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10 Tips to become more self reliant {Episode 197}
641 Plays2 years ago
Do you wish you were more self-reliant? Had more ability to produce something on your own? Want to up your skill set? In this episode, Bonnie & Audrey share their top 10 tips for becoming more self-reliant. And they're ones you can do TODAY!
Mentioned in this episode:
Episode 34: Kids and Emergencies
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About Outnumbered the Podcast:
Two moms. 19 kids between their 2 families. Finding Joy in the Chaos.
Join Audrey and Bonnie as they share real parenting tips for real people through humor, advice and compassion.
Whether it's tackling how to teach kids to work or discussing where to turn when you're all out of patience,
these two experienced moms are here to offer authentic tips for raising children joyfully.
Because motherhood doesn't come with a manual!
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Transcript
Introduction to Hosts and Parenting Topics
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumbered the Podcast. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. We are experienced moms to a combined total of 19 children. In our weekly episodes, we explore relatable topics using our perspectives of humor and chaos. Tune in for advice and encouragement to gain more joy in your parenting journey.
What is Self-Reliance?
00:00:31
Speaker
Hey everybody, we're back, and we're gonna talk about something today that we think is probably on a lot of people's minds, and that is self-reliance, or depending less on other people for your food, shelter, clothing, and more on what can you produce yourselves. But first of all, I have a humor segment. My son was, so I have, I know we keep promising that we're gonna do an episode on sensory processing stuff.
00:01:01
Speaker
So one thing that is one of the things that I'm sensitive to is like noises. And when little kids, my boys always make mouth noises, like they're always making little little noises with their mouth. So my toddler was at it one day and finally I said, could you please just for five minutes stop making that noise? I can't handle it anymore right now. And he says, but mommy, those are my little voices.
00:01:25
Speaker
And they're adorable, son, except not right now because I want to do something harmful to you if you keep... Okay, another humorous thing I had to share, you guys. If you do not follow Johnson files on Instagram, you need to go follow him. He does the funniest stuff. And he recently did a video. What's funny is he's not even a parent yet. He just announced that he and his wife just had a successful IDF transfer, or not just, but they are expecting a baby.
00:01:54
Speaker
But he somehow knows all the parent things to laugh about because he made a music video a little while ago called, watch this mom, I think it's called, or watch me mom. It is so funny. You guys need to go watch it. It's basically a music video all about how moms just settle in to read a book or do something delightful on their own and a kid comes up and wants to show you something totally inane that you've seen a thousand times. And my favorite line from the song is, I don't want to see you do something that every human in the world can do.
00:02:23
Speaker
And I don't know how many more times I can say, that's neat. So go do yourself a favor. You can watch his video on Instagram. So cute. I know it. I know it's so, so dumb. And you're supposed to be like, wow, you jumped two inches in the air. You can hop on one foot. Congratulations.
00:02:47
Speaker
Oh my goodness. Uh, we're probably terrible mothers. Absolutely. No, no denying it. Yeah. All
Why is Self-Reliance Important?
00:02:54
Speaker
right. So what are we going to talk about today is self-reliance. So what does it mean to be self-reliant? It means to not be dependent on somebody else for your basic needs, like your food, your shelter, your clothing, or maybe less dependent. Like you're able to produce more of your own.
00:03:11
Speaker
Basically, think about growing a garden and going out and picking a salad and eating it. That's kind of pretty self reliant. We're gonna talk about how to be self reliant in so many different areas.
00:03:22
Speaker
Yes, and let's just pause for a second and talk about what a blessing it is that we don't have to be 100% self-reliant, right? 200 years ago, you basically had to either live real close to a bunch of other people and figure out some sort of bartering trading situation going on, or you made everything yourself. And thank goodness for modern conveniences and grocery stores and the supply chain that we have going on today, we don't have to do all those things.
00:03:45
Speaker
We get to have some free time because somebody else is not only growing our food and putting it in a store, but sometimes delivering it to our doorstep. So what a miraculous world we live in. However, that being said, we very quickly forget just how far removed we are from the production of our goods and food. And that's kind of dangerous as we start to see things happen in the world. Some supply chain failure started in COVID, right? And all of a sudden you couldn't just go to the store and buy toilet paper.
