Are you tired of celebrity mansion shows on television where they feature ridiculously large family homes with twenty rooms, a squash court, and an indoor pool? If so, perhaps you will enjoy the opposing trend of tiny homes. The tiny homes movement has been gathering steam over the last few years, as an answer to rampant consumerism and consumption. While a tiny home may sound, well, tiny, the philosophy behind it is quite significant.

Focus on the Little Things

Everywhere we go these days, we are bombarded by advertisements for the myriad of things that we should own. These signals can sometimes get overwhelming, creating a never-ending sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) and the tiring cycle of keeping up with the Joneses. Minimalism is a lifestyle choice where people choose to leave the consumerist rat race and keep sight of what is important. The basic principle of minimalism is to focus on the quality of life instead of the quantity of possessions.

Although the concept of minimalism has existed for eons, the idea took hold with the public after the introduction of the Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. The KonMari method of organizing and decluttering was widely adopted by audiences, who took to their wardrobes and garages, throwing out their belongings that did not ‘sparked joy’. While Kondo has said that her methods are more about mindfulness than minimalism, many of the principles can be applied across both lifestyles.

Minimalism is centered around the idea of only using what you need. By decluttering, simplifying, and organizing your life, you detach your self-worth from the price tag of your possessions. When you are not buried under monetary commitments to inconsequential items, then you will have the time and presence of mind to focus on the pursuit of true happiness and your goals in life. In other words, minimalism is the way to freedom; True freedom to live life outside of the trappings of consumer culture.

Cozy and Comfortable

Of course, subscribing to minimalism does not mean that having material possessions is inherently bad. What may be trivial to one person could be of utmost importance to another. Living a minimalist lifestyle does not mean that you cannot have the things you want such as a car or a house. However, it does mean that you should consciously choose to invest in an item because it truly makes you happy, and not because society says that you should.

According to the US Census Bureau, the average size of new homes in America has grown from 1,660 square feet in 1973 to 2,687 square feet in 2015. Meanwhile, the average household size has decreased from 3.01 persons to 2.54 persons. Yet, with all the ensuite bathrooms, entertaining areas, and spare bedrooms, studies have shown that we use a pitiful percentage of our living space. In fact, a recent paper has suggested that a single individual only requires 150 square feet of space to live comfortably.

Make no mistake, going from a spacious home to a tiny house is a radical change. But we are a lot more adaptable than we give ourselves credit for. Many new owners of tiny homes have found that they adjust easily to the reduced living space and the convenience of having everything within reach. If you have ever lived in an apartment in New York or Hong Kong, shared a college dormitory, or traveled cross-country in an RV, the tiny home will be no challenge to you at all.

Small But Powerful

Aside from keeping life delightfully simple, the tiny home comes with numerous other benefits. Due to their minute size, micro-houses require much fewer materials to build and boast a small carbon footprint. The limited living space is incredibly energy efficient, requiring less energy to light, heat, or cool. This means that your tiny home is not only beneficial for the environment but also helps you to save on housing costs and utility bills.

Another obvious perk of living in a tiny house is that there is much less cleaning and maintenance to do. As you cannot stuff that many things into a 300 square foot home, chances are that all non-essential items will be passed over. Sweeping or vacuuming your tiny home would take a fraction of the time that it used to, and any repair costs would be proportionately smaller as well.

Finally, because you can put wheels on your tiny home, it can function as a sort of upgraded RV, where you can hitch it to a truck and simply drive it somewhere else. Whether you are not impressed with the neighbors or simply want a change of scenery, you can now move to a completely different city but live there in your original home.

With a range of advantages and a poignant perspective on living life with meaning, the minimalist idea of living in a tiny home is anything but mere hype. While it remains an unusual sight at present, do not be surprised if you see more tiny homes popping up around your neighborhood.

Digital marketing is a necessity for all businesses. Leveraging a deliberate digital marketing strategy can help search engines and, more importantly, customers find your site. Digital marketing allows users to learn more about and connect with your brand. An effective digital marketing plan will enable your website to appear on a search engine’s results page. Once your site earns a spot on the results page, customers can get to know your brand and learn more about your business.

Knowing where to start and understanding the various elements of a digital marketing strategy can be challenging. Here’s what you need to know about digital marketing and why you need it for your business.

Importance of Design

A website design agency can help deliver a well-crafted and intentional customer experience. Website design matters, and a quality designed site puts information within easy reach. A good design will relay essential concepts and information in an easy-to-follow manner. Users can explore the site and learn more while better understanding your business and the services you provide. This curated experience establishes your brand as a trusted resource and will help consumers make informed purchasing decisions.

