Bringing things back to the basics doesn't have to be overwhelming. I put together a simple guide sharing some of my favorite homemade kitchen and cleaning swaps to help you take a little more control over your home, save some money, and skip the big-box store aisles.
Thank you so much! Being old as the ocean I inherited much of this knowledge and am now more and more reverting to 'natural living'. My 2 cents: If you have a spot for a perenial plant, grow Lipstick (Levisticum officinale), we call it 'stock cube' or Maggi. Add a leaf, fresh or dried, to any liquid base and you do not need the salty store bought rubbish. My neighbour just gave me a jar of syrup made with young spruce sprouts, the new growth in spring. I like it. And then we went fishing with hook & worm, I got most of the fish...
I take it a little further - I simmer the whole chicken carcass and any leftover pan drippings overnight, then remove it, pick of any meat and return to the broth, cook down the broth, then add rice and green peas to cook in the broth. Chicken rice is a favourite in our house - using it at the end means one chicken can make up to five meals for the two of us.
What interests me most here is the deeper meaning of homemaking as a form of sovereignty.
Making broth from the chicken you already cooked, maintaining a sourdough starter, preparing tortillas, mixing your own cleaners, choosing durable kitchen materials, all of this looks ordinary on the surface. But structurally it reduces dependence, increases practical knowledge, and returns small domains of daily life from distant systems back into the household.
That matters because sovereignty is rarely built only through dramatic acts. It is often assembled through hundreds of mundane competencies.
The person who knows how to feed a household, preserve ingredients, improvise with what is available, maintain basic supplies, and make informed choices about what enters the home possesses a kind of practical intelligence that consumer culture quietly trains us to outsource.
There is also something psychologically stabilizing in this. A home becomes less of a consumption terminal and more of a living system you actively shape.
That may be one of the most overlooked forms of freedom.
Thank you! These are all wonderful and a few I had no idea about. 🙏🏼
Fabulous! Thank you so very much. ✨👏
I have learned that stainless steel contains a toxic metal called nickel. I never used anything that's made of stainless steel.
Thank you so much! Being old as the ocean I inherited much of this knowledge and am now more and more reverting to 'natural living'. My 2 cents: If you have a spot for a perenial plant, grow Lipstick (Levisticum officinale), we call it 'stock cube' or Maggi. Add a leaf, fresh or dried, to any liquid base and you do not need the salty store bought rubbish. My neighbour just gave me a jar of syrup made with young spruce sprouts, the new growth in spring. I like it. And then we went fishing with hook & worm, I got most of the fish...
I take it a little further - I simmer the whole chicken carcass and any leftover pan drippings overnight, then remove it, pick of any meat and return to the broth, cook down the broth, then add rice and green peas to cook in the broth. Chicken rice is a favourite in our house - using it at the end means one chicken can make up to five meals for the two of us.
What interests me most here is the deeper meaning of homemaking as a form of sovereignty.
Making broth from the chicken you already cooked, maintaining a sourdough starter, preparing tortillas, mixing your own cleaners, choosing durable kitchen materials, all of this looks ordinary on the surface. But structurally it reduces dependence, increases practical knowledge, and returns small domains of daily life from distant systems back into the household.
That matters because sovereignty is rarely built only through dramatic acts. It is often assembled through hundreds of mundane competencies.
The person who knows how to feed a household, preserve ingredients, improvise with what is available, maintain basic supplies, and make informed choices about what enters the home possesses a kind of practical intelligence that consumer culture quietly trains us to outsource.
There is also something psychologically stabilizing in this. A home becomes less of a consumption terminal and more of a living system you actively shape.
That may be one of the most overlooked forms of freedom.