Category: Radical Homemaking

We did have one lovely snow in February. Now the fruit buds are threatening to open, and we’re heading south to go camping. 

I’ve been thinking of late about the broken world, and what it means to repair it. Casting my net in search of the great solution. Is it in the world, or in the home? Is it my spirit that must be intact, or the entire web of life? Sometimes my focus drifts from one of these to the other, seeming to separate them, but when I am in my wholeness, they are all one.

I came across this wonderful interview with Larry Littlebird, an Indigenous storyteller whose people have seen climate change in this region a time or two before, on “The Benefits and Blessings of Climate Change.”

March Choyt: How can we find a new direction, or home?

Larry Littlebird: I believe that we are collectively attempting to rediscover this starting over place. One people’s starting over place is all too often very different from another people’s. Whatever you are caught in is greater than you are, but you are in it at the same time and part of it.

The starting-over-place, or what you call home, is discovered in the chaos, when everything is blown apart and you are grabbing at planks—and finally there is just a relinquishing. You let go. And that is where that first inkling of, “I have to do something” begins.

It is so simple! You are being tossed in this ocean and a wave flips you way up in the air for a moment and you see something in greater trouble than you. Something within you says,

“I have to do something.”

The chaos brings you in relationship to a place where all our needs are always met – a place between what has happened within and the contact with the need that will provide a starting over point.

Have you reached that point in your relationship with chaos? And what, then, is it that you do? What does your net bring up?

“Knowledge is not obtained exclusively with our brains; it is gained through our hearts and by reconnecting to life, a source of wisdom. Makers of things are in a position to understand and change the world.” Wendy Jehanara Tremayne, The Good Life Lab: Radical Experiments in Hands-On Living

It’s been four years since I started this blog to document our journey of living with less waste, and more joy. What began with a four month plastic fast became an immersion in life-learning, skill growing, community building, culture reclaiming, and creative, imaginative living.

I like to think of those years as my PhD program in homemaking, which I define as the making of a life, a family, and a community in balance with its home-place. It has also been a nifty capitalism recovery program.

When I set out on this road, I had instincts and good intentions and not much of a clue. I couldn’t imagine ever being able to make wool long underwear for my kids without a pattern, or growing a garden all winter long, or for that matter going a few months without plastic. Truth is, I often struggled to place my personal revolution into a broader movement for change (but mostly because I over think everything).

Fortunately, I have not walked alone. There is the internet, of course, which has been the stand-in for a capable great grandmother and conscious collective. There is my husband, with his true-north moral compass. And there are my motherkin, the friends reclaiming skills and knowledge and connection in their own beautiful ways.

Together, we have helped each other trust that the work we were doing in our homes would ripple out, would be a force of change in our community. And lately (by which I mean over the last two years), we’ve been looking up from our children and canning pots and gardens and jobs and around at each other and the world to see where we might direct our creativity and skills next.

With a half-dozen children underfoot at “meetings,” over late night phone calls and many cups of tea, a handful of us began shifting our work of reclaiming skills and lifeways into that of rebuilding a community that reflects those values.  Just as cooking leads to gardening leads to preserving, manifesting change on a (teeny tiny bit) larger scale is the logical next step for us. We created the Santa Fe Harvest Swap, which just held its second glorious exchange. Incredibly, we have a website, and on November 10th we will host a whole new venture we are calling the “Homefire Retreat,” a day of workshops meant to inspire, empower, and connect us more deeply to ourselves, our community, and our commitment to the earth.

I hope you come to the retreat if you can, or start something like it in the place you call home. Something as simple as a few friends skill-sharing while the kids play, or as complex as a week-long regional gathering (I do like to dream).

Let’s celebrate our individual journeys by stitching our work of reclaiming and rebuilding into a big crazy-quilt that encompasses our diverse lives. Let’s get together for a quilting bee, if you will, and put our bits together into something whole. And then call the beauty that comes of it our dissertations, our revolution, our world.

::

PS, go ahead and read Shannon Hayes article on the three R’s of Radical Homemaking: Renouncing, Reclaiming, and Rebuilding. It has been a helpful guidepost to me along the way, and I gratefully acknowledge her language and ideas borrowed here.