00:04:12
Speaker
you had to figure something else out. And for some people, that was terrifying because they'd never considered storing their own or using some alternative way of toilet hygiene. I don't know. The economy is a little bit touch and go these days. Financial situation for people is kind of stressful. And then we also just believe that being self-reliant is helpful because it expands our knowledge of things. It helps us to grow and learn and become
00:04:37
Speaker
better people because we know how to do more things. And our family personally, we believe, we just believe in being good stewards over the things that God has given us. He's given us this amazing planet. We need to know how to use it for our benefit and not just rely on other people to give it to us.
00:04:51
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. It's amazing when we can teach our kids skills that they can take into their life or pass on to other people. And if we don't know it, we can learn it right alongside of our kids.
How to Start Practicing Self-Reliance?
00:05:02
Speaker
So in this episode, we're going to share 10 how to tips, ideas that we have for a single person, a large family, small family, whatever, just like yours, like how to get started toward becoming more self-reliant.
00:05:15
Speaker
Yes, and we are going to start small because we don't want anyone to leave this episode and think, oh my gosh, I have to learn how to darn my own socks or whatever. But maybe get there someday. First, you have to raise the sheep. Right, right, right. Share the sheep, create the wool, knit the... No, we're not talking about that. We're talking about starting super duper small. So our first step is to just do the babiest
00:05:39
Speaker
step that you can possibly imagine. And for us, it's something like growing herbs on a windowsill. They even sell them in a pot at the store. You could just go buy some cilantro or some basil or something you use quite often and stick it on your windowsill and grow it a little bit. The first time you cut off herbs and put it in your own food, you're going to just squeal for joy. It's so exciting. Yeah, that is so true. It's like starting small. And
00:06:04
Speaker
It's a little way that you're going to get addicted. We promise you because that rush of adrenaline or that rush, you know, that good feeling when you have made something yourself or produce something yourself or you're not having to rely on somebody else. And that is something that you can teach and share with your kids too.
00:06:21
Speaker
my goodness goodness when we got our chickens a couple years ago and we collected our first egg I felt like we should have just dipped it in gold and saved it because well first of all it was worth about a thousand dollars after all the money we put into the chicken coop and everything else but it was like we just we just made this happen I mean obviously we didn't do it the chickens did it but we like grew them from chicks and we fed them when we nurtured them we took care of them and
00:06:45
Speaker
we just got food from it and again these eggs are worth probably considerably more than they are at the grocery store with all that we put into our chickens but it's so so thrilling. Another quick small tip we can share with you is to just start creating some meals from
00:07:02
Speaker
recipes from scratch, right? So many of us are used to taking shortcuts, right? We buy a rotisserie check instead of cooking our own, simply because we've chosen to create these busy lives for ourselves. But if we can just maybe take a step or two backwards on the food chain and try to create things from scratch so that you could replicate it. If you did need to grow your own food, you could make your own bread or you could make a dinner that didn't require buying something that someone else had made.
00:07:26
Speaker
Yes. So that egg that you're talking about, that was, you know, very expensive egg. It's a very expensive egg until there are no eggs at the grocery store, and then it's a very valuable egg. Then someone might come pay a thousand dollars, maybe not. Well, you know what, that leads, that's a good segue into the second tip, which is start early.
00:07:45
Speaker
So to get a chicken to egg laying operation from hatching an egg or starting with a chick is seven months. To get fruit from a tree. It takes years and years to grow and produce a fruit and trees. Like we always say like when people ask us for tips, but I think you guys know that we live on kind of a hobby farm here and we produce most of our food in the summer and quite a lot in the winter from what we've preserved in the summer.
00:08:12
Speaker
And the other dairy and other animals we have, is people come to us and they ask us for tips. And we always say, plant your fruit trees first. Because you're going to have to wait for those the longest. If you plant a garden in spring, you'll eat off of it this year. If you plant a fruit tree this year, you're not going to eat off of it this year. So start early is the next step. Start early.
