NZ Influencer Teiana Grace is better known as The Kiwi Homemaker, a social media account where she shares her life as a stay-at-home mum. Photo / Supplied
Teiana Grace made seven jars of apple sauce this week. There are not many other options when you find 6kg of less-than-perfect apples for $3 at a Marlborough farmer’s market.
“How will you use seven jars of apple sauce?” Only one of her nearly 27,000 Instagram followers asks the question we’re all thinking.
A handful of others gloss over the amount of roast pork needed to make this make sense. They praise her for being an “inspiring SAHM” instead (heart, pink flower and hand-clap emojis sprinkled for impact).
Known to her followers as The Kiwi Homemaker, Grace has turned her life as a stay-at-home mum (SAHM) into a growing social media platform where she shares the message that leads her Instagram bio: homemaking on a budget, finding beauty in the simple and living well with less (leaf emoji, pink tulip emoji, coffee emoji, woven basket emoji).
Her content – posted on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube – features videos of the 25-year-old in the kitchen, at her sewing machine, harvesting from her garden or thrift shopping (that’s what her American fans call it – to you and me it’s op-shopping).
Almost every video is accompanied by a soothing voiceover explaining how it’s possible to live a full and happy life on a budget. How cooking from scratch or turning a bedspread into a skirt is something we can – and maybe should – consider doing. Imagine your grandma in a Gen Z body. It is, simply put, captivating.
“[When I started] I thought this sort of content was missing, particularly in New Zealand. And I wanted to put myself out there, to offer a different perspective to people; that a simple life, and the way that I’m living, is very fulfilling. Not pushing consumerism and the idea that things will make you happy, more the idea that focusing on family and the more mundane things in life can also make you happy,” she says on Zoom from her family home, long dark hair tucked below a bold, blue headscarf.
“I talked to my husband about it, and we agreed that I would start [posting] consistently and see where it went.”
Grace and her husband Hamish live on one income. He earns the money, while she manages it. It’s part of why she started posting online about her life; to show other young women how to be frugal under the shadow of the cost of living crisis. But also ways they could embrace a life where family looks more like it did when her grandmother was a child.
Grace is not the first to turn this dynamic into an online community. The term “tradwife”, or traditional wife, emerged online during Covid, when domesticity wasn’t so much a choice as a fact of life for a world stuck inside their homes. It’s since cropped up everywhere from news headlines to the couch of Married at First Sight.
Women (usually young, pretty and religious) around the world (usually America) share their recipes for homemade peanut butter, tips for keeping a good home, ways to live sustainably and some subtle suggestions that the world would be a better place if men and women stay in their lanes: boys make the money, while girls make dinner and babies.
Grace knows people will think she is a tradwife, or at least is capitalising on the trend: she doesn’t work outside of the home, she cares for her daughter full time and she has built an online persona around the joys of traditional homemaking. Neither she nor her husband were raised in the church, but together they have “come to religion” early in their marriage.
“I’m definitely encouraging that family focus and a focus on community and being at home and doing all of those things ... And I think [other] people would call me a tradwife, but I definitely don’t call myself one,” she says.
“I know those are the connotations that would come along with me, but I’m just a mum. I’m a wife. I’m living on one income trying to get by so I can stay at home with my child.”
Grace’s life didn’t always look so demure. She describes herself as an “ordinary teenager”, just “like every other girl”. She entertained the idea of university, but only because that’s what her friends were doing.
“I was one of those people who would keep up with trends. I was using my Afterpay account every week to have the latest clothes, to go shopping, or just to keep up with beauty standards – I was doing all the beauty appointments and things like that – just to keep up with society and what it felt like it wanted from me, especially on social media.”
Until one day – she can’t quite remember how or when – she had an “awakening”. She gave it all up.
“[That life] was never making me happy, these things were never making me feel fulfilled. If anything, I was feeling sadder because of it. I had no savings … It made me realise I had to step away from social media and figure out what it is that I actually value and what I want from my life and the things I think are important and that I should pursue.”
Before she chose to turn her life back over to social media again as The Kiwi Homemaker (“it is a hobby for me, creating a beautiful video. I get a lot of satisfaction from that”), she chose to look backwards.
She remembers her great-grandad as a passionate gardener, her great-grandmother a passionate cook. That, she says, is how they each served their family. Dinner was eaten together as a family. Community involvement was a given.
“It was their families, it was their marriages, and it was just keeping productive in the home and stewarding a home and creating an environment for their families that brought them a lot of joy,” she says of her grandmothers.
“And as I grew up and had my own family – and seeing how broken the family unit is for a lot of families – it was very inspiring to have that experience in my life as a young kid.”
With the arrival of her daughter, now almost two and in the throes of teething, Grace and her husband decided she would leave her job as a council gardener and leave him as the breadwinner.
“I knew I had to [financially depend on my husband] if I wanted to be a stay-at-home mum. And I wanted to be a stay-at-home mum more than I wanted to bring my own income into the household.”
Life looks different to how she was raised. Her family is supportive but Grace knows not everyone will.
“People disagree with me a lot when it comes to the fact I financially depend on my husband for our income. I think that can be a little bit of a touchy subject for some people,” she says.
“They think my husband is earning the money and is controlling where it goes – if anything, I’m controlling where the money goes because that’s what works best for us.”
Cooking, baking and gardening came naturally to Grace. Sewing and knitting were harder to learn. Budgeting was maybe the most difficult skill to master. She wants to share what she’s learnt. Her online community gobbles up her tips for mending and making do.
And social media can be big business. Or at least, it would be if Grace accepted the many paid partnerships she has been pitched over the past few years. When your message is “forget about consumerism” it’s hard to sell that to a brand to then sell to others – without looking like a bit of a hypocrite.
One day, she might figure out a way to make it work, but for now she simply hopes people can understand that under-consumption and living within your means is worth the effort.
“We are not a high-earning family, otherwise I wouldn’t be sharing frugal living tips – but it is achievable if you are willing to make the sacrifices. But I don’t think many people are,” she says.
“You’re not missing out if you’re not keeping up with the trends, keeping up with the Joneses. A simple life is fulfilling.”