I am removing stains with all “the love in the world” from my little daughter’s bodysuits: weaning has the forbidden charm of a fruit-based Jumanji. There, with a handmade Marseille soap bar in my hand, with slow but rigorous movements, I remove a lively carrot stain, just as my grandmother, my mother, and my aunts taught me—all the wisdom of another time right there.
It seems to me that I can see their hands on mine, like an invisible thread that binds all our generations together in that circular movement, energetic enough. It is incredible how virtuous manual work is, how mind and body can travel together and in parallel, like in a Latin pas de deux where you can see the dancers together or separately and it always makes sense.
It is not surprising that today there is, and especially among younger people, a recovery of some practices linked to domestic activity. Against the culture of performance, hyperconnection, and constant instability, a new antidote seems to emerge: living as grandmothers do, or even better, living like Italian grandmothers! Nonnamaxxing, complete with a definition for the lifestyle to be inspired by, which transforms and reinterprets what for decades has been considered “old,” “provincial”, or “backward”. The trend is not entirely new and follows in the wake of already existing slow-living, cottage-core, and homebody culture. Yet, Italian hygge seems to fascinate in a different way.
Probably the reason lies in the fact that the Italian grandmother has a well-defined iconography in the collective imagination.
Just think about it for a moment and, in a second, handmade pasta immediately comes to mind, the vegetable garden with seasonal vegetables, you almost seem to smell the aroma of the tomato sauce filling the house as it simmers for hours. In the background, a long-lived female figure, energetic and affectionate, at a large convivial table laden with food.
In other words, the Italian grandmother eats well, cooks, cultivates the garden, but above all spends time with family, friends, and neighbors. She passes down practical knowledge and lives within a community. At this historical moment, she offers something powerful on a symbolic level: the idea that it is possible to live well without living in a hurry, without being perfect. The everyday art of care, of good food, of relationships.
The trend certainly does not intend to express how close it is to reality or whether grandmothers from other regions of the world or of Italy itself are more or less similar in this, nor does it arise from the nostalgic desire to return to the past—where the female figure, in particular, had very few choices and freedoms. The success of nonnamaxxing is supported by an explicit possibility: the feeling of being able to leave the chaotic world outside, to reclaim a more intimate space, where one can decide what really matters, free from the obsession with performance. The Italian grandmother thus becomes a cultural symbol of resilience, sustainability and relational well-being, reinterpreted as a desirable model of life.
Domestic activities, inspired by nonnamaxxing, then become a safe harbour where one can dock, capable of producing a feeling of security and control in a world perceived as unstable.
Much to the delight of my smartwatch, which in the meantime congratulates me for the twelfth time on my fantastic hand washing. I smile, and meanwhile I think that next time I wash clothes, I will have to remember to use that little dish where everything is placed, just as my grandmother used to do.