Everyone today is running the rat race, filling every waking hour with busy.

We embraced our off-grid lifestyle to create our own lifestyle in a crazy mixed up world. We were seeking a freedom and a pace that was to our liking, but when we first embraced our dream we hit the road running and kept pushing on.

At some point, we realized that we were pushing so hard that we missed our mark. We were no longer enjoying our dream the way we intended and we found we were running the rat race just like the rest of the world. What??

We needed to step back and realize that there was more to our desires and our dream than killing ourselves with a crazy pace. We found our freedom, but we needed to make changes. We forgot to take time for ourselves, to have fun and to do things other than work as a family. Don’t get me wrong, we did enjoy our chores as a family and it was quality time while accomplishing things on our homestead, but as they say “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”!  Well let me tell you, the same applies for Jill!

We needed to find a balance in our lives and we also needed to put God first. Our Sunday’s were reserved for church and God, but we didn’t fully rest. We were still busy and found things to do. Our first adjustment was to make our Sunday a complete and total day of rest spent with God and as a family! Once we fully took that day of rest our lives changed.

The next thing we did was incorporated PLAY back into our lives. We take time to do the fun things we enjoy. This was a bit hard for us because our work and play blended.  We were still doing things we enjoyed, but when you take time and walk away from the fun chores and work and truly enjoy playing, you restore yourself. In doing so, you return to the home or homestead and have more to offer not just to your family, but your projects too.

In addition to taking time for yourself and God, having a To Do list and a budget that you base your projects on will help remove the stresses of finances which can be huge. The To Do List helps to keep you focused and the budget helps to keep you out of debt and working on projects as the money is available.

Accomplishing a lot on the homestead is great, but if it comes with a cost, that is not so great. Finding a balance can be hard, but only you and your family can find that balance and make changes. You will know your needs and desires better than anyone so focus on putting something together that works for your family. We find that with a set schedule things roll so much smoother as well.

If you sit down and truly analyze your schedules and all the things you are doing to fill your week, I am sure you will find things that can be removed. This is my suggestion to you, evaluate what is most important to everyone and look at all the tasks you are trying to squeeze in.  Remove the ones that really don’t have value to you. Free up some of your time and then focus on how you need to put the important things into your schedule.

As I said, we focus very heavily on our Sunday as our day of rest and we have a night of devotions each week and a night of games all of which is spent as a family which pulls us all together and provides some amazing quality time and in depth conversations. Every family needs their together time. Because my days are spent in front of a screen the majority of the time and researching things, I thoroughly enjoy just a night on the couch crashed and watching a movie (doing something I don’t have to think about and can just sit and enjoy). We have found Amazon Prime and PureFlix to be our go-to resources for our movie nights.

It kinda sounds almost backward when you read this, that in order to be productive you have to slow down but please trust me when I say this is SO important and SO true!

Take those steps to put your home or homestead back on track because I have to imagine the majority of you are also running the rat race!

Does this apply to you?  What are some things you have done?

If you enjoyed this and found it helpful you may also enjoy my Podcast #145 How To Avoid Overwhelm…