00:08:34
Speaker
Yeah. What do they say? The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The next best time is today. In our old house, sometimes we drive by our old neighborhood and my husband, did I just talk, I think I just talked about this on an episode, but my husband planted trees the day that my son was born, my nine-year-old, and we drive by now and I'm like, oh, look at all that shade. We only had a few years of it before we moved, but it happens eventually. You know, you're going to be 10 years older in 10 years. No matter what, you might as well have some fruit trees to go with it.
Community Building through Shared Skills
00:09:01
Speaker
Okay, number three is to go slowly. Don't make yourself crazy and don't put yourself in debt by just thinking, oh, I need to have all the things. I'm going to go buy all the animals or plant all the gardens. And gardening can be expensive. I'm sure all of us know if we've invested in some really nice soil at the store. But one thing that we love to do is just to stock up on a few extra grocery items. So our family goes through food pretty quickly, both of our families, because we have a lot of children.
00:09:27
Speaker
So, instead of buying two or three cans of something that I would need for one meal, I'll just buy a case. So, we always have several cases of beans, sometimes canned fruit or vegetables, depending on what we've been eating. But just buying a little bit each time adds up quickly, and then you have a reserve. And there's this peace of mind that comes knowing that you could feed your family from your pantry for quite a while. Yes. Yes. That is so awesome. Just a little bit at a time adds up.
00:09:53
Speaker
over time. It really does. Another way to go slowly is if you're adding animals to your repertoire of ways you're being self-reliant, go slowly. Start with one animal and learn it. Then get that one mastered and learn the ins and outs. It's sometimes heartbreaking. Animals have the circle of life.
00:10:17
Speaker
They live and they die. And sometimes you can't, you don't have any control over that. You can do your best and all that, but start slowly. Don't get like chickens and pigs and goats and rabbits and okay, just hang on back off. Just start slowly. Let's just start with one. And that way, you know, like if you see if it's a good fit for you to have an animal to take care of, um, rather than getting them all and then having to find a place to displace them when you realize that you can't actually handle an animal. Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:51
Speaker
Okay, our next tip is kind of seems like it's opposite of what we just said, but it's think big. All right, so this actually means like plant more than you can use. That is not hard to do. When you open a package of zucchini and there's 18 seeds in there, you're like, yes, I am sticking all these in the ground. But if you only plant one green bean seed,
00:11:17
Speaker
You probably can feed your family one meal one time, maybe, if it's an extra prolific green bean plant.
00:11:23
Speaker
So it's okay to think big. That packet that you buy of green bean seeds or zucchini seeds, that is going to cost the same no matter if you plant all of them or none of them. So that packet of seeds is going to cost the same. But then when you have a whole bunch of zucchini or tomatoes or green beans, you can add another skill to your skill set. Okay, so now you can grow zucchini. How about preserve zucchini? Okay, so add that one. Or you can share.
00:11:48
Speaker
or there's other things that you can do that we'll talk about here in a little bit. But it's okay to have extra. Think big. Just because you can't use it doesn't mean someone else can't. So think big.
00:12:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, for sure. No one I've ever met will turn down homegrown vegetables or fruits or anything else, right? It always tastes better. And especially where gardening is concerned, the work you're doing is really the same, whether you plant one plant or 15, maybe a little bit more weeding for the surface area, but it's not a lot more, like you said, not any extra money, but not a lot of extra work as well.
00:12:30
Speaker
Yeah. This goes for animals too, you know? So let's say you have a goal of having a dairy cow someday that you milk. Okay. That's awesome.
00:12:39
Speaker
But let's back up to number three, go slowly. Start with a dairy goat. They don't produce quite as much milk. They're not as big to handle. You don't need as much space. So start with a goat and get used to that. And it's okay to think big. We had goats for, I don't know, 10 years before we ever got a cow. It's okay. Think big. Don't be afraid to think big. But again, combine that with go slowly.
00:13:01
Speaker
Right, right. Okay, so number five tip is to learn new skills. Obviously, any of the things that we've talked about so far are going to require some sort of skill. Even just talking about the grocery store, if you want to do it smart, you'll have to learn how the sales go and maybe start clipping coupons or something so that it doesn't end up being a great expense.