Content and design working in tandem make it possible to educate users about your business and the available products and services. When users understand the advantage of working with you, they are more likely to do just that. A quality website can help convert leads and turn prospects into actual customers.

Trusted SEO Partner

Keeping up with the current trends and changes with digital marketing and how it pertains to your industry can be time-consuming. However, staying current with ongoing developments is vital. To do it right, you need to be aware of changes and identify fleeting versus long-term trends. SEO is also a long game, and it can often take time for changes to take effect. Knowing when to be patient and when to change course can be a challenge for SEO novices.

Bringing in a trusted and established SEO company can benefit your online presence and your mental wellbeing. SEO professionals understand how to best position your business and the intricacies of implementing an effective digital marketing strategy. A quality SEO company will help your site rank and help your site maintain that ranking as trends develop and algorithms and SEO best practices change.

Understanding the Process

Digital marketing is simply marketing information conveyed across digital formats. SEO or search engine optimization is perhaps the best-known aspect of digital marketing. The right words or phrases in the right places allow search engines to grasp the meaning of your site. Once a search engine understands your business, thanks to the information available on your website, that search engine can include your site in the results when someone types in a relevant search.

Each business requires a unique SEO strategy that is tailored to the brand. A brand new start-up that is relatively unknown will require a different plan than an established juggernaut that’s been around for decades. Understanding the right keywords and where exactly to use them is a constantly evolving process. As industries grow and advance, new trends, and keywords will emerge. What’s more, search engines may change their algorithms, so tactics that worked in the past may not continue to prove as effective today or in the future. In some instances, search engines may even change course and penalize strategies that once delivered results.

Value of Visual Engagement

SEO certainly matters, but there is more to an effective content marketing strategy. A website needs to deliver a visually engaging and informative user experience. These two components work together, and both are necessary for a digital marketing strategy to succeed and help users find your website.

An engaging and exciting website design is essential because most people are visual. The importance of visual aids and content is evident from social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, which showcase photos and videos. Including compelling imagery and an easy-to-follow structure will make your site look polished and professional while encouraging users to stay and tour your site. The entire design needs to represent your brand while also functioning smoothly and helping users find the information they seek.

Grow Your Business

SEO and website design are two critical components of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. SEO helps users find your site, and a quality design encourages users to stay and continue to frequent your site. This level of engagement will, in turn, convert leads.

Finding the right partner when choosing an SEO company and a website design agency matters. You want to work with SEO, and site design professionals who can offer honest, expert advice and have a proven record of helping their clients rank and find success. It’s essential to find professionals who understand the industry, follow trends, and ultimately help users connect with your brand.

Minimalism started soon after the second World War, when the rest of society was still in shambles, desperately scrambling to recover after a devastating historic event that basically destroyed the foundations of the world and shook it to its very core. It was originally an art movement, where visual art pieces moved toward geometric abstraction, away from the then movements of modernism and postmodernism and into the more orderly, simpler straight lines of minimalism. After all, with minimalism, no attempt is made to represent an outside reality, and the artist wants the viewer to respond only to what is being shown right under their noses. In other words, to see things as they really are. Minimalist painter Frank Stella famously said about his paintings “What you see is what you see”.

As the rest of the world started to get back up on its two feet, however, minimalism slowly started to infiltrate into the design language of everything else, ranging from architecture, to music, to even literature. Today, we see the far-reaching influence of this little art movement that began in the late 1950s, now influencing everything around us in the modern world, from the design aesthetic of our various technologies, such as smartwatches and smartphones, to even the application icons and the logos of large conglomerates and companies. Indeed, minimalism has grown beyond its original art movement and has entered our everyday lives as a way of living, a conscious design choice that favours less as being more.

Less is More

Less is more. That is the design philosophy at the core of minimalism. Considering the name of the movement, surely this does not come as a surprise. Minimalism is all about cutting out the excess, ignoring all the surrounding noise and clutter that only serves to distract one from the core essence of the product design. Minimalism is said to have been influenced largely by Japanese traditional design and architecture, where their concepts of Zen philosophy and the Japanese’s core idea of simplicity bled into Western society’s concepts and design language. As the design philosophy got more and more refined, we see the movement evolving into more than just the reduction of clutter. We see how artists and architects use the empty space that comes with stripping down the design to its bare minimum, and making it blend together with natural light, nature and its surroundings; we see it taking on a new kind of emptiness, one that does not feel like a work or space devoid of personality and lacking in content, but one that utilises basic geometric forms, elements without decoration and the repetition of structures to convey a sense of order and essential quality within them. In other words, minimalist design and spaces seeks essence and simplicity, forcing the spectators to rediscover the valuable qualities in simple and common materials.

