Julia Watkins was a lawyer before she became, as her Instagram following would describe her, one of the most influential voices in natural and low-waste home living. Simply Living Well is the distillation of her years of experimentation — a practical guide to making your own cleaning products, personal care items, and home supplies with simple, natural ingredients.
What Is This Book?
The book is organised by room and season, walking the reader through low-waste alternatives for every corner of the home: kitchen cleaners, laundry products, body care, candles, and seasonal rituals. The photography is exceptional — genuinely beautiful in a way that makes the low-waste lifestyle feel aspirational rather than punishing.
But Simply Living Well is more than aesthetics. The DIY formulas are tested and effective. Watkins explains why each ingredient works, giving readers the understanding they need to troubleshoot and adapt rather than just follow recipes blindly.
The Chemistry of Clean
One of the book’s most valuable contributions is its clear explanation of why natural cleaning agents work. White vinegar is acidic — it dissolves mineral deposits and cuts through some bacteria. Baking soda is mildly alkaline — it deodorises and provides gentle abrasion. Castile soap is a surfactant. Understanding these properties means you can combine them correctly (not acid and alkaline together) and use the right tool for each cleaning task.
The most radical thing you can do for your home and the planet is to understand what you're cleaning with — and choose it intentionally rather than reaching for whatever the supermarket tells you to buy.
— Julia Watkins, Simply Living Well
Beyond Cleaning
The book extends well beyond cleaning products. There are recipes for infused oils and herbal tinctures, instructions for making beeswax wraps and cloth produce bags, guidance on seasonal preserving and foraging, and a meditation on slow living that connects the domestic practices to a larger philosophy of intentionality. This is a book about a way of life, not just a catalogue of swaps.
6 Key Ideas From This Book
White vinegar, baking soda, castile soap, washing soda, and essential oils can replace the vast majority of commercial cleaning products in most homes — at a fraction of the cost and packaging.
Marketing has convinced consumers that "serious" cleaning requires synthetic chemical formulations. For most household tasks, natural alternatives perform equally well or better.
Organising home practices around seasonal cycles — spring deep cleaning, autumn preserving, winter slowing — creates natural limits on consumption and connects domestic life to the calendar of the natural world.
Personal care products generate a disproportionate amount of plastic packaging relative to their volume. Switching to bar soap, shampoo bars, and homemade products removes dozens of plastic bottles per year.
Making your own products builds practical knowledge — of chemistry, botany, and material properties — that commercial products deliberately obscure to maintain consumer dependency.
Watkins understands that making natural living visually beautiful is an advocacy strategy. A home that looks inviting makes the low-waste lifestyle appealing rather than austere.
Any Weaknesses?
The aesthetic emphasis — beautiful photography, linen and ceramic props, a certain Instagram lifestyle quality — can feel removed from the economic realities of households without Watkins’ kind of space, time, and disposable income for quality ingredients and equipment. The book does not engage seriously with questions of access or privilege. Some DIY formulas also require sourcing ingredients that are not universally available.
Who Should Read This?
Home cooks and homemakers who want to extend their DIY practice from the kitchen to the whole house — and who value the craft dimension of making things themselves.
Zero Waste Home for the full lifestyle framework, or The Zero-Waste Chef for the kitchen-specific deep dive.
People with chemical sensitivities or allergies — switching to simple, known ingredients is as much a health strategy as an environmental one.
A certain Instagram-adjacent aesthetic that may feel aspirational to some and alienating to others. The content is sound; the presentation is unapologetically beautiful.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Simply Living Well: A Guide to Creating a Natural, Low-Waste Home worth reading?
A beautifully crafted book that makes the natural home lifestyle genuinely appealing. The DIY formulas are reliable, the photography is exceptional, and Watkins' philosophy of intentional, seasonal living gives the practical content a coherent framework. Recommended alongside, rather than instead of, books that engage more directly with the systemic causes of household waste.
Who should read Simply Living Well: A Guide to Creating a Natural, Low-Waste Home?
Home cooks and homemakers who want to extend their DIY practice from the kitchen to the whole house — and who value the craft dimension of making things themselves.
What is Simply Living Well: A Guide to Creating a Natural, Low-Waste Home about in one sentence?
Julia Watkins was a lawyer before she became, as her Instagram following would describe her, one of the most influential voices in natural and low-waste home living.
The Verdict
A beautifully crafted book that makes the natural home lifestyle genuinely appealing. The DIY formulas are reliable, the photography is exceptional, and Watkins' philosophy of intentional, seasonal living gives the practical content a coherent framework. Recommended alongside, rather than instead of, books that engage more directly with the systemic causes of household waste.
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