00:13:19
Speaker
So many amazing self-reliance skills in regards to food specifically. Canning, preserving, making cheese, yogurt, gardening, animal husbandry, drying, fermenting, pickling, all the things. I will just brag on myself for five seconds.
00:13:36
Speaker
Audrey inspired me to try some new things. Just a couple weeks ago, I made some yogurt. I made some kefir at home. It was really fun and really exciting. Most of the time, we're just freaked out because we've never tried it before. And what's the worst thing that can happen? You have to throw it down the drain because it doesn't turn out. Big whoop, right? Not a big deal. So just try something. Maybe you're a little bit more into canning or preserving. You've got an awesome bushel of fresh peaches this summer and you want to try to can some. Delicious. Go for it, right?
00:14:02
Speaker
And if canning makes you nervous, just freeze them for a while until you get the hang of it, or try one can, right, one jar, and then work from there. But so many amazing skills. And not only to teach yourself, but to pass on to your kids and your grandkids as well. Make sure that we continue having generations that know how to care for themselves.
00:14:21
Speaker
Yes, that is so true. And again, this goes back to go slowly and so learn a new skill. So you want to try preserving food. So start exactly what you said, freezing. You don't need much extra equipment to make strawberry freezer jam. Another one is sauerkraut. That is one of the easiest things that you can preserve. Take cabbage, add salt, put it in a jar. Boom. I mean, let it sit. Yeah, so that is so good.
00:14:50
Speaker
Then go on to things that require hot water baths. So that would be like fruit, canning fruit. So that doesn't take a pressure can or an extra skill. So again, just work your way into it. It's what I did. And it's so amazing to be able to take something and extend its life by preserving it, and then feed your family off of it too, and then have this amazing skill that you can use.
00:15:13
Speaker
Okay, the next tip is to teach or share your skill with others. How does this make you self-reliant? Well,
00:15:23
Speaker
We'll get to that in a second. But somebody taught me to can, and I'm teaching somebody else to can. I grew up canning with my mom and preserving meat. And my grandma was great at making different sausages and preserving things and that kind of thing. And if you are willing to pass this knowledge on to others, your kids is the one that we've been talking about most, but like your neighbor. So let's say you
00:15:50
Speaker
are teaching your neighbor how to do strawberry freezer jam. They might be like, oh, hey, this reminds me of the time that I did cheese making with my mom. And you'll be like, oh, hey, teach me. So when you, when it's kind of a mentality or mindset thing, when you start this preserving or the self-reliance thing, you find other people who enjoy that too. And, um, and they pass their knowledge to you as well.
00:16:16
Speaker
That's right. That's right. And it's a really fun way to make memories too, right? Oh, yeah. Moving on to number seven. So this is what Audrey's talking about, a way that teaching others benefits us is that if we can't make it, we can maybe trade something for it. This is just how the world worked for thousands of years before anyone had money in stores and
00:16:37
Speaker
things like supply chain. They just made something and if they had too much, they would trade it for something that they needed. And this is a wonderful way to operate within neighbors and friends, especially if you have a skill that other people really value, right? Bartering your time, skills. In reality, any skill that you have that makes you more useful is self-reliance, right? So being able to barter that with other people will make you more reliant on yourself and less so on those who may or may not be able to help you out later on.
00:17:04
Speaker
We love that we live in a society where we don't have to do everything ourselves. And I don't think there will ever come a time where we will have to, but to even have three or four skills under our belt that can help subsidize what we already buy from the store can be immensely useful.
00:17:22
Speaker
Yeah, right. So let's say you can bake bread, but you don't have a cow. Well, okay, I'll trade you milk from my cow if you break, bake bread for me, right? So it's, it's a win-win situation. I've got way more milk than I can use. And if you're making sourdough, you probably have way more starter and bread than you need. So that's really, really neat thing. And again, it's more of this mindset thing about like self-reliant. It's not,
00:17:49
Speaker
I guess it's empowering. This is what I'm trying to get at. It's empowering to be able to share your skills with others and have them share it with you and share what you produce with others and have them share it with you. Maybe they can babysit your kids while you ... Not the cow. No, not the cow. No, while you can peaches and then you give them some of the peaches back or something. There's just all sorts of situations that you can think of.
