Aaah! Thank you for the detailed examples. I never knew how to care for those real wood floors the old way. There is so much that I wish I was taught by prior generations. I wonder why my ancestors didn't write things down so much apart from some recipes. It is sad for me. There were so many experiences and learning curves they went through. Perhaps instead of being sad I should take it as a hint that we the now-living should write things down for future generations.
It is not very cold yet in Tennessee. But once the cold winter sets in, I put our reindeer pelts on our beds for extra warmth. They make me feel connected to life before modernity. I often day dream about those old eras. I was that kind of child playing make believe in the kitchen with a pot, ladle and water, stirring it and imagining I was in a stone cottage with a fire crackling, on the misty, wintery moors in Scotland waiting for the boys to come back from bartering in town.
Sorry, got carried away sharing. It always feels as if we are all there bundled up around the fire and listening even when your posts are written ones. ❤
I love that story, Yvette. I was one of those kids, too. Dreaming of the life in the pages of Little House on the Prairie and Tasha Tudor. We would probably have been pals. 🙂
I’m lucky to have a beautiful, fairly natural home. My fiancé built it himself a couple years before we met. He comes from a family of inspired west coast builders and our house has passive solar design, big timbers milled by him, a front door made of a solid slab of Douglas fir, fir countertops, plastered walls, fir ceilings , polished concrete floor and a green roof. His go to material is always locally sourced wood that he mills. Our dining table is made of four solid yellow cedar slabs held together without any hardware (by some magic, I assume). He has a lot to say about modern building codes, as he is a licensed home builder and has to deal with some crazy shit in that department. They have to seal them up so tight, like a plastic bag, and then add in a whole hvac system for anything over a certain square footage (because a house that can’t breath will grow mould of course). So much unnecessary material is used in houses now in the name of energy efficiency. Give me a leaky house with wood heat any day.
Our only heat source is a gorgeous mass heating wood fireplace covered in brick (with an oven). It’s really the heart of our home.
I would have made some edits were I here for the building process (copper pipe instead of pex for example) but I accept that I can’t fix everything. I do have a scheme to add a wood cook stove one day, though my guy refuses to ever cut a hole through the green roof (fair enough). I really feel the lack of a wood fired cooktop.
We feel the same way you do about furniture. It’s got to be vintage wood or we just can’t stand it. Plus, it’s cheaper to buy old stuff. You need to hunt for it, but that’s the fun part!
Your home sounds absolutely gorgeous, Karla. I could feel the energy in it just by the way you wrote about it. Gorgeous! I love mass wood heaters! You're a lucky bum!
Thank you 💕 It’s really a testament to my amazing man. When we first met and I first slept in the house, I said it felt like I was in his head. It’s such a personal, thoughtfully designed house and it took him five years to build. I knew we were a match as soon as I came home here.
Love this Karla! I am looking to get educated on the safety of wood fire when it comes to smoke both our own health and the air… what are your thoughts on this?
There’s no issues in an energy efficient, tested and verified, modern wood stove. When you hold up one of these stoves against the life cycle, from mining to refining to transport of other heat and energy sources, there’s no comparison. Local wood, chopped and properly seasoned before burning in a certified, well sealed stove is as good as it gets. 🙂
Thank you for taking the time to reply! I have learned so much from you. The question comes from news I’ve been reading about how wood fire smoke is a significant air pollutant in urban spaces (right now, unfortunately that’s where I am). I was thinking of moving over to a gas fireplace for this reason, though it breaks my heart to do so because I love my wood fireplace so.
So just trying to understand all the sides…
Do you think that research outcome might have to do with wood that is not local or properly seasoned?
Your home sounds so beautiful. We are working on building a 500sq ft home for us and want to do a passive design with good materials. Can I ask, do you have insulation? If so, what did you use?
I recently left the city and moved into a ~custom tiny home~ in the woods. This was the most affordable way for my to get into a more "non-toxic" environment. My builder was pretty accommodating with the materials I chose– non-toxic paint, hardwiring ethernet ports (5 ethernet ports in a tiny house!! Lol). I asked them to leave all the wood raw, and I finished it myself with hemp oil. It still has modern crappy insulation, but I am pretty pleased with this being my home for this season of life, while we save up and continue soaking in information to prepare us for starting our own homestead.