Modern day minimalism

Today, many modern technologies and their user interfaces heavily draw their influence from minimalism. From fitness bands to tech companies, from operating systems to in-game menu screens, many of their design philosophies are directly drawn from the minimalist mantra: that clutter is unnecessary, and their choice to not throw too much in their users’ faces has proven to be quite effective indeed. Even more recently is the Konmari philosophy that was popularised by Marie Kondo’s Netflix series, where Kondo espouses the benefits of reducing clutter in their living and workspaces in order to live a better, tidier life. Minimalism is infiltrating into even our actual, living existences, becoming a part of our globalised culture. It is now a cultural phenomenon in its own right.

In fact, many companies, tech or otherwise, have even started to recently change their logos to a more minimal form of design, with the likes of Google and Microsoft, to name a few, all choosing to abandon their old, outdated and what one can indeed say was messy to the eye, logos and redesigning them to look fresher, less noisy, more sleek and streamlined and more pleasing to the eye in general.

It is not very hard to see what is so appealing about such a design choice. Not only is it easier to create a minimalist design over, say a maximalist or a more intricate one, it is also bold and eye-catching to have just a single letter G with red and green accents or a silver apple logo stencilled onto the back of your phone. It is obvious and hard to miss, allowing others to immediately identify the company that such a product is from. It also lends a strange air of sophistication to the product: that they do not have to show off any flashy designs or gaudy, bright icons and products. All they need is their logo on it, and one instantly is able to identify the brand.

That is the appeal of minimalism: clean, sleek, sophisticated, easily recognisable and easy to design too. It is no wonder then that minimalism has exploded into popularity in the 21st century as the design philosophy of choice for the modern world.

Before the COVID-19 outbreak, nobody could’ve imagined that it’d be possible for large populations to work from home remotely instead of working from an office. The situation’s quite different now, with most employees and freelancers working remotely. But as fun as remote work sounds, most of us know now that it can feel challenging and overwhelming at times.

In this article, we’ve put together five tips for you to succeed at remote work. From setting up a comfortable office at home and minimizing distractions to creating an intelligent workflow and communicating articulately with your colleagues, we’ll be covering all this and more.

1. Safety

When working remotely, you have to ensure your work is protected digitally. With the rise in remote work, there has been a significant rise in cybercrimes too. You can stay safe digitally by installing antivirus solutions on your devices, setting up a virtual mailbox service, and locking your devices when you’re not using them.

2. Set Up a Comfortable Home Office

Remember what your office desk or office space looked like? Organized. And that’s exactly what you must try to recreate when you set up your home office. You’ll want to make sure there’s minimal clutter so that you don’t feel overwhelmed or distracted by the things around you. It’s a bonus if the space is well-lit; that’ll make you feel energized.

Ideally, you want to set this office up in a quiet place, away from the house’s noise. If you share your living space with others (especially children), you’ll want to use a room with a door so that you have privacy and silence during your meetings and intense work periods. You also want to make sure your space is comfortable, but make sure it’s not so cozy that it makes you drowsy every time you sit down for work.

An advantage of having a home office is that you have more freedom with how you want it to look. You could personalize it with photos or other things that make you feel good or boost motivation and productivity.

3. Reduce Distractions

When working from home, it’s crucial to reduce distractions. The kind of distractions you’ll face depend on where you live and how many people you share your space with. Pets, small children, and noisy ambient sounds can majorly hinder your productivity. And the frequency or intensity of these interruptions could stress you out and make it difficult to get work done.

Nobody enjoys getting distracted when they’re trying to get work done. So when you begin working remotely, it’s best to set some rules for those sharing your living space. This could include not disturbing you during certain hours of the day, or being excessively noisy during meetings. The fewer the distractions, the faster you’re likely to get the work done. And once you’ve completed your work, you’re free to spend quality time with your family or friends.

4. Use Smart Workflow Tools

Remote work has massively boosted the use of workflow and task management tools, like Asana, Slack, Trello, and many others. With digital looks like these, you can skyrocket your efficiency and feel more organized than ever before. When you track your work, you’ll naturally be able to manage it better.

