My name is Shanan Strode, and along with my amazing husband Bill, we live on a small homestead farm in east-central Illinois. We home-school our three young sons, love to garden, raise our own beef, chickens, eggs, turkeys, and love to spend time exploring the woods and meadows around our family pond. We have learned how to simplify our lives over the years and are always learning new ways to protect and preserve this beautiful world that God has given us. We have learned to grow our garden organically using heirloom seeds so that we can replant year after year. We also free-range our egg hens and pasture raise our meat birds and beef. Whatever we can’t grow or raise on our little farm we try to get locally first before we head to the store or order on-line.

I love to learn new things, and we always seem to have a new project going on here at Havenwood. Because our children are home-educated they get to help out with many of the projects, and even get to pick out new projects for us to research and try out. Some of my favorite learning experiences were making my first batch of bread, making our own soap, and making noodles for the fist time. These were all fun to try and have become regular activities for us.

When I was first married I was so domestically challenged that my poor husband had to eat Tuna-Helper at least three times a week. I barely knew how to do laundry, grocery shop, or how to clean a house properly. I muddled thru the best I could and finally figured out what worked best for us. Now I love to cook and rarely ever use a cookbook or stick to a recipe. I have learned how to grow a good deal of the food that we need, and how to really shop for deals on the things that I can’t. I have discovered better ways to clean our home using natural ingredients that are much healthier and less expensive than the chemicals you get at the store. I have learned to sew and can now make, alter, or repair most of my own clothes. Learning how to replace zippers has really cut down on needing to buy new coats, and jeans for our boys as well!

 

I also love to teach others what I have learned over the years. I love mentoring other women and showing them how to cook, bake, sew, garden, can food, and make soap. I have made new friends and helped them get thru difficult personal struggles as well. It is such a blessing to see a young girl blossom and grow into a confident and competent young woman. I firmly believe that we are each given wisdom as we go thru experiences and trials in our lives, and that we are also given opportunities to share the wisdom with others. Even in the midst of troubles and pain we can find ourselves growing and learning more about ourselves and those around us. We need to remember to reach out and share what we have learned with others in the hopes of encouraging them and/or helping them avoid some of the mistakes that we have made.

 

I hope that you will enjoy learning ways to simplify your life and make your little part of the world greener at the same time. Even little things can make a big difference in the long run. You don’t have to change everything as you know it. You can start small and make little changes here and there, then it starts to become a habit. You will start to look for the simplest and easiest ways to do things and go from there.

 

Start small, but have a vision on where you want to be. Working towards a goal is so much easier than just wondering around aimlessly and hoping that you get lucky and it all “clicks”. After you have thought about where you would like to see yourself, write down some things that you will need to do to make that vision a reality. These are your goals that you will begin to work on.

Prioritize your list and start working on the easiest things first. It is human nature to seek instant gratification. When we make up our minds to do something, we like to see some progress. This is why I say do the easiest things first. You will get to see the “progress” you are making and be less likely to get discouraged and give up. Once you have made all the simplest changes, then you can focus on the bigger goals, and the more involved projects. The bigger things on your list can be broken down into more manageable stages that can be tackled one baby-step at a time.

Some small things that we have done to cut down on electricity usage is to hang clothes out on the clothes line to dry on nice days. We switched our regular light bulbs to the compact fluorescent bulbs a few at a time as we needed to replace burned out bulbs rather than change all of them at once. We try to not use lights during the daylight hours except in the school room or in the few rooms that don’t have any windows for natural lighting. Our church just installed motion sensor light switches in the restrooms, but I’m seeing them in the playroom and the boys’ bathroom because they are always leaving the lights on in those rooms.

 

We also turn off the heat and air conditioning when the weather is nice outside. Usually from mid-March thru mid-June and again from September thru November we have the windows open and enjoy the natural breeze that always seems to blow out here on the prairie. When we do use the heat or air we keep the temperature at a constant 68 degrees in the winter and 75 degrees in the summer. Our home did come with a heat pump that was already installed and was one of the many things that we loved about this home when we first looked at it. Another selling point was the trees that shade the house from the afternoon sun and provide lots of places to sit in the shade and relax with a good book on a warm summer day.

 

There are many other ways to simplify our lives and making our homes the peaceful and restful retreat that it was meant to be. I look forward to sharing ideas and tips with you that will help you to cut down on the chaos and stress while also being gentle to your little corner of the world. We can all learn to be good stewards of what we have been given in this life, but we all need a little help and encouragement when we are just getting started. I hope that I can offer you encouragement as well as helpful advice on your journey.

 

~Blessings,

Shanan Strode