Avoid This One Big Modern Homesteading Mistake in 2019

Modern homesteaders kind of have it easy. Running water, central air and heat, grocery stores to shop at where plenty of businesses provide all we need make our lives easier and more full. We quite honestly have no need of canning food, making our own clothing, gardening, or even homesteading. We are a truly blessed people having everything available to us, but all this availability of resources can cause one of the biggest modern homesteading mistakes we can experience.

All of the privileges we experience in the 21st century create myriad choices for us. In my experience raising children and spending time with my grandson, and even in my own personal life experience, having many choices doesn’t always serve us well in meeting our homesteading goals. I’m going to show you how you can to make your homesteading goals happen, starting today.

The Common Problem of Too Many Choices

One of my favorite phrases over the past 20 or so years is “I like options.” I mean, everyone does, right? Not a bad way to feel. However, too many options can create a feeling of discontentment for me. I’ve seen this play out often with my grandson, too.

Consider This Scenario

Me: “Which snack from the cupboard do you want, Kieran?”

Kieran stands at the pantry, looking at everything on his snack shelf.

Me: “Do you want muffins?”

Kieran: “No. That doesn’t sound good.”

Me: “How About Spaghetti Os?”

Kieran: “No, I don’t like SpaghettiOs.” (He does.) “Don’t you have hot chips?” (Hot chips are his name for Doritos.)

And so on.

Now, I’m not going to say that muffins and SpaghettiOs are the most healthy of food choices, but they are closer to a meal than Doritos. But rather than choosing what is better for him, Kieran would rather eat junk food in place of a meal.

Kieran’s responses are not unlike my own when I think about all I have to do in a day. Some tasks on my list give me a feeling of excitement, and some just make me dread the day. I would much rather do the thing that makes me feel excited. The “yummy” thing. Not the thing that is good for me (or my homestead).

Can I get a witness?

Contrast the Last Scenario with This One

Me: “Kieran, do you want muffins or SpaghettiOs?

Kieran: “MUFFINS!”

See how easy that is? Give two choices, get one answer. No dragging it out. No going through every possible choice he can have.

Now, of course, this is a scenario that I have made up for the sake of getting my point across, but it’s not unlike the scenarios that go on here at Grandma’s house. I assume it probably goes on at your house too, if you have children. It’s a common solution to the problem of giving our kids too many choices. It really works!

How Too Many Choices Hurts Our Homestead

There are a specific set of things that need to be done in order for our homesteads to provide food, warmth, and, if we desire, a livelihood for us. First, we need goals. If you are homesteading, you probably already have them, you just need to carry them out.

(In case you don’t have any goals mapped out, my “Jump Start to Homestead Planning” worksheet can help you set some up today. It’s in my resource library, and you’ll be able to get the password at the bottom of this post.)

It’s not enough for us to have goals, though. We need to carry out specific plans to achieve those goals. And we need to follow a specific set of tasks to make that happen.

But what if we don’t want to carry out the tasks on those plans? Well, we don’t get that food, warmth, and livelihood that our homestead is able to provide, right? Right. Inevitably, those things will not happen for us.

So what is it that stops us? For many of us, it’s that additional influence of our thoughts and desires that takes us off track. We need something to head off those thoughts and desires at the pass. Something that will work in our favor every. single. time.

A Scenario Close to Home(stead)

Homestead: “What kind of outcome do you want today, Kristi? Would you like to put some food up for the future? There is a whole plant full of tomatoes to harvest out there. You could turn those into tomato sauce, dehydrated tomatoes, or salsa to enjoy later in the year.”

Me: “Nah.”

Homestead: “Well, how about making some cheese? There’s a whole fridge full of goat milk that needs to be dealt with before it goes bad. You could fill your freezer with all that amaaaaazing mozzarella you love. And don’t forget the creamy butter you could make!”

Me: “No, I don’t wanna do that. Besides, I can’t. I have so many other things to do.”

And so on.

Surely, I can get a witness on this, right? Come on, you know you’ve done this.

Autopilot: the Modern Homesteading Solution

You know what autopilot is, right? According to Google Dictionary, it is “a device for keeping an aircraft on a set course without the intervention of the pilot.” It also adds this definition for the phrase on automatic pilot: “acting or functioning without conscious thought, as a result of routine or habit.”

So, our homestead is the aircraft, and our thoughts and desires are the pilot. Our homesteads need to run without additional influence of our thoughts and desires outside of what is needed every day. Does this make sense?

Ok, so autopilot isn’t a new idea. I know that. But the truth is that personally, I don’t use this concept in my life enough. I believe this is why things aren’t happening as quickly on my homestead as I might like them to. In fact, I know that’s why.

My thoughts about how I feel about certain tasks, and my desires to always be doing something that sounds like more fun will ALWAYS win out over choosing to wash my dishes, trim my goats’ hooves, turn my compost, or any other task I really don’t like doing. Always.

One More Scenario to Consider

Homestead: “Hey Kristi, what should we do today? How about getting that huge pile of leaves raked and into the compost pile?”

Impractical me, thinking about what I’d rather do: “Nah, that doesn’t sound very fun. What’s on Netflix?”

Is it that way for you too? I’d venture to say that if you are not where you want to be with homesteading, it’s a good chance that it is. Here’s what should happen:

Homestead: “Hey Kristi, what should we do today? How about getting that huge pile of leaves raked and into the compost pile?”

Practical me on autopilot: “Yes, that is on my list to do today, so let’s get that done.” (Also acceptable response: “Yes, that is on my list to do later in the week. Let me look at my list for today to see what’s next.”)

What did Practical Me do there? She made one simple tweak to the scenario. Practical Me didn’t give room for any negative thoughts to come in and steal her homestead’s thunder. She didn’t allow her thoughts and desires to crowd out the plans that she had previously made to move the ball forward on her homestead plans for the day.

Our New Modern Homesteading Plan

So now it comes time to make the commitment to our homesteads, and to ourselves. I promise, you won’t regret it if you follow these directions:

1. When it comes time to do something we don’t like, we allow our minds to run through every reason why we hate the task in front of us. We won’t even allow our minds to linger there!
2. We will simply just do it. Just like Nike says. And when our minds protest, we will say to ourselves “Just do it, Kristi.” (Of course, replace Kristi with your own name or this probably won’t work for you. *snicker*)
3. Make this a habit. Be in control. YOU TELL YOURSELF what you will and won’t do. Allow your practical self to be the boss, so that you can become a boss at homesteading today.

Let’s quit being babies. Putting our big girl (or boy) homesteading overalls on, is the only thing that will make this lifestyle work for us. Let’s stop allowing our impractical, selfish, live-in-the-moment selves dictate whether our homesteads will be successful at feeding us, warming us, and providing us a livelihood. If we do this, we will change the way our homesteads run in 2019!