Each organization has its own go-to tool when it comes to workflow and task management. If your company is small and trying to figure out what tools to use, you could always check out user reviews and discover a tool that’ll be apt for your needs.

5. Communicate with Your Colleagues

Most remote workers would love that they have much more time available to them with this setup. But as fun as it is, it can make people feel lonely and isolated. While some people may have their family around, others may be living alone.

With remote work, it’s not possible to have those in-office interactions that made work fun for you. However, you can still keep in touch with your colleagues through digital messaging and conferencing tools, like Zoom and Google Chat. Although you won’t be physically around each other, you’ll be able to connect with your colleagues and have relaxed conversations.

Other than that, these tools can also boost your productivity by ensuring you all have clear communication channels to clarify doubts as they arise.

6. Balance Your Life

For most employees, work would end once they logged off from work. But with remote work, people often continue to handle work-related tasks well past their log-out time. With the atmosphere at home, it’s easy to lose track of time and continue working well after office hours.

It’s essential to stay organized and manage your time well so that you don’t continue working after your work hours. Once you manage that, it should get easier to log off on time and not overwork yourself.

General aches and pains are can afflict us all at various times through our lives. Usually the discomfort is mild and passes on its own. We needn’t think too much about the cause, or it’s something obvious, such as physically over-straining ourselves.

Occasionally, though, discomfort becomes more severe and lingers, and the causes might not be as apparent. Particularly as our bodies age, it becomes important to guard against arthritis and more chronic forms of pain and immobility. Here are some proven methods so that you can live a pain-free and active life.

Use supplements

As the name suggests, a supplement should not be your only course of action, but combined with a healthy lifestyle, taking the right product can work wonders to ensure your body is getting all the help it needs.

Websites like sandiegohealth.org offer high quality, natural pain relief. Proven ingredients such as epimedium, turmeric, and Japanese fleece flower can, in the correctly balanced formula, bring significant benefits. Fatty acids, such as EPA and DHA are necessary for the body to function well. A good supplement will ensure you don’t lack these things.

Eat an anti-inflammatory diet

Inflammation is a known cause of pain and discomfort, and certain foods can cause flare ups. It makes sense, then, that you should watch what you eat and stick to an anti-inflammatory diet.

Cold water fish, such as tuna, salmon and trout. These are full of Omega-3 fatty acids, and healthy fish oils.

Nuts and seeds. These are often overlooked, but provide essential, healthy fats and oils, to repair and protect your bodies connective tissues.

Whole grains. Because it’s known that refined grains can cause an inflammatory response in the body, always choose a wholegrain alternative.

Dark chocolate. A delicious treat, but when you’re buying chocolate, make sure to go for something that’s at least 70% cocoa. That’s the ingredient that has anti-inflammatory properties, so the higher the better. But you need to avoid an excess of fat and sugar, so don’t have too much chocolate, even the good kind!

Green tea. This Japanese favorite has anti-oxidant properties. Matcha is a more concentrated version, even better for your health, and can be made into a delicious latte. Just be careful your latte isn’t too loaded with high-fat, sugary ingredients, though.

Exercise regularly and be active

Physical discomfort might make you want to stay home and move less, but in fact, it’s critical to remain active. Exercise and movement play a key role in keeping you supple and healthy.

According to the CDC, people with rheumatoid arthritis should do low-impact, aerobic exercise three to five times a week. If your pain is less severe, you can do more than this, and you might soon find that not only are your aches gone, but you’re sleeping better, you have more energy, and your mood is elevated.

Walking and light running can be done anywhere, and benefit your heart and lungs as well as helping ease aches and pains.

Swimming is low-impact and relaxing, stretching your muscles and offering relief to your joints.

Strength training makes your muscles, well… stronger! And stronger muscles means less strain on your joints, and greater overall resilience. Start gently and work your way up gradually, trying weight machines, resistance bands and free weights, and seeing which combination works best for you.

Yoga is fantastic for flexibility and range-of-motion. It’s also deeply relaxing, and can be highly beneficial for mental and emotional well-being.

Regular physical activity is very important. The great thing about eating carefully and exercising is that you’ll naturally lose weight, gain strength and energy, and improve your posture, all factors that are crucial in warding off aches, pains and general ill health.

Heat and cold

Both heat and cold can be useful in treating joint pain, and pain in the lower back. Heat acts as a relaxant, soothing stiffness and encouraging flexibility. Try using a hot water bottle or a warm pad, applied directly to the area of discomfort.

