It is quite ironic that in my search for a simpler life I found it in a capital city.

Back in 2007 I was still working and living in the UK but was searching around for a way to make my life feel more meaningful and more simple. I started to grow my own vegetables and herbs, was a varying degree of success and we changed the way we approached food – more season and local. I found work at that time rather soul destroying with redundancies and budget cuts making my working day miserable with meetings after meetings. My husband had many times been offered the chance to move to another country with his work and after our wedding in 2007 we decided to take the opportunity to move to Denmark.

We decided to go for it and see how we liked it. Our relocation experience is another story but the impact on my search for a simpler lifestyle was immediate. We downsized to a small city apartment and got rid of or left behind a lot of material possessions which was liberating. We had less money in a more expensive city so instead of accumulating things we didn’t need we concentrated on experiencing our new city. After being a two car household in the UK and spending a huge amount of money running them, we became a two bike and two travel pass household – another liberating experience.

Shopping was different here both in availability of things and also opening hours. Plus there is a real emphasis on seasonal foods. My desire to be greener and to support a more sustainable way of life was possible here in so many ways.

After about two months of living in Copenhagen I knew it was the perfect fit for us and it was the more simple life I had been craving. Six years later I still feel the same.