Harmony Family Farm

Simple living isn’t “easy” living. It’s a lot of work. Simple living, in simple words, is decluttering every area of your life so you’re not “busy,” and you have the time to enjoy the little things that bring you joy.

I know you have seen them. The perfectly curated videos and posts depicting a perfectly peaceful, beautiful country life. The homeschooled children are running around in matching linen clothing while chasing the chickens, and Mama is cutting flowers for the table while waiting for sourdough to ferment. I actually love these kinds of channels and posts because they inspire me. What I don’t think they accurately depict is the reality of how much WORK goes into simple living.

Although I want to share the beauty that I see every day in our lives… I really want to share the real-life part of it, too. I had such a pretty little picture in my head about our day to day life before we moved to Texas, and shortly after. We had just come down from the stress of completely remodeling our old house in nine weeks, finding a house here, and then finally moving. It was A LOT. I was also 36 weeks pregnant. I didn’t even want to think about unpacking. I was swollen, tired, and HOT. It was lovely sitting on our gigantic front porch, looking out onto our entire acre, the pasture across the street, the big trees, listening to the sounds of nature instead of traffic, and dreaming of what we could make this place. It’s really easy to dream.

Here is a harsh reality for many of us. You can not live “simply” if you have a ton of crap! We had purged a lot when we moved, and we still stuffed an entire Uhaul truck and trailer to the brim. We stacked boxes of stuff we didn’t immediately need in what is now our office, and that didn’t get touched for about a year and a half. It was quite literally a storage room. When we finally got around to the overwhelming task of cleaning that room out, we threw out about 80% of the stuff in there. It was just clutter. Mounds and mounds of clutter. I found a box of papers dating back to 2016… nobody needs that kind of stuff around. It wasn’t just the room of boxes, either. I couldn’t keep up with the piles of laundry, the kids’ toys, and the constant state of mess because it was just too much. It made homeschooling feel impossible. The dream of having a peaceful home felt impossible, and trying to take care of it all and do all the “homestead stuff” seemed literally impossible. I kept asking,” How do these women in the blogs do it all?!?!” I kept measuring myself against those perfectly curated snapshots of their lives.

We are two years into living here, and I am just now getting into doing home projects again. I finally finished painting the boys’ room and the girls’ room. This is where pregnancy nesting is so wonderful! I have been powerhouse purging everything, too! We have had these really awesome junk removal guys come out twice now, and I am planning on having them out again! We STILL have way too much crap! If you want the time for homeschooling, gardening, chickens, and making sourdough… GET. RID. OF. YOUR. CLUTTER! Downsize everybody’s clothing, downsize the toys, downsize the amount of kitchen gadgets and pans, downsize your craft stuff, just downsize everything. If you haven’t used it or thought about it in a year, you don’t need it.

Once you have most of your purging done, get on a cleaning routine. I was trying to do a whole house deep clean every Friday. That meant deep cleaning every room, mopping floors, cleaning windows, and wiping down the baseboards. Our house is 2400 sq. ft. It’s overwhelming and very, very hard to get all of that done in one day. So break it up, and assign every task to a day. Get a weekly calendar for your fridge and write everything down to keep you on track. Usimg that as a guide, get yourself a planner. I love the planner from Natural Life. It has a #1 Goal box, and it breaks down your day by morning, noon, afternoon, and evening, with an added “to do” list on the side. My number one goal is whatever task I have assigned to that day. These are my cleaning tasks for Mondays:

•Weekend Reset (this is a quick tidy of all the common areas because they get messy from not cleaning on the weekends)

•Wash Diapers

•Bake bread

•Wash kitchen towels and clenaing rags

I have certain loads of laundry assigned to each day as well. That way, it’s not overwhelming. And things don’t pile up as much. I really try my hardest to fold and put away those loads as soon as they come out of the dryer, but we all know how that can go sometimes! I have a pack and play that is full of the boys’ clothes right now that I still need to fold from last week, I also have a tote full of girl clothes thats mixed sizes and it’s questionable what is clean and dirty…but today I am going to catch up on going through, folding, and putting away all of the clothes.

This is where the “to do” list on the side comes in. Finish your most important weekly task first, then schedule your daily and any extra tasks after that. This really helps. And any extra tasks you didn’t get to on the current day, add them to the top of the list for the next day. I am definitely still working on this as habits are built over time. Try not to over schedule yourself either. It’s very easy to be extremely overconfident when it comes to the amount of time a task takes. I always forget to factor in the fact have four children needing my attention during the day, and I’m 6 months pregnant. So keep your schedule simple. If you have an off day where something comes up or you really need rest, do the bare minimum and make a plan to catch up.

In the picture above, you will see on Fridays that I still have a “Whole House Tidy.” This is not a deep clean. We go through the house, picking everything up, and I vacuum and mop. That way, we have a clean house going into the weekend. Remember to schedule a day to rest!

Now I want to tell you about imperfect progress. You may look at this and feel absolutely overwhelmed and even the thought of starting something like this in your home. It’s going to take time to make new habits. You are not going for perfection. Holding yourself to a standard of perfection not only not attainable, it will make your mental health go down the toilet. Only God is perfect!! Especially if you have littles, you are going for “put together.” I am going to say consistency is key, but I still struggle with consistency. This is where imperfect progress comes in. I have to take baby steps, and long as you are going in the right direction, you’re good to go! Give yourself credit for the progress you are making, and when you master one baby step, take the next one!! My new baby step goal is putting the kitchen to bed every night. Robert loves waking up to a clean kitchen, and so do I, and he has been cleaning the kitchen, but I want to make sure to take that over so he doesn’t have to worry about it.

An attitude of gratitude! This is the motivation behind mundane chores! You can not be grateful and hateful at the same time. Something I enjoy doing is praying over the house while I am cleaning it, and telling God that I am thankful to Him for dishes to clean because that meams we have good food to eat, thankful for laundry because we have clean clothes to wear, thankful for children’s messes because we are blessed with beautiful and healthy children. I also love to turn on some good worship music while I’m getting everything done. There is nothing more motivating to me than keeping my home for God’s glory.

If you are looking for some biblical wisdom, read Proverbs 31. The Proverbs 31 woman is good to model yourself after, but remember, it takes time to build skills and routines. Don’t be hard on yourself. Perfection is not your goal. I believe simple living is worth every bit of hard work. There is lots of love poured into that work, and that’s what counts. Don’t forget to enjoy your family and the beauty around you when you are in the process of getting your home together! Have that cup of tea on the porch! Watch your kids run around like little monkeys! Take a break to build a blanket fort!

I hope you have a blessed day and week! I look forward to sharing another post!