Easy Things You Can Do to Romanticize Life & Elevate the Ordinary
Life can feel like one long to-do list… especially if you’re in a season of survival mode, navigating newborn/baby/toddler/kiddo chaos, or just trying to make it to Friday. To help keep us sane, we’ve found that the tiniest tweaks can transform even the most mundane moments into ones that feel intentional, cozy, and inspiring.
We’re constantly adding to this ourselves, but here are some small, realistic ways we’ve been elevating the everyday to romanticize life & find joy right where we are:
basically free ninety-nine
After dinner every night, make yourself a little treat. Heat up some water and pour some sleepy time tea, have a handful of chocolate chips or m&ms, or enjoy nature’s dessert like fresh fruit (we reach for mandarins, apples, and blueberries).
Elevate your takeout meal or leftovers. Take them out of the fridge & place them in a bowl or on a plate to fancify your meal. Just because you’re having leftovers or takeout doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to use your beautiful tableware.
Recreate your favorite vacation meal. Remake the appetizers/entrees/desserts you have loved from your travels & be transported to an alfresco dining experience abroad. Why save the good stuff for vacation when you can just make it at home?
Our version of burrata & tomatoes à la Da Enzo in Rome, Italy.
Use a fancy glass! Drink your mocktail, sparkling water, or soda out of a coupe glass or wine glass. Who decided that having fun drinking has to be drinking alcohol?
Light a candle – any time of day. At your desk while you’re working, on the table while you’re eating lunch, in the kitchen while making dinner, after eating dinner while watching tv, in the bathroom while getting ready for bed. Give it a try!
Use a coaster. Nothing says romanticize life like using a coaster on a piece of furniture that definitely isn’t nice enough to warrant coaster use.
Find beauty in the everyday. Listen to the sound of the wind rustling the leaves, smile when you see a snail crossing the sidewalk, take a picture of the wildflowers growing through cement/brick. There’s beauty everywhere you look.
We’ve got the iPhone shadow to prove that this wasn’t Photoshopped. So gorgeous!
Dine alfresco. Whenever the weather is nice, we always try to eat our lunch outside when possible. Even if just for five minutes, feeling the sunlight while nourishing our bodies during the kiddos’ nap time is a simple energy reset.
Go for a walk while listening to music. This always makes us feel like we’re the main character in a rom com.
Set a morning routine that you can’t wait to wake up to. Avoid your phone until absolutely necessary, read a few pages of a book (we love how each chapter of Liz Moody’s 100 Ways to Change Your Life is only 2-3 pages & gives us a little nugget of knowledge to ponder all day long), use a red-light mask, get some sunlight in your eyes, meditate (we love Headspace & Calm), do a workout while listening to your fave podcast... Whatever gets you excited to get out of bed!
Curate your social feed like you curate your home. Unfollow accounts that drain you, follow who & what truly uplifts you, and teach the algorithm what you want more of. Be intentional with your scroll.
pay once, enjoy for years later
Fancify your soap game. Treat yourself to a bottle of Aesop soap (or similar fancy soap brand) and continue to refill the bottle with your cheap run-of-the-mill soap.
Bonus points for being able to tell who is just wooed by pretty packaging (aka us) when they tell you how amazing your guest bathroom soap is.
Get a robot vacuum and set it on a daily timer. Not only does this save us hours of chore time, but it just feels lovely to have a clean floor without doing anything.
If you have a multi-level house, don’t forget to bring your robot vacuum friend upstairs or downstairs every once in awhile. We forget most days, but the days we remember, we breathe much easier!
Invest in high-quality bedding! We spend about one third of our life sleeping, so make your bedroom your sanctuary. You’ll sleep better & therefore, feel better. We recommend starting with a new duvet and duvet cover, these pillows & these sheets.
One of us has the world’s coziest bed while the other refuses to invest in high-quality bedding because dog hair will get all over it… but 2025 might finally be the time we both prioritize a hotel-like bedroom that fosters the world’s best sleep.
add it to the budget
Prioritize your hair. This one is a tough one for us considering we’ve only gotten our hair cut 1-2x per year for the last who knows how many years, but book a quarterly hair appointment!
No more lusting after your friends’ hair and thinking yours just sucks for no reason – it’s just because you don’t get it trimmed regularly.
Get your nails done! We went from monthly gel manicures at the salon, to the occasional salon mani mixed with at-home regular polish, to pretty much entirely forgetting to ever do our nails after having kids… but we realized:
when we prioritize our nails (whether regular polish at home, DIY gel manicures, or the real thing at the salon), we always feel better & you can too regardless of which option is best for your budget!
Outsource your least-favorite chores – whether weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly – to give yourself a little treat.
If you hate cooking, use a meal-delivery service for your lunches, dinners, or all of the above. If you hate cleaning, hire a professional house cleaner for small tidying to deep cleanings. If you hate home projects, hire a task rabbit or handyman to help. Free up your own time & help a small business at the same time – it’s a win win.
You don’t need a new job, a new home, or a European vacation to romanticize each day. Start with small things & add more when it feels right. Your future self will thank you!
Let us know what you’d add to the list in the comments! We’ll be over here lighting a candle and sipping our ice water out of a wine glass. While you’re here, take a look at the kitchen registry items we’re still loving 3 years later or add this sheet pan veggies & feta recipe to your shopping list.