This article explores the value of small-scale, intimate, and personal everyday practices, often hidden from the public eye, for sustainability transformations. It invites fellow humans to see value, depth and hope in small-scale transformations and relies on a long-term autoethnographic project of its author as a practitioner of voluntary simplicity and extreme minimalism. Via methodological contemplations underpinned by critical realism, the article celebrates deviation from positivistic conceptions of science that encourage researchers to maintain distinct identities: scientists during our working hours (...) and humans beyond this. It aims to nurture a more holistic approach to ourselves as both researchers and practitioners and reveal the struggles of navigating and reconciling these different roles. (shrink)