Leo Babauta writes on minimalism, simplicity, and living with less, as a companion to his Zen Habits blog.
Commenters hold Babauta up as a model of minimalism, even with six children, and call it a good, more personal read than Zen Habits.
I have a personal site I'm trying to pursue an old-style feel with, but it never qualifies by the heuristics people use, mainly because:
* image-heavy (with careful expressive intention! https://maya.land/latin/)
* I have javascript that, horror of horrors, is separated into multiple files (so I can manage it without a build step) for such malefic purposes as accessibility (https://maya.land/prefers-reduced-motion/) and displaying the current moon phase
But I think it's kind of good that there are different people pursuing different visions of The Good, even if many of us from different corners are all inept calling it nostalgia without better language to articulate our visions. This blogger is presenting cesspools like voat and raddle as a positive vision. Despite the fact that I think they're wrong about a lot, I think it's good that we're both out here on the web seeing and doing things differently. Maybe it takes some people to be obsessed with text-heavy content to act as a counterweight to FB misrepresenting video view counts. Maybe it takes some people like me going wild with GIFs to balance out Leo Babauta's web ethic (https://mnmlist.com/w/), and both of us to balance out the standard wordpressy norms.
ETA: I realized this looks like self-promo, so if you are suspicious of my using my own site as an example, https://sadgrl.online/ isn't me but illustrates a lot of the same thing I'm trying for
I think Leo Babauta of http://mnmlist.com/ is a great model for minimalism (or simplicity, or however you'd like to define it) and he has six children.
http://thepowerofless.com/leo-babauta-author-bio/
His mindset defines minimalism for me and I think refutes the central points of this blog post. He seems to be financially successful, frugal, happy, healthy and in a loving relationship with a wife and family.
If anything, stripping life down to the bare essentials should give you more time to focus on your family. Granted, I don't have children, so feel free to dismiss my comments on those grounds alone :)
Realistically most of your readers will come through links and the like, and thus not be willing to pay a subscription.
If it were a site I frequent, I'd probably be willing to pay $3-4/month for a simple, clean, static html version (no need to remove the pictures though -- I can choose whether to load those client-side). Something like this, say: [http://mnmlist.com/unknown/] I'd only pay 15-20/month if I could get the entire web like that :)
Most likely, at 15/month I'd just not visit your site.
EDIT: PLEASE don't use the navigation from that site though. It's ... way too vertical.
While I've spent years reading this message in various places (most recently at http://mnmlist.com and http://farbeyondthestars.com), I'm always refreshed by it.
Perhaps it's not the author's main point, but living lightly means we have more time to invest in the things and experiences that interest us, and that is a good thing.
It doesn't but every minimalist has their own personal exceptions. As with most things in life achieving 100% is more idealism than realism.
http://mnmlist.com/iphone/
https://zenhabits.net/whyphone/
Plus working in tech, not having the latest (or one gen prior) iPhone, often means not being able to run new apps.
Perhaps I'm missing the point here, but I started studying minimalism and the art of less last year, and there's almost no product I look at and think that I need immediately.
If you're interested in that same mindset, this site is a fantastic read:
http://mnmlist.com/