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Thirteen years ago I bought a domain because I liked coffee (still do to be fair) and thought maybe three people would read it.

I’m so glad more than three of you showed up.

On New Year’s Eve 2013, I bought a domain name on a complete whim. I was living back in Transylvania, Romania, I was 23, I liked coffee, I liked clothes, and I really did not expect a lot of people to ever read what I was about to write. It was just a fun hobby for me.

So I called it Cappuccino & Fashion (cappuccinoandfashion.com), and I hit publish, and then I told absolutely nobody – except my husband (who was my boyfriend at the time).

Well that domain name got me to consistent 100k+ pageviews and was the first brick to building my full-time business online.

That domain just became madelinehegedus.com, and I wanted to tell you why I made this decision.

It started as a secret

I didn’t tell anyone about my blog for years. Not friends. Not family. Just my husband (boyfriend back then). Ok I trusted him not to judge, but also needed some help with my lack of tech skills.

I was honestly a bit afraid of it – afraid of it failing, afraid of people thinking I was being cringe, afraid of caring about something and having it not work out. The name felt like a safe little shield. If nobody read it, it was just a cute hobby with a fun name. Not much to lose.

But then people started reading it. And then more people found it. And gradually, without me fully noticing, what had started as a quiet little secret was turning into an actual business – one I was still telling barely anyone about. I was just building it during nap times and after kids’ bedtimes and in every spare pocket of time I could find.

By the time I accepted that this was genuinely my career, Cappuccino & Fashion had a proper following, a history, and a lot of content sitting under that name. 

Changing it felt risky. 

So I didn’t. 

For thirteen years.

What changed

And then I got pregnant and started throwing things away.

Ok that was abrupt. Let me explain.

In 2022, I was heavily pregnant with my second baby and somehow deep in a decluttering spiral that I had not planned for. Our house looked totally fine from the outside – honestly, if you’d visited, you’d have thought it was tidy. But behind closed wardrobe doors – absolute carnage. 

Bags full of bags. 

Baby things from five years earlier that we weren’t planning on using again. 

Stuff I’d kept “just in case” since roughly 2015. You know the feeling.

I started clearing it all out because I was desperate for a bit of calm, and I decided to start filming it – not because I had a strategy, just because it felt like something worth documenting. 

And those videos took off in a way I really hadn’t expected. My house didn’t look like a Pinterest board, but I think it took off because people recognised the feeling behind it. 

The overwhelm. 

The wanting-a-calmer-home-but-not-knowing-where-to-start. 

The realising that the stuff you’re holding onto isn’t actually making your life better.

The overbuying for things we don’ truly need.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I had a moment of realising the domain name cappuccinoandfashion.com wasn’t really fitting anymore.

The name I’d been kinda hiding behind for over a decade had stopped fitting the person I’d become, and I think I’d known it for a while before I admitted it.

Two channels, two sides of the same story

Here’s where it gets a little layered – because my world is split pretty neatly in two right now, and I thought I’ll tell you about it.

@madelinehegedus – this is my main channel. Decluttering, minimalism, intentional living, shopping less and loving your home more. If you’re here because you want a calmer house and a quieter life, this is your corner. It’s where I document the real, ongoing process of simplifying – not as an aesthetic, but as a way of actually being able to enjoy your home instead of managing it.

@madelinehegedustoo – is the behind-the-scenes channel, and it exists because a huge part of my community are women who – like I once was (and still am) – are trying to figure out how to build something of their own around real life. Around kids, around limited time, around the very normal feeling of having something worth sharing but not knowing how to get it out into the world. I grew my main channel past 70k subscribers mostly during nap times and school runs, and this second channel is where I show exactly how that works – and how you can do it too.

Both channels are very much me, just different sides of the same story.

Why the name change matters to me

I’ve been honestly overthinking this change for months now (maybe years).

Because the name Cappuccino & Fashion has some sort of emotional charge for me now, after so many years of creating on it. It had recognition and it had history. SEO-wise, it was probably the safer choice to keep it.

But here’s the thing about hiding behind a random name: at some point it stops feeling like a brand and starts feeling off.

Everything I make now – the YouTube videos, the courses, the emails, the free stuff – it all comes from the same place. My actual experience, my actual family, my actual messy-in-places life. It felt strange to have all of that sitting under a name I’d picked at 23 because I liked lattes and shopping. (I mean I kinda still do, but I’m more intentional in my 30s).

madelinehegedus.com is, very simply, me. In a way that Cappuccino & Fashion just wasn’t fitting anymore.

So here i am simplifying it all.

Simplifying it for you, hopefully, to make it easier to see what pieces of content came from me. And not leave you wondering – uhm, who’s cappuccino and fashion?

All my handles online, youtube, website, course platform – everything under my name. So that you can easily recognise when something is created by me, for you.

What’s here if you want to go deeper

If you’re sticking around,  here’s what I currently create and where to find it:

If you’re here for the home and lifestyle side: My Simply Decluttered ebook and course are a good place to start. Less overwhelm, more clarity, a home that actually works for the life you’re living.

If you’re here because you want to build an online business of your own:

• Thumbnail Templates – the exact Canva templates I use on my own YouTube channel to get it to over 70k subscribers. Plug in your photo, change the text, done. No design degree required.
• Simply YouTuber – my full course on growing a YouTube channel around real life. Strategy, scripting, thumbnails, monetisation – built for people who don’t have unlimited time but want to turn their YouTube into a full time income.

Both are at madelinehegedus.com whenever you’re ready.

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TLDR:

Nothing changes for you. You can still find everything like you did before, just under a different domain name.

Thirteen years ago I bought a domain because I liked coffee and I thought maybe three people would read it.

I’m so glad more than three of you showed up – and I’m even more glad you’re still here.

– Madeline