Congratulations! What an excellent way to get out of the city and set yourself up without taking on astronomical debt just to have a place of your own.
Hi Tara, this post is so interesting and super helpful. As we are looking for renovation objects in Norway this comes so handy. I have been thinking a lot about it already, but sometimes things are a bit above my head. I have no knowledge yet on renovating and it can seem daunting. This will help us a lot in the right direction! Thank you :) I was wondering since I read your post on having off-grid systems in place that do not rely on electrical dependencies like the solar panel systems. I was wondering how you would do that with refrigerators and freezers and such? My only idea now is that you would probably just can everything, even meat? But would that be doable? Or do you have other tactics?
Well, it all depends on timelines. So, if the power goes out here, what we do is dependant on how long. Because we freeze all of our meat in the fall, power outages aren't a big issue throughout the winter because it's so cold and our freezers are in an unheated building so everything stays cold. If it is summer time and we are in a long power outage, our freezers are quite low on meat and we would can what's there. We also have a generator hardwired into our house and the outbuilding so everything would be fine for an extended time.
If we're talking about the collapse of the grid altogether, it would be as it would be for everyone. Back to salt and smoke and air for preserving. Skills everyone should know.
I was interested to hear about this as well. I’ve been talking about independence with my man a lot lately and he’s running with it. He just upgraded our fresh water storage by a factor of three and next is a hardwired diesel generator and a diesel tank. I’ve been on the fence about going into a battery bank and solar. Not sure it’s worth it, except for our well pump. I always want to be able to get water out of our well, and what if diesel isn’t available? We do have excellent clean surface water not terribly fair away, but again, without fuel or electricity for a pump, it would be really hard to get it to our house.
How are you set up for water? Does your well need an electric pump?
Our pump was our achilles heel. We have a lot of water around us so if things got bad, it's easy to haul water, but that's really not ideal. The madness of the current world convinced us that this year was the year to finally bite the bullet and get the Bison Pump we've wanted for ten years or so now. Honestly, it's such a relief.
I love this series!! My husband and I are at the very beginning of this journey in setting up our home to be a haven - we only keep furniture/decorations that are meaningful & beautiful, but we still have a loooong way to go. Partially because we are still attached to the military, and will be moving at their whim a few more times over the next few years. I have been gathering ideas for our forever home, wherever/whenever that come to be, and this post is FULL of great ideas to research. Thank you thank you thank you!
Thanks, Molly. That was me for a few decades - dreaming a dream about a kitchen I would one day have. My husband likes to tell the story of when one of the military houses we had only had about 6 inches of counter space in the kitchen. We had a dishwasher on wheels that had a butcher block on top of it that I would prepare all of our food on. I would say to him, "Promise me, one day, I will have a real kitchen." He made good on his promise. 🙂
Thank you Tara, I can feel the energy of your home through your photos. I can even almost smell it, and it is exactly what I am going for in our home.
We are building a home on my in-laws land (i asked you years ago if that was something you would recommend and you replied-"that depends, how do you get along with your in laws? ;) " Well, i can now say after almost two years in their home---not very well!! but well enough that i can make it to the other side! hahaha. it has been challenging.
The home building process with two carpenters (father in law and husband) has also had it challenges (and amazing plusses of course) they do believe in letting the house breathe and are not into the "high efficiency" homes (or low flow toilets btw which are requiring loads more water in cities and causing septic tanks to be pumped much more often because they don't make a "slurry" but more of a sludge...) but they also firmly believe in the benefits of drywall so i have had no luck in my dream plaster walls. We protected our exterior wood doors with a linseed mix and my father in law joked that it couldn't be working because it didn't stink.
I often feel like one of the wealthy homeowners that my husband usually works for, telling the laborers what to do differently at every turn-things that are usually more costly and require more work. Most things don't pass. I help where I can. But we are insulting with wool in our walls! Apparently the supply chain worked in my favor for once because insulation is hard to get at the moment and the price shot up, so wool won!!
I refer to all your posts often, thank you so much for everything.
Haha, you deserve some sort of reward for your perseverance! How lovely that you have people you know and love building your home. And wool insulation! That's so dreamy. We can only do that in bits as walls come down. I hope you get in your home soon.