Here is my revolutionary three-step plan to a mess-proof house:

Step 1: Pick up the Mess.

Step 2: Get rid of It.

Step 3: Repeat until the mess is composed entirely of things you can’t live without, or consists of things that are pleasingly wabi sabi in their strewn glory.

I first got hard core about decluttering when I was pregnant with #2. For my birthday that year I told my husband all I wanted was get rid of 1/3 of our possessions. That meant: one teapot, two dozen cloth napkins, forty books, a garbage bag of clothes, a sleeping bag, and on and on. And on.

That was almost two years ago, and I’m still peeling back layers of stuff and excess.

My children charmingly believe that play is basically imaginative emptying of every possible receptacle in the house: cupboards, drawers, toy chest, sewing box, yarn stash, garbage can. I don’t want to keep them from what is no doubt healthy development but nor do I want to have high blood pressure.

So, I’m just getting rid of it all.

Just curious–does this look like a lot of toys to you, or a little?

A friend of mine is an especially inspiring de-clutterer. She says that she has yet to reach the point where she feels like she’s done enough. I did once get rid of too many spoons, but perhaps it’s a sign that I should pare down on knives and forks.

I de-clutter because it makes my house more beautiful and because it makes my life simpler. The constant picking up and putting away of our detritus takes a tremendous amount of energy from me. Our belongings take mental, physical, and emotional energy to care for. As we get rid of stuff, we are freed in surprising ways.

Where toys go when mama gets tired of picking them up. Visitation is allowed. The bottom floor is kept clear as a hidey hole.

Currently in the Out Box: Anything that annoys me, including, but not limited to

• Small toys formerly stored in cute baskets. Things that seem to exist for the sole purpose of dumping on the ground and scattering.
• Play kitchen food and utensils. One or two pots seem sufficient. Food can be found in the real kitchen.
• Clothing. Out of season clothing, wrong size clothing, excess right size clothing, kid clothing only one or another of the mother-daughter dyad likes, but not both of us. It’s all outta here.
• Crafting supplies: fabric, yarn, thread, notions. Too much of a good thing is still too much.
• Books. I have officially reached the point in my Letting Go of Stuff phase where I can part with books. Mostly on the outs are novels and anything I haven’t gotten around to reading despite years of having on the shelf. I’m trying to think of my bookshelves as a curated collection.
• Children’s books.  We own only a very small collection of special books. The rest come from the library in batches of ten or so at a time. (most of them ones we cycle through repeatedly) ensures that they are all treasured, and enjoyed, not to mention actually read.

Amazing things happen with this bare-bones kitchen.

Wait, there’s more!

• Animal magnets on the fridge. Under the stove is more like it.
• Linens–we just don’t need two dozen washcloths, I’ve found. Two sets of flannel sheets per bed keep us cozy year round.
• Winter clothes. Crafty mamas are in extreme danger of drowning their family in handknits, and we need to help each other be strong against the well meaning onslaught of booties and pilot hats. If you have less of this stuff, you are less likely to lose them in the mountain of gear inside the front closet. Be fearless. And only make it if you really need it.
• Mama-made toys that don’t get played with. This would be the cardboard barn and hand-knitted menagerie of farm animals, the adorable wee felt folk, the felt balls, the stuffed bunnies, the amigarumi bird family. Perhaps someday when there’s nothing else left, they will be treasured. For now, they are just too hard to dust to keep on the toy shelf.

So as most of you know, last year we did this thing where our family didn’t buy any plastic. For four months, really more like six, we acquired only the teensiest amounts of plastic–exact amounts can be found at my end of month reckonings–during what turned out to be a life changing experiment. The posts from those months are a celebration of my joyful discoveries of Life Without Plastic.

Since then, though, I’m not even sure I’ve mentioned plastic at all on this blog. I just didn’t know what to say. Recently inspired by a number of posts written by friends in blogland ranging in topic from money to miscarriage to compromise, I have been thinking about transparency and figure it’s long past time to give a full accounting of our lifestyle these days, to reflect on life after no-plastic. Post-post-plastic, if you will.