00:18:15
Speaker
And one quick side note about this, think about the social network created when people are able to barter their skills and their products that they're creating themselves. We live in a society that is just continually more and more isolated. Thanks, COVID. All of a sudden, nobody talks to anybody anymore.
00:18:34
Speaker
You know, recently I bought a big batch of peaches that I was going to work with, and I had more than I needed, and I was able to go to my neighbor and share some with her and have a conversation, right? When we are sharing our skills and our resources with others, it just connects us to those close by, and that's something that everyone is in need of, I think.
00:18:51
Speaker
Yeah, here's a really fun example of this. We planted our fruit trees, but before we had enough apples, we would have a yearly apple cider press party and everybody would bring the apples off their trees and we would throw them all together and combine it and run them through our cider press. We didn't have any apples we were contributing, but we did have a cider press and we have this big, huge Saturday celebration where we just
00:19:17
Speaker
pressed apples and made cider. And everybody took apple cider home and we got to keep some. And, you know, there was also other fresh baked goods and it turned into this really fun time. Just connection and having fun. And we didn't have any apples. Our trees weren't producing apples yet, but we definitely benefited. Oh, cider press. Why aren't you my neighbor? So, so good. It's one of those old time ones where you crank it and it presses it down. Yeah, that's awesome.
00:19:47
Speaker
All right, tip number eight, think local.
Essential Skills for Self-Reliance
00:19:51
Speaker
So you actually, in reality, can't do, make, grow everything. We're not out on the front here. Nor would you want to.
00:19:59
Speaker
Sounds exhausting. Exactly. I know. There's not enough hours in the day. So find your local farmers, growers, makers, people who are doing and making and growing things. And that cuts down on the whole supply chain issue. If you have pigs and I have clothes that I sew, we can barter. I can give you clothes for bacon or whatever. And we can trade. But it's local. It takes out the, you know,
00:20:30
Speaker
this and that is coming from China or Argentina or whatever, and they're out at the store, so then we're just out. Well, what isn't out in your area? Let's talk about that. Yeah. Okay. For a second, you said, I'll give you clothes for bacon. I'm like, is somebody dressing a pig up? I'm confused about this. Just kidding.
00:20:49
Speaker
I would basically give anything for bacon, okay? Same. Same. What do you want? A child? Here you go. Just give me the bacon. I will not run out of bacon. So good.
00:21:03
Speaker
All right, number nine is one that we kind of like to talk about. Is it time to talk about sewing, Audrey? Yes. You know we found place in our self-reliance episode to talk about sewing. You guys, I know sewing is not everyone's cup of tea, but if you have even the slightest desire to learn how to sew, do it. It is the most useful skill I own hands down. It can't make food, but let me tell you,
00:21:26
Speaker
that because it is a skill that requires so much practice and expertise, people are desperate for that skill. And I can guarantee you that if things, you know, crap hits the fan and all of a sudden we can't get food, you will have a useful skill to barter and trade. And even if that never happens, I've saved so much money by just being able to patch my kid's pants or just being able to hem something that, you know, got too short. So now it's a skirt instead of, you know, a shorter skirt instead of a maxi.
00:21:53
Speaker
It is just such a useful skill and we love it so much.
00:21:59
Speaker
Here is a very good example of this, that every single sewist felt vindicated in 2020 when there was a mask shortage. And what did we home sewists do? We dove into our enormous stashes and we started sewing masks for people. And some people started selling those. And I'm here to tell you, some people made some really good money because there was no masks and masks are required.
00:22:24
Speaker
every, like the sewing skill was there. There was a group of people in my area that got together and so they took orders, not orders, they took requests from the hospitals for the healthcare providers and they were sewing the masks for healthcare providers because there wasn't any. And it was pretty amazing. Like it felt really, really amazing to be able to offer something with this skill that was just kind of a hobby up until that point. So that's not sewing clothes or anything.
