Habits That Change When You Homestead

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Habits That Change When You Homestead
Homesteading is first and foremost a mentality.
It is an approach you meet life with
every.single.day. You seek to be more of a
participant in what you eat, how you live, and
the impact your presence has on the Earth. You
work to rely more on yourself than others.Other
than your eating habits that change when you make
the conscious decision to be more self
sustainable (because at its heart, that is what
homesteading is!), you may be surprised at the
other things that seemingly change overnight.
Changing into a clean pair of pants every single
day, for example. Before you turn your nose up
too much, read on!

• Shop Less When it comes to food staples,
  clothing, and the day-to-day needs, homesteaders
  tend to shop less frequently. At least, it sure
  changed for us! We buy wheat berries in bulk and
  grind our own flour. We buy 20 pound bags of
  rolled oats and package that to last. For the
  things we cannot grow on our own, we buy it in
  bulk, on sale. For non food items, we still shop
  far less. We stopped buying paper towels because
  we had a huge back stock of kitchen towels.
  Eventually, everything comes down to practicality

and paper towels truly are a luxury item.
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• Clothing Styles and Habits The kinds of
  clothing we buy has drastically changed. More
  denim, less rayon. Work boots instead of what
  looks good. If I cant tromp through mud at
  any given time, it likely has no place in my
  closet. Everything has moved from fashion
  considerations to practical applications. Will
  this keep me warm? Will it last more than a year?
  Is it machine washable (not on delicate,
  either)? Looks are a distant second for us now.
  Sure, we want to look good but more importantly,
  we want to be warm and dry.

• Less Laundry The average person would think you
  would end up with even more laundry being a
  homesteader. Nope. When Laundry consists of hand
  washing everything or hanging them on the line to
  dry or anything other than your standard
  washing/drying system, you tend to wear things a
  few days instead. Especially if you have to go to
  the laundromat (VERY expensive here). Honestly,
  other than socks and undies, is that shirt
  really dirty after one day? Unless you are
  cleaning out the chicken coop, not likely. Jeans
  or even better, Carhart pants, can be worn 3 days
  before being tossed into the hamper. Yeah, I can
  hear some people saying Ewwww! Until you live
  the life, it is hard to understand why that
  would

be perfectly acceptable.
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• Sleeping In My husband and I are polar
  opposites when it comes to morning time. He is
  up, chipper, talkative and ready to face the day!
  I, on the other hand, have been known to growl,
  gnash teeth, and even snap at people who get too
  close until after I have my shower and morning
  coffee. At least half the cup. I also loved to
  sleep in. It is the greatest gift ever given to
  mankind.well besides the perfect pillow.

• Say goodbye to all of that when you homestead.
  You need to be up to
• open the greenhouse and cold frames before they
  get too hot. If there is livestock involved,
  forget about it! You need to be up to feed and
  tend them, milk the goats and clean the coop!
  Add in projects you want to get completed plus
  harvest time and food preservation time.sleeping
  in is a rare luxury.

• Using Money for Everything There is a certain
  satisfaction to getting what you want and need
  by way of bartering. Homesteaders tend to shy
  away from using money as they get deeper and
  deeper into the lifestyle. Many people see more
  value in a few pints of freshly canned blueberry
  preserves than they do 15 for some scrap wood
  they had laying around. I know, it sounds a
  little crazy but it is largely true!

• Having Elaborate Meals We dont go out to eat
  very often at all anymore. It is hard to justify
  spending 100 on a dinner, no matter how nice,
  when you could take that same money and buy
  enough to make 20 meals (or more). OR you use
  that 100 to build a place where you can grow
  your own food that will last years! Not only
  that, when you start to cook from scratch and
  eat it regularly, you can taste the chemicals in
  boxed and canned foods.

• What you Consider Entertainment Used to be I
  could spend literally 12-
• 16 hour stretches on the weekends playing online
  games. No joke. I would sit here on my backside
  (which got bigger over the years from all the
  sitting lol) every free moment I had and
  be plugged in to some game or another,

completely immersed. I had more interaction with
people online than I did in
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• the real world. Before that, watching TV or
  reading a book, maybe going for
• walks was my entertainment. Even if I didnt have
  the blog, it has pretty much all changed.
• Homesteading changes you in really weird ways
  (though often funny).
• Watching chickens, for example, is one of those
  things that just happens. We dont even have any
  (as I have said) but I will watch a friends
  chicken cluck and scratch around the whole time I
  am there. Going fishing to actually fill the
  freezer is workbut still
• entertainment! Entertainment changes to family
  meals and game night instead of dinner and a
  movie.

• Buying Everything New Touched on lightly above,
  I dont know any homesteaders who rush out to
  buy whatever they need brand new. Sure, there
  are certain items that you kind of need to buy
  new but those are pretty rare. Instead, they
  either fix it, make it, or make do without it.
  You can never really get away from needing to
  have and use money but it is not the first route
  most homesteaders take. In fact, it is usually
  the last when all other

options dry up.