And now I feel I can stop my searching and searching for a floor sealer. Our home has lovely wood floors and the ones in our bedroom were sanded down, but not refinished. Time to look into recipes and processes for lye application with Castile soap.
I have been curious about your kill switch for years - what’s y’all’s alarm clock setup?
Approaching forty myself, my previous need for 12-14 hours of sleep a day is down to 9-11, but a room without a clock in it would be a big change.
My husband picked up a beautiful old wind up alarm clock for me years ago, and I was hopeful. Sadly, it is such a loud tick-tock that it dominates the entire house...
Alli, how you seal your floor (and Lord knows this was a painful lesson for me) is dependant on the type of wood the floors are made of. I used lye and castile soap on white oak and it doesn't work like it does on softwoods. The oak is too hard to permeate. It requires an oil to finish it. Look into WOCA products.
We just use an ipod on airplane mode as an alarm. It can't connect to anything anyway. Easy Peasy and doesn't need any plug in.
Oh my goodness, Tara. So much in here. I think I'm going to have to read over this one a few times. Thank you for the sanity bit about making small changes starting with what you have. I love and hate our house. I love it because we will soon be debt free. I hate it because there are so many things I see that are "wrong" with it. I need to change those in my head to "opportunities for improvement." 😅
Ha! Yes, you do. I have lived in some serious shit holes, Danae. But, to be debt free is an incredible gift and there are always things you can do to polish 'er up. Just a little love and appreciation for the life she's giving you :)
Would love a resource for the soap floor finish! A quick search has not led me to much. Would LOVE to do this when we reno our main floor in the next few years 😊
Your kitchen is beautiful and calming, just looking at the picture. I learned a lot in this post, and very inspiring. Thank you for writing about what you have learned . I hope to research more and put some of these into our house.
I always appreciate the succinct and impactful phrasing present in your writing, my favorite line from this blog being: “Desperation brings education in a way that interest can’t deliver.” Simply refreshing! I also feel very welcome to starting a conversation about “smart” digital technologies and how to find a balance.
I am not a fan of having my privacy invaded by corporate and government entities. I do my best to control what I can and part of that control has led to having “smart” devices in my home. Due to my rebellious questioning and non-trusting nature, I’ve had several tribe members remark that they were surprised that I would have “smart” devices in my home. I tend to lead toward a more natural living experience that most of the time that takes me in the opposite direction of acquiring digital technologies. Due to the surprise of my tribe, I found myself reassuring them that incorporating these things in my living space wasn’t something I took lightly nor was it in contrast to my lifestyle. I spent months (and on some topics, like EMF, years) researching the purpose of “smart” devices and digital technologies, they’re composition, use, and privacy characteristics. My research lead me down a road I didn’t expect which was to find a place for some of them in my life. In the end the biggest conclusion I reached was answering the question, does it (the device) enhance my life and allow me the opportunity to focus on the things that really matter? The enhancement has to be present in every aspect of my life regarding my mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being. I’ve committed to a mind, body, soul life experience years ago and I won’t compromise on that commitment in any one area. The answer to that question is often no so my home isn’t some entirely automated establishment. I could share more of the specifics about what devices I’ve chosen to incorporate in my home but my main goal here is to share a different perspective from someone not living on an amazingly self-sustaining farmstead (#goalsaf) but in a major city with no yard to grow food and inches from my neighbors. Oh yeah, Tara has fans and supporters from block and the barnyard and that makes her work that much more important and necessary. So if anyone read this blog as a critique of their lifestyle, I’d encourage you to shift your perspective because that’s not how or why she writes. Rather ask questions of yourself and others about what she’s shared. Create a dialogue (publicly or within yourself) and commit to holding a space for other ideas and lifestyles while affirming your own.
Thanks so much, Tracie :) It's always good for all of us to hear from different perspectives and approaches. So much of where I ended up was a result of getting sick for so long. It made me evaluate EVERYTHING! I couldn't afford to leave a single stone unturned. Then, as I got better, I kept what was working for me and that was that. 🙂
I’ve read and re-read and gazed at these beautiful photos since you published it. Among other things, you’ve made sense of the feelings I’ve always had in the historic houses I’ve lived in where I could hardly wait to start tearing out linoleum and stripping things back to masonry and wood. You’ve offered so much here that I feel badly asking for more, but I would love to know what you use for a mattress. I’m somewhat skeptical of what’s marketed as natural and organic, but don’t know a reliable guide on that topic.