So I have to just say it out loud: the fast that was so celebrated in this space ended in May. Since then, we’ve been buying plastic. Sometimes a lot, like when my in-laws came to town and I just went to Trader Joe’s and didn’t bat an eye at the cart filled with packaging (though I felt sick when I saw it filling our trash can, later). Generally it is a lot less than when the trips to TJs were a weekly extravaganza (that’s right, I was a pretty careless, if all-organic shopper before we started the fast), but certainly it’s more these days than when it was almost nothing.

There are various reasons for all this. Economy is one of them. I have been working hard to get our budget tightened up. I want to keep staying home with my kids, and that means really learning to live on just one income. Could I really keep spending over $10 for a gallon of organic milk just because it was in a glass jar (that doesn’t include the deposit). Did it make  sense to take a special trip across town to one of the big box health food stores for, I dunno, Braggs in bulk?

There was also my picky-picky little one, who essentially stopped growing once weaned. I needed to be able to buy her whatever I thought might help her eat more–whether it was a hot dog or frozen blueberries to top her (homemade) yogurt with. And then there was me, pregnant and needing to be able to walk into the kitchen and eat something right this second, which kind of interfered with my made from scratch ways. I started stocking the fridge with basics like tortillas.

Lastly, my attention was diverted from my extreme eco ways by the intensity of mothering a two year old. I devoted myself to finding my parenting legs (so different from the mothering legs we get when our little baby is in arms!) and this led me down a wholly new and unexpected road to a fabulous realm I call Steiner Land. Furthermore, I wanted to spend time learning to sew, making things, out in the garden, living. I didn’t yet know how to do all that and never buy a plastic bag.

I think I’m much closer now. I feel everything coalescing, all the skills I’ve spent the last year learning, the inner work I’ve done, the growth I’ve experienced as a mother, and the somewhat miraculous (and ongoing) organization and de-cluttering of our home. This has, happily, brought us full circle. I have the inner and outer resources–the drive and the skills–to go back to a life that is in line with my values. I have a sense of what is the right balance for us, the things we need, the things we don’t need.

I have to say that the most powerful thing about our plastic fast wasn’t that we didn’t acquire plastic during that time, but that we discovered out capacity for change. That we broke out of a system that we took so for granted we didn’t think there was any other way to live. Plastic isn’t the point (which I think I made clear even back in the day). The point is to live as carefully and consciously as we can. This means balancing many different parts of our lives, of making sure we are  joyful in our efforts rather than resentful. It means resting when we are weary, and taking up the staff to keep walking when we are ready to keep walking.

::

ps–I just revisited the path we forged last year during our fast by meandering through the archives here at Old Recipe. Dang, did I really do all that? I’m so inspiring I just inspired myself. Cool.

Or something like that.

First things first: what’s the hurry, anyways? What’s up with all the short cuts and schemes that allow us to live our hectic, busy lives while getting even more done? In truth, slowing down, making room, spending more time off-line, and taking the time for these things is its own reward and its own path to being a super eco-groovy human being.

Still, some of us work. Some of us want to make art or take walks or go to school. Some of us have children that are tired of a mother whose idea of playtime is rolling tortillas.

I’m writing this post in response to folks that mistakenly think that living the way we do is a full time job…for me, the housewife. I do think of it as my work–my bread labor. But I’ve found that it doesn’t take much extra time to do the basic sustenance part of life. In fact, sometimes I feel like a hunter gatherer with plentiful leisure time. Even when I worked outside the home I cooked pretty wholesome meals everyday.  I don’t spend much more time at it now. It’s taken practice, surely, to get to the point where so much cooking from scratch is just part of the rhythm of our days, so go slow if just starting out. In fact, go slow no matter what.

Anyways, for what it’s worth and off the top of my head–

Beginning

::Choose one or two of the things that you currently purchase to try your hand at making. This might be bread, yogurt, crackers or tortillas, granola, cheese, body care items, or any infinite number of ordinary items from greeting cards to sweaters. Start with one and as it becomes familiar and effortless, add the next one. These are all pretty much way easier than I ever imagined back when I was convinced they had to be store-bought.

