You always wanted to grow out your food and have a sustainable lifestyle. While doing research, you find out that there’s a lot more behind that. You come across the world of homesteading. But what does it mean, and why should you consider starting to homestead?

When you hear about homesteads, you probably think about living off the grid in a tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere. However, you can start a homestead anywhere, in any living situation. Because, like minimalism, homesteading is a lifestyle and a mindset. Surely, you can do it in a cabin far away from everyone, but you can also do it in an apartment in the city, in a big house, and it doesn’t have to be only off the grid.

Start small

If you have no idea if you can adapt to this way of life, perhaps you’ll want to grow just a small garden to see how it goes for you. You can set goals to spend some amount of time every day to take care of it, and with baby steps, see your daily routine change. As you find yourself growing the things you’re using and eating in your own home, you can think about expanding your garden. Maintaining that can be hard work, but homesteading is not always rainbows and butterflies too. 

Of course, the journey to start a homestead can be overwhelming initially, but as you get more experience with it, learn more skills. But as long as you pay attention to what you’re doing and learn from your mistakes, you’ll be fine. The concept of homesteading is becoming more popular as the years go by. With that, the community is growing bigger, with more and more resources available to support whoever joins the movement in the process.

The main key to homesteading is easy: it’s about freedom and self-sufficiency

You’ll notice early just how humbling homesteading can be. Persevering through failures and successes is character building. It will increase your knowledge about things. It can develop many qualities that you might not even know you had because the responsibility of things such as taking care of animals that are reliant on you or growing the food you’ll have on your table to survive will build up your work ethic. You’ll find yourself doing things you had no idea you were capable of before.

Money can be a huge issue at first, too. Living a self-reliant life means you have to get rid of debts and spending less. To guarantee that you don’t have to worry if things get tough, you need to have some money saved for emergencies. But to start slow, think about what are the things you spend money on. Instead of paying to replace something broken, can you try repairing it yourself? Instead of buying something, can you make it from scratch? When trying to have fewer bills, you might even become into lots of DIY, and it can be really fun!

Homesteading will take you lots of determination, discipline, and responsibility, no matter if you’re doing it on a farm with lots of animals, in a house in the suburbs, or a tiny apartment in the city. But changing your lifestyle to be a little bit more sustainable can improve both your physical and mental health. It can make you discover a whole new passion. It can help you make friends in the same community, with the same interests you have. And let’s be honest, who doesn’t want that?