Self Sufficient Living Tips

Keep Learning

• There is no one correct way to live self-sufficiently, but there are many ways to do it well and successfully. Look to current homesteaders for advice. How do they manage their time? What are their top priorities? What do they recommend for someone just starting out? Utilize your family resources as well: older generations, such as your grandparents, may be able to teach you things about gardening, tending animals, farming and home repair that you would never learn on your own. If your tomatoes fail this year, try to figure out why. Continue to experiment with different planting methods and organization techniques until you find the ones that suit you. Stay open to new ways of doing things and stay in close contact with fellow homesteaders.

Be Realistic

• You may want to raise everything you eat, but time constraints may make that impossible. Instead of focusing on an absolute, focus instead on minimizing your impact and living as self-sufficiently as possible. For example, if you don't have time or space to raise your own beef, buy it locally from a meat processor who sells only grass-fed beef. If your garden can't accommodate watermelons, buy them from a farmers' market. The point of self-sufficient living is not to never need outside help or tools, but to learn how to get the best, most natural items inexpensively and easily.

Budget Your Time

• No matter how successful your self-sufficient living experiment is, you still have to earn a living and perform other duties. Allot time each day to complete the most essential tasks, such as working and caring for children. Prioritize the rest of your duties and remember that you can't do everything in one day. Shift your priorities with the changing seasons; for example, during the winter you may have to spend more time and attention on your garden to avoid losing a crop. Take advantage of every spare moment to get something done -- fixing a broken step, taking in the laundry or catch up on work email.

Use Everything

• Train yourself to think carefully about how everything -- even trash -- could be used. Banana peels and animal manure can become compost, an excellent garden fertilizer. Wood scraps from the new porch swing can be whittled into natural wooden toys for your children. Outgrown or torn clothes can be sewn into quilts to keep heating costs down in the winter. Even the trees, plants and shrubs near your house can serve useful purposes; for example, trees in the Sapindus family of plants (such as the Florida soapberry) produce pulp that can be used to make laundry soap.