::Don’t go it alone. Combat isolation and fragmented communities by inviting a friend to teach you a new skill, to learn one you’ve mastered, or to fumble your way to success together when both figuring something out for the first time.

Maintaining

:: Dedicate a morning each week to prepare the staples needed for that week. After the busyness of the weekend, I love spending Mondays at home, messing around the kitchen doing whatever needs doing.

::Invite your girlfriend and her brood over to share that kitchen morning with you–talk and talk, and before you know it everything’s done, including clean up. Remember to make enough for both families. Alternatively, each of you could choose an item or two to make at home, and then swap yogurt for bread for sauerkraut.

:: Make double or triple batches of everything. You knew that! Make yogurt two quarts a time. Freeze cracker and cookie dough and pie crust. I often make extra brown rice and beans, two slightly more time intensive staples around here, and freeze them in meal sized portions in a tiffin. We don’t rely on them regularly, but when we need a quick meal, they are infinitely helpful.

::Don’t ever, ever, run out of flour. Everything else you can live without, but keep that sack handy and half full! In fact, try to keep ingredients on hand, but don’t run to the store until you really need to. Amaze yourself and your family by what can be made out of cabbage, frozen chicken stock, and an onion.

Bread

::The popular no-knead / 5 minutes a day bread making method isn’t for everyone. But if you have some kind of thing against buying bread products in plastic bags, as we seem to, you might consider putting a picture of it’s creators up on your kitchen altar. I always double the recipe. It keeps fine for two weeks in the fridge, though no matter what I do ours runs out after a week. It is lovely to have the dough on hand for bread, rolls, naan, english muffins, or whatever the occasion calls for. All it takes is a little time to rise before cooking, and for naan not even that. This might seem like one of those short cuts that deprives us of the simple pleasure of kneading, and the flow of traditional bread making, but it is, frankly, awesome.

Dinner

::I’m not the most sophisticated menu planner, though I see how helpful it is to plan ahead just a little when it comes time for the grocery store. I think more in terms of two major meals each week, and aim for ones that will provide versatile leftovers that can become either a repeat or a whole new thing. The roasted chicken is a great one for that–come the end of the week there’s soup to make from the carcass. Alternatively, I also do a pot of beans or dal most weeks, and that provides a good basis for lunches or simple week night meals that I can doll up in minutes. I’ll make the tortillas for the week while the rice and lentils are cooking, and call it dinner.

::Cook a little bit all throughout the day rather than saving everything for 5:00. If you’re making quiche, do the pie dough in the morning. If you’re making enchiladas, make the sauce or tortillas in advance.

::While I love preparing complex meals from scratch, simplicity is so, so delicious. Save the fancy stuff for Sunday dinner. And then go all out.

::When you run the oven, pack it. On my baking day, I make sure to have as many of the following as I can reasonably do: bread, crackers, pies, chicken, potatoes, squash, etc.

::When putting away clean dishes, set the table, even if dinner’s hours away. I used to wonder what napkin rings were for, but love Soulemama’s idea of having a different one for each member of the family so that napkins can be used repeatedly by the same person until truly in need of a wash. I suppose if you don’t have napkin rings, a mismatched set of napkins would work, too.

Laundry

::When Adrie started washing her family’s laundry by hand I was blown away. I have no desire to follow in her footsteps, but I am much, much more aware of whether something is really dirty before throwing it in the hamper. Like, I have to see/smell it and it’s bad before I wash it.

::Always hang laundry on the line. This is a time saver because it gets you outside, twice, and from there it’s no trouble to just keep on walking.

Childcare

::If you have just one little one, stick her in the shower with you. Yes, this does eliminate the eco-friendly possibility of shaving with a straight razor, but saves water and time. Unless you savor the time to knit beside the bathtub while someone splashes water all over. Then do a bath everyday.

::Hair brushing: I think once a day is plenty. Do it five minutes before being seen in public.

Houeskeeping

::Unless there is no alternative, avoid using nap time for housework or cooking. That time is for you alone, Mama. Don’t give it up to the endless tides of sweeping the floor and washing dishes.

::When the house is clean, leave. Go away. Go make a mess somewhere else. Come back only when you can’t stay away any longer.

How do you run your household without letting it run you?