We construct several families of distance-optimal few-weight binary linear codes. As a method, we use the mixed alphabet ring Z2Z2[u],u2= 0 (viewing Z2Z2[u] as a Z2[u]-module) and three suitable defining sets, each consisting of three simplicial complexes generated by a single maximal element to construct three different families of linear codes over Z2[u],u2= 0. We explicitly determine their Lee weight distributions and study their Gray images to obtain our results. It turns out that most of the distance-optimal codes obtained in this paper are self-orthogonal and minimal as well. We emphasize that we find an infinite family of binary three-weight projective codes with new parameters, which produce stronglyl-walk-regular graphs for every oddl≥ 3.