Hello, and welcome to the second Redeeming Home Simple Living Newsletter! (Cue the confetti!)

(As a heads up, I am in the process of making newsletters once included in the Redeeming Home Membership community public from 2022. Please bear with me as I release them. I hope they are not a bother to your email inbox if you are a subscriber. Thank you so much for your understanding!)

I hope you enjoy today’s articles.

Goal Planning within Our Homes

Goal planning is so much fun for me. I love looking at my life to see what I might improve. Each and every little thing we do builds on each other. Before long, we can see some real improvement in our lives by changing our habits to implement new goals.

Our homes can be divided up into several sections. Each of these sections can have goals assigned to them. It is a blessing to be a manager over our homes. A lot of the time, homemakers have tremendous influence over what is accomplished. For example, my husband isn’t much of a goal planner, but he does help a lot to implement goals that I set. Every marriage and relationship is different, but this seems to be what works for us.

A few sections you might consider while planning goals include:

Homemaking – This is the area that encompasses most normal tasks that take place within the home. Are there any new recipes you would like to learn? How about a skill like sewing or knitting? (YouTube tutorials are a great way to learn skills like these!) How about decorating plans and projects? These are some of my favorite goals to make!

Finances/Frugality – While homemaking, we can be such a blessing to our families if we set financial goals. Over time, small financial goals can really add up! It is good to set goals regarding setting up a budget, paying off debt, saving, and investing. If you can master making a budget and sticking to it, then you definitely are on the right track.

Family – Family goals might include new resources you would like to introduce into your home, a new way to spend time together, vacation plans, or homeschool plans. I’ve learned that sometimes that goals in this section need to be the most flexible, since they involve multiple people’s opinions in the end. It is good to consider your children’s opinions and learning styles, for example, while planning homeschool activities for the new year.

Home Improvement – This might not apply to you if you are renting or don’t care for home improvement projects, but I love to find ways to continually make our home a little better. I guess it’s a hobby of mine. I love watching these goals comes to fruition!

Health – It is good to set small, attainable goals to continuously improve your health. After all, it is very important to treat them well. Goals might be about exercise, healthy eating, drinking water, or setting a better sleep schedule.

Best wishes as you set goals for your home, friends!

What Even is Simplicity?

Simplicity. What even is it?

Is it living off grid? How about keeping a minimalist home? Is simplicity paring down your wardrobe to only ten items? How about getting rid of your television?

While simplicity can most definitely involve all of these things, it can also involve none of them. I’d like to think that I pursue a more simplistic lifestyle, and at the moment we are tied into the grid, I’m no minimalist, and yes, we do own two televisions.

Simplicity means something different to each one of us, I suppose. To me, it involves learning more about food and where it comes from. I’ve learned about gardening, essential oils, and holistic health. I want to learn old-fashioned ways of doing things, when society wasn’t so harried and hurried.

Simplicity to me also involves more of a laser focus on my family, and their needs. I want to prioritize relationships over things.

If you were to walk into my home right now, you might judge my efforts towards simplicity, and not think that I’m on the right path. Oh, believe me when I say I’m not perfect!

I have been guilty of trying to put people into a box. But I grew so much as a person once I realized that we are all different, which is perfectly okay and wonderful. Our journeys, and even our definitions of simplicity, are not going to be the same.

I’d like to encourage you to really think about what simplicity means to you, and perhaps make one change in your life that will bring you closer to living the life you want, instead of conforming to society’s expectation of rush and hurry. Simply living on your own terms is a wonderful feeling!

Embracing the Slowness of January

Oh, January. I was hoping you would come in with a rush of cold air and snow, but instead, we are experiencing warm temperatures and thunderstorms! I guess I shouldn’t expect much else, since we live in Georgia. I try to remind myself that the Lord knows best, and He is in charge of the weather. There is no need to fret about it.

January is an interesting month. It is winter, and I believe that this time is a time of rest for us before busy spring arrives. We should be sleeping longer, and enjoying all kinds of cozy activities inside of our home.

At the same time, January welcomes the new calendar year, along with resolutions and goal planning for some. Many folks spend January knee deep in organization projects and new exercise plans that are anything but restful.

I believe there should be a balance. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with setting goals and making plan, it is also good to recognize the benefits of resting during the winter.

And if January is anything, it is winter!

Embracing the slowness of this time benefits our bodies, preparing them for the time to come when we will be expending more energy. This is definitely true if we garden. Springtime through harvest is such a busy time.

Now is the time to live slowly, and purposefully. A time to enjoy the warmth of the kitchen and a blanket on the couch with your little ones once the sun has set. This can be such a nice time to make memories of home.

Before I go, I’d like to share a video made by Lea from Our Little House on the Mountain. Yes, it was made about December, but I hope you enjoy it all the same. The slow living lifestyle she portrays warmed my heart.

Homestead Happenings

I’m always so excited about happenings around our small homestead! We are definitely taking January kind of slow. The days are short, it isn’t the growing season, and we don’t have any new animals to speak of. Nonetheless, we do have a few things going on this week.

We have started to work on more thoroughly clearing our woods. Friends, this property was such a mess when we purchased it about one and a half years ago. We have made some improvements, but there is still much to be done! This property had been neglected for years, and brambles and vines entangle most of the trees. When we moved in, we made it a priority to free the trees directly around our home. But the woods are still a mess. We’d like to slowly expand outward, and now is the time to clear the woods while most insects are dormant.

My husband and son have been using a brush attachment and machete to clear what they can. Two days ago I put on my garden boots to see what I could do to help. The ground is mucky, and slippery, too. I’m so thankful that I didn’t fall!

I pulled limbs out of the woods, and cut vines out of trees. I’m sure I looked quite comical. Many of those vines were stuck, with their little roots going up the length of trees. I’m so thankful that we are finally helping the trees “breathe” again. I honestly have been worried about their welfare.

I’ve been learning more about permaculture principles while planning the layout of our homestead, and I’m exciting to learn more methods to manage this new “layer” of the land correctly.