00:22:53
Speaker
That's not even diving into making quilts and coats and things for your family and for your home. Who would have foreseen that situation coming up that sewing would be such a useful skill? Yeah. Okay. I think we need to stop talking about sewing now and keep going. That's not. Once I know I wanted to add in here is we've talked about food and clothing, which are two essentials for survival. Two other ones that came to me recently were
00:23:22
Speaker
shelter, and also medical care. So those are two that are also really, really essential for being self-reliant. Obviously, we can't give each other surgery. I hope no one would be trying that. But little things like, do you have a first aid kit? Do you know how to take care of some basic injuries? I can glue a laceration shut like nobody's business because I've had a lot of them to deal with.
00:23:42
Speaker
and know how to deal with some life-threatening emergencies at least till other medical care gets there. But the minor stuff, do you know how to take care of minor burns and those sorts of things, really, really helpful. And then shelter, like what else can you learn about your own shelter? Can you learn how to patch your own roof or deal with a different leak or a plumbing issue, especially if these trades become harder to find or something happens with your shelter, that's a really, really essential skill to have.
00:24:11
Speaker
Yes, that is such a good point. I think we have a whole episode about that idea. And we talked about what was in our medical kits at home and how to take care of our kids. We'll have to like that one in the show notes.
00:24:23
Speaker
But yeah, shelter, definitely. One of my kids went through the whole exercise of, I think it's called, oh, I'm not going to remember the name of it, but it's the survival skill where they go out in the woods and they build a shelter from everything, the found. It's something about found. Yeah. Yeah. And he did that. And he has this shelter.
00:24:46
Speaker
that he built and it's got like a chimney on it. Like he went through the whole exercise of making his own clay or mortar or whatever, just because it was interesting to him. And that's kind of cool. Another thing that we did was learn one year for science. My kids were studying plants and we learned what was edible.
00:25:06
Speaker
in our area, what we could eat of the plants that were out there. So that was a pretty cool exercise. There might be one or two cactus we can eat out here, and I think wild javelina if you want your bacon. Oh, do you have dandelions? Surely you have dandelions.
00:25:22
Speaker
Oh, yeah, maybe. I don't know. This is kind of a barren wasteland over here. Yeah. But anyway, that's kind of cool to think about. And this is back. Well, so maybe you don't know anything about patching a roof or building a shelter. Well,
00:25:41
Speaker
some of your skills that you have for that. Or even ask somebody to teach you. Maybe they're not going to come roof your house for you, but maybe you can go roof a house with them to learn that kind of thing.
00:25:55
Speaker
There's almost nothing you can't learn on YouTube, seriously. Again, I probably wouldn't learn electrical work on YouTube, something that could actually kill you if you messed up. But canning, for sure. Growing a garden, milking a cow, anything you want to learn, just Google it and figure it out. Ask a friend. Maybe a friend can come learn with you. You guys can have some trial and error together. What's the worst that could happen? You break a couple of jars and you don't have to eat your peaches, raw bummer.
00:26:20
Speaker
Instead of an again, it's fine. It's just so exciting to be able to expand your skills and know that you're helping your family, potentially helping your family to survive with these skills. Yeah.
Teaching Self-Reliance to Children
00:26:32
Speaker
Okay. The last tip that we have for you is the biggest overall overarching thing that you can teach your kids is teach them to be producers, not consumers. This is a big concept out there.
00:26:45
Speaker
So if they want something, how do you respond to that? They want, you know, and then it even comes down to what do they do with their time? So what are they doing with their time? Um, are they consuming on a device on a screen? That's, that's a consumer mindset, but how about what could they do with that time that like, not that they have to be producing or productive a hundred percent of the time, but what's the ratio there of productive to consumptive time?
00:27:12
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's something that's just so easy to do because we are just bombarded with this fire hose of media and so easy to just go buy whatever you want, read whatever you want, listen to whatever you want. And it's so much harder to make it ourselves, right? But it's infinitely more fulfilling.
