Little Okie Homestead

I wasn't called to be normal! I was called to be different from the rest of the world and I feel it almost daily how different my family truly is! Homeschooling, homesteading, and homemaking are so far from the norm in our society. Then if you add in that I'm a Christian who is married to an unbeliever that adds a whole new aspect to being different. And of course our goal of tiny living. But it's working! Our family is a strong family unit. We work together, spend time together and make decisions together. We choose to make sacrifices to keep our family strong and connected and we love helping people around us when an opportunity arises. Homemaking is an important part of our lives and how we choose to be different. I'm not just a stay at home mom. I don't just merely stay home. I'm actively making a home for my family. I clean, bake, organize and create a loving and caring atmosphere for my family. I make choices on saving money by cooking most even...

Since our move a year ago I've had lots of ups and downs. Moving out of Colorado where I was born and raised, where all my friends and family live, and the only place that I thought would ever be home was one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make and follow through with. I knew that this move would make my life and my families life ultimately better and being out here has proven that to be true and it's only been a year. But looking back over the year there have been plenty of hard times. About every few months I start missing the life I had in Colorado. I miss getting together with other moms that are like minded homemakers. Other women that put family above everything else no matter what the sacrifice. I haven't found friendships in Oklahoma that easily but I continue to push forward with it and I'm starting to finally have a few women that I have developed a relationship with that I now call friends. These friendships alone are starting to make Okla...

I work hard most days as a homemaker. I have the house to care for, laundry, dishes, bathroom messes from little boys, never ending dust from living in the country. I have boys to educate and entertain all hours of the day and sometimes during the night. I have dogs that need my attention and now I have adult chickens to care for outside and baby chicks living in my house to care for. I also have to look after myself and make sure that I'm cared for as well and not forgotten with everything else I have to do throughout the days. But...I have a husband that needs to be cared for too. He works hard for our family too. Every day he wakes early (some days earlier than others) and heads to works. My husband in particular  works a hard physical labor job. He works all summer long outside in the humid heat of Oklahoma. It's miserable out there and currently it's only June. By September we will be wishing for June heat again. My husband needs a healthy breakfast to star...

So I explained in part one how downsizing my clothes has helped me not be so overwhelmed when it comes to tackling the monumental task that laundry holds in my life. And of course you saw my closet and know that I have plenty of work to do to make that situation even better. As promised I will now share what has made the most difference in my taking back my life from laundry. I have Hubby to thank for this change. He's reading a lot about tiny houses as we prepare for building ours and making the transition into our own tiny house. He really is trying to convince me that we don't need a nice front loading washer and dryer. That a small one like we have now is big enough but I still disagree even with the changes we made. Currently the one we have is working but barely. It holds just enough to make it our current life work but what about when baby number 3 makes an appearance? Or number 4 if I can convince him to keep going? Plus our boys are going to keep growing wh...

Do you struggle with laundry taking over your life? I always have felt this way! I detest laundry! But every day more and more gets added to the piles of baskets that line our hallway. There are clothes from Hubby, myself, the boys, towels, rags, sheets, etc. The list can go on and on of everything we use everyday that piles up into laundry. Just to keep up I'm doing two loads a day and it seems never ending. The piles never seem to go down unless I spend a whole day washing clothes and actually get the majority of them done. Then I finally see hope that it will end at some point. But there is always more. Not only do I have to wash them though. That would be the easy part! I then have to fold them and put them all away. Of course I can get Monkey and Goose to start helping with this task and I do have them help but some days that's more hassle than my mommy brain can handle. I have never had a solution to this problem. I figured as a mom who is in charge of laundry it...

Have you ever wonder if what you do really matters in the long run? Have you ever felt like washing another sink full of dishes won't make a difference or picking up socks off the floor or making the beds? Does any of that really matter? The examples above are not as important as playing with your kids or going on a date night with your spouse but could you imagine what your house would look like without you there to care for it? Could you imagine if you weren't there to wash the laundry, clean the dishes, or pick up things off the floor? I know my house would be a disaster! I know that some of these things seem meaningless but really someone has to do it. It does matter! If someone wasn't there to clean dishes what would be used at meal times. If someone didn't clean the laundry what would we be wearing. And how gross would the sheets get if they were never cleaned? Every little task that you do each day as a homemaker matters! These are just the little thin...

So the month is up after trying my hand washing dishes challenge ! When we first decided to see if hand washing would actually save us money we Hubby asked me how much we would need to save to make it worth while. I wasn't sure. He suggested $50. We both agreed that $50 each month would probably be worth the extra time. In the beginning my kitchen was sparkling clean almost every day. I really enjoyed having a nice clean kitchen and hand washing dishes didn't seem so hard or time consuming after all. But throughout the month my kitchen has looked like this.  Don't judge ;) I'm sure we all have days when this is our kitchen. After 2 very busy days my kitchen was overflowing with dishes. I was dreading the time it would take to wash the dishes and get caught up. I had finally hit the point that washing dishes by hand was no longer peaceful but just another chore. And the month was only half over. As soon as the 7th came I was checking the mail daily waiting ...