Cold, on the other hand, reduces inflammation and swelling. Use an ice pack, applied directly to the painful region.

Try using both heat and cold, as you require, to see how it affects your condition. In general, heat and cold are also very useful in aiding your body as it relaxes, recovers and strengthens after exercise.

Aromatherapy and acupuncture

Both aromatherapy and acupuncture have grown tremendously in popularity as alternative, holistic practices. They are effective in treating a wide range of conditions, and in boosting wellness.

Always be sure to seek out qualified practitioners who can explain their methods and deliver a personalized course of treatment.

Overall, lifestyle factors are greatly important in keeping away aches and pains. And this is a great situation, as you’ll soon find that through taking the necessary steps to soothe discomfort, you’ll balance your health, boost your energy, and improve your mood.

Regardless of whether you are a business owner or someone looking to make a little extra cash through ecommerce, you are likely to face challenges with shipping to customers all over the globe. Not only does international shipping come with a slew of complications, it can also be extremely expensive. Here are some ways to cut shipping costs so as to increase your overall profit margins.

Tackle The Nitty Gritty

Before you start the shipping process, it is a must to familiarize yourself with the regulations and limitations imposed by different countries. Shipping packages internationally is often subject to plenty of constantly changing restrictions. You must be up to date with the current and authoritative measures, so as to prevent any unnecessary fines or delays.

International packages typically incur customs duties, which vary from one country to another and are levied by governments on imported goods. They are either specific or based on the value of the goods. For example, if you are shipping to Poland from the US, there are specific maximum weight restrictions and customs tariffs that must be paid should the package exceed a value of $50.

Restrictions can also change depending on the international shipping provider you choose, which can make or break the entire process. Work with reliable international shipping companies that have good reviews and high delivery service standards. Some factors to take into account include price comparison and extra costs, service quality, speed, insurance, and customer service. Do your research diligently, and you should be in good hands.

Calculations are key. International shipping costs should be meticulously and carefully calculated and have a cost breakdown inclusive of details like the cost of the product, packaging, shipping, handling charges, taxes, additional fees, and profit margin. After all, record keeping is a vital part of any business.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Using the right packaging will help you save on materials, and in turn, general overhead expenses. Protecting fragile items in transit is of utmost importance, but one must be smart in choosing the right protective material that is both cost-saving and fitting for your brand. Shipping costs can be reduced by using protective materials that are lightweight, such as bubble wrap and air pillows. The lighter your package, the less it costs to ship.

Buying your supplies in bulk is another cost-saving method that will be beneficial in the long term. Taking advantage of volume discounts as you shop for boxes, poly mailers, or air pillows is a great way to cut down on shipping costs. It is also a good way to ensure that you are stocked up on packaging in various shapes and sizes, which will come in handy should a package be of the wrong dimensions due to changing demand or restrictions.

You will also save money on materials if you reduce the quantity of packaging used. Packing lightweight items in a large box will incur more costs than necessary, due to their larger dimensional weight and greater amount of space taken up. Overly large boxes also increase the risk of the product being damaged.

As a matter of fact, reducing excessive packaging also positively impacts the environment. In a Sustainable Packaging Study conducted by Packaging Digest and Sustainable Packaging Coalition, 92% of consumers acknowledged the importance of sustainability in packaging. As more and more customers make the switch to sustainable shopping, their preferences will be reflected in the companies they choose to purchase from.

You may not cut down on shipping costs by using eco-friendly packaging, but you will be saving money on the packing itself. If shipping costs are higher than expected, you should aim to cut costs in other aspects of the business. You do want to profit, don’t you?

Cut costs, all while reducing your carbon footprint and doing your part for the environment, by investing in recyclable shipping boxes and biodegradable styrofoam padding. There are also sustainable packaging material alternatives you can consider, like Kraft paper, a biodegradable, recyclable, and compostable material made of 100% virgin fiber paper, or solid bleached sulfate (SBS) paperboards, which are made from bleached virgin wood pulp. Compostable mailers as a plastic substitute are also growing in popularity.

Online shipping supplies can be reused and recycled. As both an online shopper and seller, the boxes and packaging you receive can be repurposed for your own packages. However, don’t forget to remove or cover the old shipping labels beforehand. We want to avoid as much confusion as we possibly can.

At the end of the day, lower international shipping costs are great for any business, no matter how small. Given that passing on the costs to your customers is nowhere near feasible, taking measures to lower expenses will help you make the most out of your business without having to deal with the exorbitant fees that come with shipping internationally.