00:27:30
Speaker
Okay, so once again, don't get overwhelmed by this and think about all the things you're reliant on others for. It's the same, the world around, well, maybe not the world around, but the West for sure. Most of us are reliant about 99.9% on other people. But just get inspired and make one little change, one little thing you've been interested in doing. Maybe you really, really just want to learn how to grow
00:27:55
Speaker
apples because your family is obsessed with eating apples. Well, in five years you're going to have an apple tree because you're going to plant one today, right? Or whatever it is. And like Audrey said, just continue doing it so that years down the road you look back and go, aren't you so glad that we started, that we did something that was a little bit uncomfortable and we figured out how to create something that our family needed. Yes. And then ask yourself, what are the things that we use every day? So when we started planting a garden, our
00:28:22
Speaker
My husband said, let's plant ingredients. Let's look at this as if we're planting ingredients. And it's just kind of a different way to think about it. That, yeah, what do we actually eat and how can we produce it ourselves? What are our favorite foods? How can we make that happen? So what else can you do to become less dependent? Not completely independent, but less dependent on someone or something else for food, shelter, clothing. Like Bonnie and I have both experienced, just going back to sewing for a second, just a second, I promise.
00:28:51
Speaker
But we have both experienced a huge shift in our mindset about fashion and about clothing now that we can produce clothing and we're not reliant on the fashion industry for clothing ourselves or our family. Not that we produce 100% of our clothing, but it's a mindset thing.
00:29:10
Speaker
That leads into my final thought about being self-reliant. Even if the world never gets to a place where you have to be, you know, producing these things for your family because you can't get them somewhere else. But as you begin to create things for yourself, you just become a little bit more aware of what's out there and how things are created. So I knew that the grocery store eggs were not the best kind, especially the ones you get in a big box from Walmart that costs like $7. You're like, you know, the yolk is like barely yellow. You're like, I don't know if there's any nutrition in these.
00:29:40
Speaker
But the fact of the matter is, since we started producing our own via these wonderful chickens, we are just so much more aware of what goes into the production of them. And I'm aware that a lot of these commercial chickens are locked into teeny tiny little pens or coops and don't have a great quality of life, which also affects the eggs and the nutrition. So just like you're saying about clothing, it just makes me more aware. Where is this coming from? Who's making this?
00:30:07
Speaker
especially when it takes me three days to create a dress, how are they turning this out at such a cheap rate? How is this affecting the planet? How is this affecting someone's quality of life? Just kind of open up your eyes to what you're consuming and how makes you just a better earth dweller.
00:30:27
Speaker
Is that the word I'm looking for? No, that is so cute. I love that. A better citizen of planet earth. There we go. No, I like earth dweller. My final thought here is just maybe a final tip. It's just surround yourself with people who are more self-reliant than you. So follow somebody on Instagram who makes sourdough bread if you don't.
00:30:50
Speaker
And just watch them. Just start watching them. You're going to be inspired. If you don't have any animals that you raise, follow somebody who has a farm. And just watch them. Just watch them. You're going to be inspired. Or at least you're going to grow an appreciation for what goes into it. If you don't sow, follow somebody who sows. If you don't know how to build or do home repairs, just touch it. Just reach out and follow somebody or watch somebody.
00:31:17
Speaker
there's, there's a hundred ways to start being interested in this kind of thing. So it's just kind of a way to help your kids in the future, to shift their mindset from complete a hundred percent consumer to just even start being aware of that things are produced and how they're produced and how much effort and time it takes. And that can, we can have a great influence on the, on the future just by taking a couple of small steps.
00:31:47
Speaker
We hope some of these tips, some of these 10 tips have been exciting, inspiring for you and not scary or overwhelming. We just wanted to do this episode because we think more people are, it's, it's coming to the forefront in people's minds that things are not as available or as affordable as they used to be. And so the knowledge is out there and we encourage you to go, go start. Just, just take one tiny step and see what, see what you find.
00:32:16
Speaker
All right guys, have a great week. I'm Bonnie. And I'm Audrey, and we're Outnumbered. Thanks for listening, friends. Click the link in the show notes to subscribe to our email and never miss another episode. Show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes or sharing the podcast with a friend. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.