I’m writing this post from my cloud couch in Miami Beach, snuggled up on a rainy spring afternoon, watching the breeze gently move the palm trees just outside my windows. I exercised earlier at the studio across the street from my building, and now I can faintly hear the city carrying on beneath me. It’s the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, and still, people are casually dining at the café across the street, looking unhurried.
When I’m done here, I’ll probably take a slow walk to Whole Foods to pick up some fresh fruit and vegetables, since my fridge is currently looking more aspirational than actually stocked.
It’s a far cry from my life a decade ago, living in a worn-down inner-city apartment in Chicago, owned by a slumlord, bracing myself against traffic and bitter cold just to make it downtown to a commission-based leasing job where I hoped to make a few bucks.
When you’re in that kind of environment, it can feel like a constant stretch for life to feel beautiful. In truth, it feels ugly a lot of the time. My apartment, my daily commute, and the energy I was surrounded by all felt heavy. But I’ve always done my best to make something good out of a stressful situation. To find a way to make even the bleak feel beautiful. Even when it was hard, I found small ways to make my environment just a little more lovely.
This series on slow beauty wouldn’t be complete without acknowledging the profound impact our environments have on our health, our habits, and ultimately, our beauty. My life today is one of effortless beauty (hello, sunshine!). But it didn’t happen by accident. I intentionally curated it to be this way.
New to this Slow Beauty Series? Start here.
Slow Beauty Begins at Home
One of my favorite docuseries is Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones with Dan Buettner. In the final episode, he shares what I still believe is one of the most overlooked truths—not just about health and longevity, but about beauty too—the profound influence our environment has on how we live, feel, and show up in our bodies.
In the communities where people regularly live to 100, their surroundings do a lot of the work for them. Fresh, nourishing food is part of everyday life, connection with others is effortless, and walking and movement is a natural part of everyday life, because of the way the towns and cities are laid out. Their environments guide them toward vitality and a kind of natural radiance that comes from the way they live, day in and day out.
And while we often look at these places through the lens of longevity, I couldn’t help but see that these are environments that make feeling good in your body inevitable. And that’s all that beauty really is.
Watching that made me reflect on my own home in a different way. How do I create a space that naturally shapes how I care for myself? Am I making it easy to nourish my body, to slow down, to move, and to rest? Does it invite me into rituals that make me feel like me?
My slow home has become an extension of my beauty practice, and it directly shapes my habits, my choices, and the way I take care of myself… often without me even realizing it.
Related: Slow Living at Home: Creating a Slow Home that Soothes the Soul
Designing Your Environment for Slow Beauty
For me, slow beauty lives within a simple ecosystem that supports me from the inside out. It comes down to three core elements: what I put in my body, what I put on my body, and how I move and relate to my body. This is beauty from the inside out.
Over time, I’ve realized that when my environment is set up well, I don’t have to rely on willpower to make good choices. They just become the natural and easy choice. I’m not constantly negotiating with myself about what to eat, how to take care of my skin, or whether I’ll move my body.
So instead of trying to be more disciplined, I’ve focused on designing my environment in a way that makes slow beauty feel effortless.
Let’s start with one of the places I feel this most in my everyday life:
1. Curating a Slow Beauty Kitchen
If you’ve read my post on creating a slow home, you’ll know I tend to lean minimalist when it comes to my design aesthetic. For a long time, that meant I didn’t like having anything on my countertops. The sight of a cluttered kitchen gives me low-grade anxiety (ha!).
But as I began prioritizing my health and beauty in a deeper way, I realized that a few well-chosen things, left out intentionally, can actually support the way I care for myself. Now, my kitchen isn’t just clean. It’s laid out in a way that’s actually helpful.
One of the simplest changes happened in relation to hydration. I keep a glass gallon jug sitting beside my Brita filter on the counter. It’s one of the first things I see when I walk into the kitchen, and it reminds me to begin my day differently. Where I used to reach for coffee first thing, I now reach for water. I’ll pour a large mason jar and drink it before anything else.
I’ve also reimagined what lives inside my cupboards. Seeds, nuts, grains, goji berries, cacao… all stored in labeled glass jars so they’re organized in a way that feels beautiful and actually inspires me to use them. I get to feel creative as I make my pretty bowls at breakfast time!
