Realigning Our North Star: A New Chapter for Our Family & Our Blog
Life has truly never been busier, and for us, nothing has sharpened our focus and clarified our true priorities quite like welcoming a new baby into our home. Recently, we’ve found ourselves engaging in deep reflection, asking fundamental questions: What exactly are our core goals? What purpose drives our daily efforts? What genuine fulfillment are we hoping to gain from all this hard work? The answer, as it turns out, was surprisingly clear and decidedly not about achieving more blog hits, higher traffic numbers, or external validation. In fact, both of us feel a growing sense of unease with the idea of our blog expanding any further than it already has. We often look back with immense fondness on those earlier, simpler days when we invested less time in work, enjoyed more restful sleep, and spent significantly more quality moments with our beloved family and cherished friends. This modest corner of the internet, which we affectionately call our website, has already far exceeded every expectation and wildest dream we ever dared to harbor for it. So, if not for growth or external acclaim, what exactly are we truly chasing now?
When our daughter Clara was born, we were both dedicated to blogging full-time, but the landscape of our online presence was vastly different. We operated with approximately a third of the traffic we currently manage, and our content schedule typically revolved around sharing one major project each week. These projects were interspersed with a delightful mix of home-related chatter, updates on our family happenings, engaging reader polls, inspiring reader makeovers, and various other snippets of our daily lives. It was, without a doubt, one of the most fulfilling and joyful periods of our lives. We found ourselves doing less, possessing fewer material things, and yet we were completely content and comfortable in every sense. In light of the overflowing plates we now navigate – with a precious new baby boy, a daughter who is growing up at an astonishing and heartwarming pace (cue the Armageddon music, truly), and the countless responsibilities that come with them – we’ve made a conscious and deliberate decision to gently paddle back towards that earlier, more balanced way of life.
We are fully aware that this significant choice may directly lead to a reduction in blog hits and, consequently, a decrease in our income. And we’ve come to terms with that. While it’s certainly a little daunting and a touch scary not knowing precisely where our journey will take us in the coming months or even years, it’s also a familiar feeling; as professional bloggers, we’ve never truly had that certainty anyway. Throughout our career, we’ve made what some might consider “risky” career choices in the pursuit of a higher quality of life. For instance, leaving the relentless rat race of New York City and relinquishing the security of steady salaries to embrace the unpredictable world of full-time blogging was a monumental leap. Yet, in hindsight, those have consistently proven to be some of the most profound and beneficial decisions we’ve ever made, shaping our lives in incredibly positive ways.
Just as we approached those previous leaps of faith, we’ve taken proactive steps to ensure our peace of mind for this new chapter. We’ve diligently saved enough to provide a comfortable financial cushion, allowing us to sleep soundly at night knowing we have a buffer. Furthermore, both of us have deliberately kept the doors open in our previous professional fields. This means that even if this pivotal choice eventually necessitates returning to freelance advertising work – a path I pursued to earn a living before we embarked on this blogging adventure, and one that John has intermittently explored over the past few years – it is a risk we are wholeheartedly willing to embrace. We view this as a necessary and worthy step in our ongoing quest to bring a more harmonious and enriching balance back into our lives, making space for what truly matters.
A Refocused Approach: What This Means for Young House Love
The truly wonderful news, however, is that our profound love for home improvement projects and the art of blogging is deeply ingrained in our hearts and souls. Our legendary to-do list, ever-evolving and ambitious, remains a mile long, brimming with exciting ideas and upcoming transformations. Let us be clear: we have absolutely no intentions of ceasing our blogging activities anytime soon. You can still count on us to regularly share our latest projects, delve into our planning processes, unveil our shopping discoveries, and provide all the other usual, much-loved content that has become a staple here. However, things will indeed feel noticeably different as we meticulously recalibrate our priorities and embrace a more intentional pace. We anticipate settling into a comfortable rhythm of sharing approximately three to five posts per week, allowing for more depth and less pressure.
A significant change you’ll notice is our decision to consolidate all our family-related posts back onto our main platform, Young House Love. We sincerely apologize to our Young House Life readers for this shift, but we believe it will create a more cohesive and authentic experience for everyone. In truth, family content has always been a fundamental part of Young House Love; in fact, some of our most cherished (and most popular) posts are deeply personal ones, exploring topics such as breastfeeding journeys, Clara’s heartfelt birth story, her delightful photo project, this particular ridiculousness, and even random, amusing facts about me and John. With these types of personal stories consistently finding a home on our main site, coupled with Instagram effectively serving as the perfect platform for smaller, more frequent family updates, the separate Young House Life platform has naturally felt less essential to our mission lately. Consequently, we will no longer be posting new content there.
We understand and fully anticipate that this shift in pace and content strategy will evoke various responses from our incredibly diverse audience. Many of you, for instance, have graciously encouraged us to slow down and embrace a more sustainable rhythm, and we believe you will be relieved by this change. Others might be genuinely excited by the prospect of a new, looser, and perhaps even more authentic style of posting. Conversely, some readers might decide that this new direction no longer aligns with what they seek from our content, and choose to tune out. And honestly, we are entirely okay with that too. Our primary goal is to create content that genuinely reflects our current lives and values, even if it means adjusting our audience.
We feel profoundly fortunate and incredibly blessed to have the opportunity to make this transformative choice. This is not a decision we have taken lightly; it has been the result of countless conversations, deep introspection, and careful planning. We’ve come to the powerful realization that if we don’t seize this precious window of opportunity now, we may very well never have the chance again. Our youngest, Teddy, is our last baby, and our sweet Clara is just a year away from starting kindergarten – a milestone that feels impossibly close (how did that happen?!). With these fleeting moments in mind, our fervent desire is to truly savor and enjoy this irreplaceable time with them, immersing ourselves in their growth and joy. We refuse to spend our nights, weekends, and precious family vacations working away, relentlessly chasing after some abstract business goal that, in our hearts, we no longer even desire.
A Journey of Gratitude and Future Dreams
As we embark on this new chapter, we honestly have no idea what the future precisely holds for us or for the ever-evolving world of the internet. However, even if the internet were to suddenly disappear tomorrow, we are already filled with an immense and overflowing gratitude for this truly amazing and completely unexpected journey that has been ours. This blog, in ways we could never have foreseen, has surprised us with its profound impact and reach. It has opened doors to unbelievable experiences and presented us with opportunities, many of which we still can’t quite wrap our minds around or fully comprehend the magnitude of.
Our big dreams for this house – our beloved home – are still very much alive and continue to inspire us. We absolutely cannot wait to share with all of you how it evolves, transforms, and grows alongside our family. But for now, if you’ll kindly excuse us, there’s an almost impossibly tiny diaper that requires immediate attention, and John is off once again to acquire some lumber, undoubtedly fueling another exciting home project. Thank you for being a part of our story, and we look forward to sharing this refreshed journey with you.