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Everyone’s talking about having a 90’s summer – meaning screen-free, and pure, analog and bare bones. It’s mostly moms wanting their kids to go outside more and watch less TV, but there are also ways for you to get your own 90’s summer – we call it the señora summer.
What is the 90’s señora summer? A señora summer is the art of letting the season be easy on purpose. It means getting your business handled in the cool of the morning so the afternoon can belong to a novela, a cold glass of horchata or iced yerba mate sweating on the table, and a phone call with no clear end. It’s papaya and cheese for lunch because it’s too hot to cook, a beach trip on a random Tuesday because the weekend can wait, and a kitchen left a little undone overnight because it won’t haunt you.
Here is how you can have your own Señora summer:
1. Have all of the teas
Not the wellness kind in a tin with a quote on it. The kind your tía kept in the cupboard for whatever ailed you — manzanilla for a bad stomach, a tea for nerves, a tea for sleep, a tea she swore by for reasons no one ever questioned. The point isn’t the tea. It’s having a remedy on hand for everything and the quiet confidence that comes with it.
2. Strict and unhurried at once
This is the rhythm of the whole thing. Mornings were for getting things done before the heat made it pointless — the errands, the cooking, the one big task. Afternoons belonged to the novela and the long phone cord stretched down the hallway for a conversation with a comadre that had no clear beginning or end. The day had structure, but it never felt rushed. You earned the slow part by handling business early.
3. Relax more
If you work, block off your mornings or your afternoons to do nothing on purpose — watch TV, bake a pie, sit. If you’re home with kids, build in small pockets where you get to think about nothing important. This isn’t laziness. The señoras understood rest as maintenance, not reward, and they took it without guilt or explanation.
4. Eat for the summer
Feel like papaya with cheese and sardines for lunch? Do it. When it got too hot, señoras kept the midday meal simple and light — fruit, cheese, bread, a little salami, some jam, whatever didn’t require standing over a stove. Not every meal has to be a production. Some of the best ones are the ones you assembled in four minutes and ate standing at the counter.
5. Let the house go for a bit
The dishes in the sink will not haunt you. The kitchen you didn’t wipe down before bed will still be there in the morning, and you can get to it then. Let it go sometimes — a house that’s a little undone in July is the sign of a summer being lived, not neglected. You’ll get back on track. You always do.
6. Drink all of the juices
Horchata, agua fresca, iced tea, tamarindo , yerba mate— keep something flavorful and cold going at all times. The jug that lives in the fridge and sweats on the second shelf is non-negotiable. Half of staying sane in the heat is just having something good to drink within reach, and señoras knew that long before anyone sold it in a can.
7. Find a telenovela (or the equivalent)
I’ll sometimes pull up old Chilean telenovelas I loved in the ’90s on YouTube and let them run in the background like company. If you don’t have a show with that kind of hold on you, pick something with a lot of seasons and commit — Bridgerton, Mindhunter, whatever — and watch it like you’re the tía who’s home all summer with nowhere to be. The genre matters less than the surrender.
8. Go to the playa just because
Why wait for the weekend? Load up the kids, make some sandwiches, and get out of the city on a Tuesday. The fun doesn’t have to wait for Saturday to be allowed. Some of the best beach days are the ones nobody planned, on a day that wasn’t supposed to be special.
9. Start a new routine
Pick up something you’ve let slide. Want back on the yoga train? Fifteen minutes every morning is enough to count. Start walking around the block in the evening when it cools off. It doesn’t have to be ambitious — it just has to be a small thing that makes this particular summer feel like its own, distinct from all the others.
10. Stop taking life so seriously
Things happen. Somewhere along the way we started treating every small thing like it had enormous stakes, investing in all of it, bracing for all of it. Let some of it go. A hundred years ago there were señoras just like you enjoying their summer, and a hundred years from now there will be señoras enjoying theirs, wondering what you did for fun. Give them something good to imagine. Relax more.
The 90’s señora summer isn’t really about the ’90s, and it isn’t about doing less for the sake of doing less. It’s about remembering that a summer doesn’t have to be optimized to be good . The señoras figured this out generations ago, without an app or a word for it. All you have to do is follow their lead and let the summer be easy.