And then there are the things I’ve allowed myself to keep out, even as a minimalist. A small stack of recipe books that now live on my counter, offering extra inspo throughout the day. My Whole Foods Cooking Every Day recipe book, Chocolate Every Day which is filled with raw cacao treats, and my latest read Adaptogens on ritual wellness that includes drink recipes for longevity.
2. Designing a Slow Beauty Bathroom
I have to say that while I tend to lean minimalist, my bathroom has gotten a little extra lately. I’ve had my kitchen on lock for a while now, but the bathroom is where I really went down the rabbit hole as I began exploring slow beauty more deeply.
It started with the water. Something I had never really thought about before but suddenly couldn’t ignore.
If you can’t tell, I’m a little obsessed these days with hydration and clean water. And if you’ve read my slow skincare post, you’ll know I’ve had a long, complicated relationship with my skin. So I began looking at something I had overlooked for years—what I was actually washing my face and hair with.
To support my skin in a more intentional way, I invested in a filtered showerhead and a sink filter. For some it might sound like overkill, and it did to me at first, too. But I’ve realized that it’s an upgrade that changes the quality of my health and beauty without requiring more effort. With the exception of having to replace the filter every 3 months, it’s pretty much a one-and-done situation.
Another simple change was bringing my daily skincare products out into the open. For years, everything lived tucked away in a cabinet. But I noticed that when my products were out of sight, they were also out of habit. Now, I keep my daily essentials on the counter. And that alone has made my routine feel more consistent and more natural.
3. Choosing Your Slow Beauty Environment
This one might sound a little big. Maybe even out of reach, depending on your current season of life. And if that’s the case, I can totally relate. Because the life I live today, and the neighborhood I live in, is something I once only dreamed about.
A decade ago, I was in a completely different reality. I was going through a deeply challenging season, and I remember having this almost desperate thought: If I could just get to the beach… If I could just find a way to live near the ocean… maybe my life would start changing.
So I did what I could with what I had. I got a one-way ticket to Miami Beach. I found a small, worn-down furnished studio still filled with the dusty remnants of the woman who had lived there before me. It definitely wasn’t glamorous. My one meal a day consisted of a $4 hot dog because it was all I could afford.
But even then, something was happening. I was placing myself in an environment that felt closer to the life I wanted. And over the next few years, I stayed committed to that vision, slowly moving closer, refining my surroundings, choosing neighborhoods and spaces that supported the way I wanted to live.
Something we don’t talk about enough when it comes to slow beauty is that your environment shapes your habits far more than your willpower ever will. When you live somewhere that invites you to walk, you move more. When healthy food is nearby, you eat better. When your surroundings feel calm and beautiful, your nervous system slowly gets the memo.
Slow beauty is not just what happens in your kitchen or your bathroom. It’s the life your environment makes possible.
This doesn’t have to happen all at once. It can begin in small ways like a space with more light, a grocer or market within walking distance, a different neighborhood, or a home that simply feels a little better to be in.
And over time, small changes in your environment can have a huge impact on your health, beauty and happiness.
Slow Beauty Is Simplicity Embraced
When I first began exploring slow beauty, I’ll admit that part of me had visions of product hauls and perfection. I imagined homemade concoctions, perfectly curated routines, and shelves lined with the “cleanest,” most organic ingredients money could buy. And while I do have fun refining these aspects, what I’ve come to realize through both living and writing this series, is that slow beauty is something much simpler.
It’s about creating a way of caring for yourself that you can actually live with, as opposed to getting everything “just right.” I’m talking about simple ingredients, simple daily practices, and an environment that supports you.
The most powerful beauty routine is the one you can actually keep up with, day after day. It’s about sustainability, and finding a way to care for yourself that feels slow and steady.
As I continue to embrace slow living as a way of being, I see more clearly that slow beauty is simply an extension of that. I look at my life and my habits now, and when I’m introducing anything new, the question that comes back to me is always, How can I incorporate this into my life in a way that actually feels good to sustain?
And that, my friend, is what slow beauty is all about.
Want to read the full Slow Beauty Series? Start here.
