In the beginning, pre-internet days, when I wanted to learn a new skill, I did it the old fashioned way. I asked. Problem was, it was kinda hard sometimes to find people who knew how to do what I wanted to learn. Sometimes I had to figure it out on my own using trial and error. That always took a long time, and was sometimes painful. Sure would have been simpler if I could have just ‘seen it done’, and what it was supposed to look like. You know, like some live youtube video or something. Wouldn’t that have blown or minds way back in the day? Wow. It’s so much easier to learn how to do things now. You can bet that whenever I found someone willing to share, I took advantage of their offer. And if there were classes offered in my area, I took them.
We read a lot and experimented a lot, and made a lotta mistakes, and learned a lot, and we’re still learning. We sure don’t regard ourselves as experts at anything we do. Just like you – we’re still trying to do the best we know how. In some areas, we just might be a little further along the road in is all.
I have a motto that I live by. It is a quote from Maya Angelou and it is stenciled in big black letters in my kitchen. “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, DO better.” So simple. So straightforward. And so absolutely profound. Just DO better. Don’t beat yourself up over what you didn’t know before. Don’t live in a life of regrets. You did the best you knew how, but now you know better, and you can move forward. I love the principle taught in the quote.
My purpose with this blog site, is to make your journey a little easier than mine was by offering some short cuts, some hands on instruction, and maybe even some suggestions. Everyone who wants to, can achieve a new level of self sufficiency, and everything I teach can be (and should be) tailored to your own home and situation. There is no complete right way, and no complete wrong way. Just all sorts of ideas that might work for you and are worth trying out.
Whether you live in an apartment, a townhouse with a small yard, a home with a big yard, or a farm on the prairie – you can make it better than it is, and become more self sufficient in it. Here, we will touch on a little of this and that – from the kitchen to the laundry room to the garden out back, to the feelings that are intertwined with this kind of lifestyle, and probably several places in between. Kinda where the wind blows us I guess. We’ll see. This is a new experience for me too. Looking forward to it.
I’d love if you’d take the time to comment when you read a post. Let me know what you think about the thoughts shared therein, let me know your own personal tips and hints for doing better. We can learn from eacy other.
– Cindy
I went looking for this little poem because I have a cookie jar that means so much to me and my, now adult, children. It was my grandmother’s, given to her by my uncle when he was a child, and the family lived in a small Italian village named Storo. I inherited it when Nana died and kept it filled with cookies, just as she did. One day, after school, my son, then six, wanted an extra cookie, that I had forbidden he have.
He dropped the lid, which shattered, but the jar remained intact. It sits on my counter today, waiting to be passed down to him someday.