Meet the former property agent who traded London for Provence
Sydney Piercey is passionate about building a sustainable lifestyle and is renovating a farmhouse in Provence with her husband and kids; this is a day in her life
Sydney is someone whose Instagram account I love to go to as I am setting up my desk for the day, while I’m drinking my tea and still waking up. Her daily sneak peeks into living in France with her family is a gorgeous lesson in building the life you really want. Here, she tells us about what a day in her life looks like.
On a weekday I’m up at 6.30am, and by 7am all the kids are as well. I light candles first thing in the morning, and we try and take things gently until 8am, at which point it’s a scramble out the door. Everyone’s clothes are laid out the night before to ease the morning transition. Both me and my husband take our four kids to school, which is partly practical – if it was just me and four little ones that might be tough – but is also another opportunity for connection as a family.
Then I’m back home in our little village in Provence, and I might be doing any number of things – feeding our goats or doing some fun DIY like creating an outdoor mud kitchen in the garden for the kids. Our move to France was somewhat spontaneous. We were living in London, months into the pandemic, and enjoying my husband suddenly being able to work from home.
It was our retirement dream to move to Provence, ‘one day’, but we ended up bringing ‘one day’ forward and moved at the end of 2020.
The one thing we were missing was more garden space and so once it was safe to travel, we did, to our beloved corner of the Provence countryside where we’d spend many summers holidaying as a family. Our initial trip of a week became a month, which turned into three months. It was our retirement dream to move to Provence, ‘one day’, but we ended up bringing ‘one day’ forward and moved at the end of 2020.
Now we live in a farmhouse that we’re renovating, on an acre of farmland, allowing us to keep animals. We have three goats, and three dogs (for now). Our priority in life is time spent together as a family, and entertainment can be anything from a trip en masse to a market or a brocante (vintage market) or scrambling up our favourite hill to watch the sunset.
I have zero routine in my day so what I do once the kids are at school and the animals are fed, really depends on where my brain decides to take me. I was diagnosed with ADHD last year, and so I am starting to better understand how my brain works and why I find boring tasks impossible to get to. I’ve started working with a personal trainer, and maybe because of my ADHD, I welcome the structure that it gives me to have a weekly commitment.
In London, I worked for a modelling agency and then for a property agency, but left after having my second child, in the pursuit of more flexibility. Now, a lot of my freelance work centres around sustainable living and connecting with people. My book Sustainable Play, shows you how to make your own toys and games from cardboard and other household materials, and came about from my doing this with my own kids, and my online community joining in and wanting to do the same.
When we used to visit Provence before we lived here, going to brocantes was the highlight of my trips. When we moved to France, my brocante obsession dialled up and I started to get messages on Instagram from people asking if I could source similar treasures for them, and so I’ve started building this business.
I’m now part of a wonderful community of brocante sellers. One seller in particular has really taken me under her wing and given me a lot of inside knowledge, for which I’ve been so grateful. I’ve realised I love doing work that connects me to people and the planet, and sourcing vintage French homeware links me both to the community in the villages around me but also to likeminded people on social media.
Something I love about the life we have is that my husband and I are both at home during the day. He has a busy job, but we’re good about making sure that we sit down together for a coffee break (although he has the coffee and I always have a lemon tea) and we often talk logistics, like who’s picking up the kids or what we have going on that day.
The candles are one of our family traditions, and we’re big on rituals
Once or twice a week we’ll have a date night, but every other dinner-time is a family affair, with everyone at the table, and just as I do in the morning, I light lots of candles. The candles are one of our family traditions, and we’re big on rituals, which manifests in different ways – for the kids’ birthday, we always wrap their presents in brown paper with a coloured ribbon. Having four kids and lots of animals is often chaos, but the best kind and my greatest joy is the life we are building out here with our family.