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The Two Kinds of Tired
The older I get, the more I think there are two kinds of tiredness. The first comes from doing too much. This is the tiredness most of us recognize. It comes from long workdays, busy schedules, physical labor, caregiving, appointments, errands, and endless to-do lists. At the end of the day, your body aches, your feet hurt, and you know exactly why you’re tired. The second kind is harder to identify. It comes from being exposed to too much. Too much information. Too much noise. Too many notifications. Too many decisions. Too many opinions. Too many advertisements. Too many people wanting a piece of your attention. This kind of tiredness…
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Small Batch Living in an Information Age
Information overload and the lost art of quiet living may not seem like topics that belong on a homemaking and self-sufficiency website. Yet the more I think about it, the more I realize they are connected to nearly every aspect of modern life. We carefully consider what we stock in our pantries, what we preserve for future use, and what we bring into our homes. We declutter closets, organize cupboards, and look for ways to simplify our lives. Yet many of us give very little thought to what we allow into our minds. Every day, we consume a steady stream of news, social media posts, videos, podcasts, emails, advertisements, and…
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Small Batch Living Changed My Home More Than I Expected
For a long time, I thought certain parts of homemaking simply weren’t realistic for me. I loved the idea of gardening. I admired people who canned food, stocked pantries, and prepared meals ahead of time. I wanted a home that felt a little more intentional and less rushed. But every example I saw seemed to involve massive amounts of work. Huge gardens. Entire weekends of canning. Twenty freezer meals at once. Five-gallon buckets. Assembly-line cooking sessions. Even reading about it felt exhausting. Between raising children, working, dealing with chronic pain from fibromyalgia, lingering exhaustion after illness, and simply trying to keep up with everyday life, I often felt like homemaking…
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Making Space for a More Simple Life
Somewhere along the way, life became very loud. We are constantly connected, constantly reachable, constantly consuming information, and constantly feeling like we should be doing more. Even our homes—which were once places of rest and refuge—have slowly become another source of pressure. Social media feeds us endless images of spotless kitchens, perfectly organized pantries, elaborate homesteads, and carefully curated lives. The result is that many people now feel exhausted before they’ve even started. But I don’t believe homemaking was ever meant to feel performative. For much of history, homes were simply lived in. They weren’t perfect, but they were cared for. Meals were prepared, laundry was folded, gardens were tended,…
