The Three Luxuries Framework

There’s a beautiful decorative bowl with a gold trim sitting on someone’s kitchen counter right now. It cost $57, which felt extravagant at the time. It was bought to hold fruit—you know, like a person who has their life together.

The bowl currently contains: two bobby pins, a receipt from three weeks ago, and what was once a lime but has achieved mummification.

This is what happens when we confuse luxury with acquisition. We buy the things that signal “elevated living” and then ignore them while scrolling through our phones, eating cereal over the sink, wondering why life still feels like we’re running on a hamster wheel powered by anxiety and cold brew.

The real luxuries? They’re not in the bowl. They’re in whether we actually notice the bowl exists.

The Luxuries We Actually Need

Somewhere between our first “real job” and our current collection of subscription services we forgot to cancel, most of us lost track of what luxury actually means. We thought it was the thread count. So why are the sheets still in its original packing, from 10 years ago. The handbag. The handbag may be beautiful but why haven’t you used it? Perhaps it’s a kitchen appliance that does one very specific thing we’ve used once and is now in the bottom drawer, between the spice packets.

But here’s what becomes clear after 35+ years of occasionally having life together and frequently not: luxury is when you actually take the moment to enjoy and experience these while you’re alive.

Let us introduce you to the three luxuries that actually change how life feels:

The Luxury of Selection

Many of us have seventeen black tops in our closets. This is not an exaggeration—some of us have counted during fits of organizational ambition.

You know how many we actually wear? Four. The same four. Every week.

This is the curse of thinking more options equals more freedom. It doesn’t. It equals decision fatigue and a closet that judges you every morning.

The Luxury of Selection is BALANCED LUXURY - having fewer, better things and the radical permission to let that be enough. It’s choosing quality that compounds into daily pleasure. They are the cashmere sweaters in colors that make you feel like yourself instead of five mediocre ones that never quite fit right.

But here’s where it gets interesting: this applies to everything. Not just stuff. The commitments you keep. The apps on your phone. The social obligations you’ve been meaning to decline for six months. The hobbies you feel you “should” have. The self-improvement projects collecting dust in your brain’s anxiety corner.

What if you selected a few things to be exceptional and let everything else be… fine? Or not exist at all?

What this looks like:

You have one coffee mug you love—maybe it’s handmade ceramic that feels perfect in your hands—instead of a cabinet full of mismatched drink ware. You invest in the good extra virgin olive oil because you use it daily and it transforms every meal. You choose the linen napkins with the hand embroidery you love -that make Tuesday dinner feel intentional, not saved for occasions that never come.

Plot twist: life feels special when you treat it like it is.

The Luxury of Attention

Remember the last time you ate something delicious and actually tasted it? Not scrolled-while-eating. Not standing-over-the-sink-eating. Not emotional-void-filling eating. Actually tasted it?

If you had to think about it, we’ve found our first problem.

The Luxury of Attention is INTENTIONAL LIVING & WELLNESS - the ability to be present for your own life. It’s noticing that your orange juice is good. That the afternoon light through your living room window is doing something interesting. That your friend just told you something important and you heard all of it, not just the last sentence before you started talking.

This sounds simple until you realize we’ve been trained to treat attention like a renewable resource we can mortgage against future productivity. We’re always “optimizing” our morning routine, “maximizing” our time, “leveraging” our—okay, we’ll stop before everyone needs a nap.

Here’s what it looks like in practice:

Instead of listening to a podcast while making dinner while mentally drafting an email while feeling vaguely guilty about not exercising, you just… make dinner. You notice the garlic sizzling on your favorite cast iron pan. You taste the sauce. You set the table like it matters, because it does.

Revolutionary? No. Available to you right now without buying anything? Yes.

The Luxury of Expression

Here’s an uncomfortable truth: we’ve professionalized joy.

You can’t just enjoy cooking anymore. You have to document it, optimize it, maybe start a food blog, definitely post it, hope for validation from strangers. You can’t just arrange flowers for your table. That’s “content creation” now. God forbid you host people without a theme and a charcuterie board worthy of Pinterest.

The Luxury of Expression is CREATIVE JOY - doing creative things for the simple, radical reason that they bring you pleasure. Not profit. Not productivity. Not performance.

Setting a beautiful table for yourself on a Tuesday. Wearing the earrings that feel special even though you’re just going to the grocery store. Writing bad poetry. Making extremely mediocre art. Hosting a dinner party where the main course is conversation and the appetizer is store-bought hummus and nobody cares.

This is the luxury our culture actively discourages because it can’t be monetized, optimized, or turned into personal branding. It’s just… alive. Present. Human.

What this actually means:

You light the candle, the one with a hint of pine and mandarin you indulged a little. Not for guests. For you. On a Wednesday. You play music while you get ready in the morning, not as background noise, but because it changes the entire quality of the experience. You arrange three grocery store flowers in a glass because it makes the kitchen feel loved.

You create small moments of beauty and pleasure for literally no reason other than you’re alive and life is short and the decorative bowl shouldn’t only hold fruit on the days we’re pretending to have it all together.

The Three Luxuries Framework in Action

So here’s how these three luxuries work together:

Selection frees you from the tyranny of more mediocre stuff—more things, more obligations, more optimization—so you have space for what actually matters to you. Attention lets you notice your life is happening right now, not later when things are “better” or “different” or “finally organized." Expression turns ordinary moments into experiences worth having, not because they’re Instagram-worthy, but because you were present enough to make them beautiful.

None of this requires dramatic life changes. You don’t need to quit your job or move. Sometimes it means investing in the right things—the items that genuinely elevate your daily experience. Sometimes it means creating beauty with what you already have.

You just need to treat your actual, current, imperfect life like it deserves attention, intention, and a bit of beauty.

Even—especially—on the days when the decorative bowl contains a desiccated citrus fruit and broken dreams.

Your Practice This Week

Choose one to explore:

-Selection: Identify one thing you can let go of—a commitment, a “should,” a backup black t-shirt.

-Attention: Eat one meal with zero distractions. Just you, your food, your thoughts. Revolutionary.

-Expression: Do one small creative thing for absolutely no reason. Light a candle. Arrange something. Wear something you love. Make your space feel loved.

This isn’t homework. This is permission.

Welcome to Épanvie. We’re practicing living well together, one imperfect, well-loved, luxurious moment at a time.

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At Épanvie, we’re currently working on actually using the nice things instead of saving them for an occasion that may never come. The hand soap is no longer decorative. Progress.