and channeled Joan Crawford -- but it's a book I'd have wanted my grandmother to give me). Photographs from the author's house all reflect what I'm sure is a huge Instagram following, for good reason.

This is exactly the sort of book we need to show that living a low-waste, DIY, simple lifestyle can be beautiful and satisfying.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review purposes.

Simply Living Well includes many projects and recipes that are pretty practical and accessible. Often, books in this genre require too many obscure or bulk ingredients that actually make the "simple" projects much harder than buying the final result. I did not think that was the case with Watkins's book. Although the rose water seems a bit out of reach, for example, most of the projects will be easy enough for me to complete with ingredients I already have or can easily attain. That is a big incentive to actually do them! Additionally, the book is cleanly designed and clearly written. I really enjoyed it.

A wonderful thoughtful book about reducing waste in your life. It is such a joy to have a book full of inspiring photography that is a pleasure to browse through. It is full of helpful hints and tips so you can try those most suited to you. You can start big or small. Some of the ideas are really good and will definitely get you thinking about what you can do. The book is such pleasure to look at that you could keep it out on your coffee table and dip I whenever you need some inspiration. If everyone did just a few things out of the book it would have a big impact on the planet.

I am not a Instagram follower of Simply Living Well. Nor am I very good at reading bylines, because I totally missed that this book was “a guide to creating a natural, low-waste home.” It was simply the book title and the clean, fresh cover that caught my eye.

I discovered the error of my ways while reading the Introduction and almost set it aside. I don’t aspire to be part of a “movement” - zero-waste or otherwise. But ... I do have a mantra that if I can gain one insight, a book is worth my attention. So I continued on. And I would recommend that you do the same.

Watkins really does put together a powerful book on simply living well. If you’re focused on finding ways to slow down and enjoy a more simplistic way of life, her book will give you plenty of ideas, as well as the steps to accomplish each. She leads with “I like to think this is a book your grandmother could have given you,” and what a gift that would have been. The book covers the full gamut - from kitchen to cleaning to wellness to bath & body to garden. There are lessons in shopping, food recipes, DIY instructions, cleaning, and caring for your family. It goes beyond the obvious of “what things go in a compost bin” and includes topics I would have never thought to even Google - like creative usages for coffee grounds and ways to repurpose eggshells.

It is also a beautiful book. Clean pages filled with crisp photographs depicting healthy, clean, simple living. It translates to homestead and well as urban lifestyles.

I blog under the tagline “creating my own little patch of happiness in OKC.” I will certainly use some of the tidbits shared by Watkins in Simply Living Well as I continue to cultivate my little patch. You can find me blogging at Patch405.com.

I was offered an advance digital copy of this book by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.

A very interesting and useful book. It's full of ideas, hints and interesting project.
I highly recommend it.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Simply Living Well by Julia Watkins is a beautifully photographed and charmingly intelligent look at how we can return to the simple and less wasteful days of our grandparents. Best of all, it is not preachy or militant, it is, instead, thoughtful, informative and inspiring. And it is a message I have been pursuing for the last few years, and more so since the COVID19 pandemic and all the changes it has brought to our families, our communities and our world.

The book is divided into five sections including Low-Waste Kitchen, Natural Cleaning, Natural Wellness, Natural Body and Bath, and Kitchen Garden. Each section includes a short, concise introduction to the topic, followed by just a bunch of great tips, swaps, recipes and instructions.

The author offers a stunning array of tips for reducing waste and simplifying, and presents them in easy-to-follow tables ie Instead of this, choose this. Some of the tips are no-brainers, like swapping out cloth towels for paper towels in the kitchen or using a wooden comb instead of a plastic one, while others are way more creative, like lining your trash bins with newspaper instead of plastic bags, or using that same newspaper as seedling pots. One of my favorite tips was to hang bright or dark clothes inside out on the clothes line to avoid fading.

There are also DYI instructions, again ranging from the simple like making your own double boiler out of a small saucepan, a canning jar ring and a glass measuring cup, to the more complex, like making beeswax wraps or plant-based blush.

And recipes for things like apple cider vinegar, coffee ground facemasks and elderberry syrup to hardwood floor cleaner and toilet pods. But also for soups and nut milks, pickles, jams and seasoning mixes.

I admit, some of the ideas are beyond my commitment to having a low-waste home. I estimate the chances of me actually making headache balm or switching out my current toothpaste for a homemade variety are pretty slim. That said, I've already mixed up a container of vegetable wash, and rethought my earlier decision to just toss my fruits and veggies into the cart to avoid those ubiquitous plastic bags instead of investing in reusable mesh bags.

Simple is better for a lot of things, but simple is also a habit, and one we can all participate in and enjoy. Simply Living Well is a wonderful introduction to the topic, and a great resource to start being more intentional about how we live, the products we use and the impact they have on us and our world.

This review is based on an advance copy read.