Well I tried it! I told you I would in my handwashing dishes challenge . I wanted to know if it would actually be worth my time and energy to hand wash our clothes to lower our electric bill. Well for right now in our current situation the answer is no. It would not be worth the amount of time and effort for me to wash our clothes by hand. Right now our house is tiny. And it's crowded with stuff. Our bathroom is actually pretty big but trying to wash clothes in the bathtub proved to be more hurtful on my back than anything else. Bending over to scrub out stains and dirt on jeans and then stomping, stomping, stomping on the clothes to get them washed and rinsed was really hard inside the tub. The worst part though was lifting the wet heavy clothes out of the tub, wringing them out and then carting them into the laundry room/our little closet to spin them dry otherwise it would probably take 3 days for them to dry. Of course it was probably harder than it really needed to be for m...

Now that we are becoming homesteaders instead of city folks we are looking for all kinds of ways to save money. One thing I have noticed about people that are new to homesteading they seem to try to get off grid as much as possible shortly after seeing the bills lowering with small changes. That is one of our goals too. We eventually want to be self-sufficient and not rely on the power companies and grocery stores to care for our family. Of course this is a big goal and will take some time accomplishing. Right now our goal is getting our electric bill reduced. So how does handwashing dishes and the electric bill go together? We you probably know that the dishwasher uses electricity. Then you add in the hot water used and it cost money to heat the water. Plus the well pump is ran from electricity too. So all that adds up and can add up quickly. So we are experimenting to see if hand washing dishes will actually lower our bill. This past month our electric bill was $191! That...

I have struggled with TV entertainment for years now. Being a homemaker can be quite lonely and quite easy to fall into lazy habits of sitting around watching TV and letting things go. Especially with boys like mine. They are not constantly needing my attention. Seriously now that they are almost 6 and 2 1/2 they are requiring more of my time then they ever have! It was easy for me to say, "Go play in your room" while I sat and watched TV. Or they would be playing in the living room while I sat and watched. Since I'm careful what I watched it wasn't a big deal to have them in the same room. Well God has convicted me of this more than once and I start doing better and then I fall back into the traps of TV and laziness takes over! Laziness is talked about in the Bible quite a few times! There are warnings after warning about falling into this trap. But it doesn't mean that I don't fall into the evil traps that are set before me. Take a lesson from the an...

We've gone through different times where Monkey helps me more around the house than other times. It normally depends on the season of life we are in. Being pregnant and exhausted all the time with Goose made my rely on Monkey to do more himself even though he was young. Well now he's 5 years old and I think it's time that he has his everyday responsibilities to help out around the house. We had a good system a few months back with a morning, lunch and evening routine but it fizzled out because our routine changed and I never got the booklets updated. I headed over to pinterest to look up some ideas and as always there were plenty to chose from. Of course some won't work because of age and reading level. Others won't work because I'm not going to put that much effort into making something for chores, at least not until I know it works for our family. First some of the contenders if I ever feel like I want to be an overachiever. I love this char...

It's Monday and I don't know about other mom's but these are my cleaning days! Over the weekend we enjoy every moment we can with Daddy since he's home which normally means that the cleaning gets put off. By Monday morning my kitchen looks like this! Awful! Now imagine the rest of the house! Yep Monday's are a big day of cleaning for the kids and I. Of course a full day of cleaning sounds like no fun to myself or to the kids so I have been battling with them to get the house cleaned and it normally is an all day battle. So here is my new strategy getting help with all the work without the constant arguing. Setting a time with a 10 minute power clean and then a 20 minute play break . During our power clean we all have to have a happy heart about cleaning and clean with a purpose. For myself that means not getting angry with the boys as they play as they clean. I need to set an example and remain calm and enjoy cleaning. It also means that I clean for t...

For this month I have decided to give up social media!  I have decided that social media is not benefiting my life at this moment. It has in the past and I'm almost sure that I will get back to it once this month is over just not as much. No one thing happened to make me make this choice. I have been struggling with figuring out some things in my life. I keep getting motivated and then sucked back into my awful routine of life. And then I'll get motivated again and then some times one day sometimes a week later I'm back to my normal routine. But two nights ago I was reading the Bible to the boys before bed like we always do and it spoke to me and to Monkey. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 15   Do not love the world or anything in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.   16   For everything in the world--the cravings of sinful man,  the lust of his eyes  and the boasting of what he has and does--comes not from the Father but...

I don't really believe in making New Year's Resolutions because it seems more often than not they end up being lost shortly after making them. This year I am setting some goals and changing things up a bit. I feel this year is a little different because I have been slowly working on changing my daily habits for a few months now. I want to make some big changes in my life! I want to lose weight! I want to eat more healthy! And I want to keep my house clean and organized which I think will be my biggest struggle.  I slowly started working out several months ago and just before Christmas I started eating more healthy and making sure I was getting enough fruits and veggies into my diet. Making these small changes has helped me gain energy and it going to help me lose weight now that all the holiday food is out of the house. Now it's time to jump in with both feet! So here's what is changing...           ● I'm changing my wor...

It was that time again this year when we headed off to the fishing derby! Everyone had a blast and everyone caught fish! Yes this is the size of the fish we were catching... Everyone caught their own little fish.  Goose's first time seeing a fish out side of our fish tank  Catching his first 'real' fish with Popa!  So proud!  J's first 'real' fish of the season!  Monkey got tired of fishing so he became bait boy!  D's first 'real' fish!  Aunt C found Monkey a snail  Goose spent time hanging out with Daddy!  A's first 'real' fish!  Goose decided this time to really go after the fish. He squeezed his head and thought it was funny!  All 4 with all their fish!  Heading to get the fish measured. Uncle K not only carried the fish but also the little ones.  Then it was time to ride the train!  He had such a good time! All in all the fishing derby ...