Thank you, Emily. We use an organic mattress that's made here in Canada from natural rubber latex the company farms themselves. It's hard, there are so many scam mattress companies. We are buying a new mattress this year, from the same company. Their covers are certified organic cotton, then a GOTS certified wool and then the inner, aforementioned, natural rubber latex. There is so much BS with latex. Honestly, it takes a masters degree to just buy a mattress nowadays!
Ugh, Tara, I am so mad at myself. I mentioned to you almost a year ago that we would be building a house from scratch, and hoping to go with a log house. That did not pan out. Every turn we took things got more expensive than promised and we ended up in such a hurry that we are now invested in building a conventional house. I thought maybe I could at least use wool insulation, but our budget is so tight I don't see being able to afford it. Forget plaster. We'll have plenty of windows for air circulation, but it makes me sick thinking about what we could have done, and now we are building something that will inevitably go in a landfill someday.
I don't know, at this point the goal is just to move out of the city, maybe someday we'll move again when we're in less of a hurry and think this through better.
Taryn, your house will be beautiful and warm and full of your love. Who cares if it's not exactly right. Fill it with your gracious admiration for all of the things it has going for it. Bless it with your joy. Christen it with your gratitude and appreciation. You can diddle around with other things to ensure good air and chemical free living. I'm so happy you will be in your own home. ❤️❤️
So good! And I love the pictures! All the nitty gritty details of what you do - it's so very valuable. I am simply so grateful that you are willing to share all of this wonderful wisdom. Thank you.
Aaah! Thank you for the detailed examples. I never knew how to care for those real wood floors the old way. There is so much that I wish I was taught by prior generations. I wonder why my ancestors didn't write things down so much apart from some recipes. It is sad for me. There were so many experiences and learning curves they went through. Perhaps instead of being sad I should take it as a hint that we the now-living should write things down for future generations.
It is not very cold yet in Tennessee. But once the cold winter sets in, I put our reindeer pelts on our beds for extra warmth. They make me feel connected to life before modernity. I often day dream about those old eras. I was that kind of child playing make believe in the kitchen with a pot, ladle and water, stirring it and imagining I was in a stone cottage with a fire crackling, on the misty, wintery moors in Scotland waiting for the boys to come back from bartering in town.
Sorry, got carried away sharing. It always feels as if we are all there bundled up around the fire and listening even when your posts are written ones. ❤
I love that story, Yvette. I was one of those kids, too. Dreaming of the life in the pages of Little House on the Prairie and Tasha Tudor. We would probably have been pals. 🙂
Your kitchen is perfection Tara 😍
I’m lucky to have a beautiful, fairly natural home. My fiancé built it himself a couple years before we met. He comes from a family of inspired west coast builders and our house has passive solar design, big timbers milled by him, a front door made of a solid slab of Douglas fir, fir countertops, plastered walls, fir ceilings , polished concrete floor and a green roof. His go to material is always locally sourced wood that he mills. Our dining table is made of four solid yellow cedar slabs held together without any hardware (by some magic, I assume). He has a lot to say about modern building codes, as he is a licensed home builder and has to deal with some crazy shit in that department. They have to seal them up so tight, like a plastic bag, and then add in a whole hvac system for anything over a certain square footage (because a house that can’t breath will grow mould of course). So much unnecessary material is used in houses now in the name of energy efficiency. Give me a leaky house with wood heat any day.
Our only heat source is a gorgeous mass heating wood fireplace covered in brick (with an oven). It’s really the heart of our home.
I would have made some edits were I here for the building process (copper pipe instead of pex for example) but I accept that I can’t fix everything. I do have a scheme to add a wood cook stove one day, though my guy refuses to ever cut a hole through the green roof (fair enough). I really feel the lack of a wood fired cooktop.
We feel the same way you do about furniture. It’s got to be vintage wood or we just can’t stand it. Plus, it’s cheaper to buy old stuff. You need to hunt for it, but that’s the fun part!
Your home sounds absolutely gorgeous, Karla. I could feel the energy in it just by the way you wrote about it. Gorgeous! I love mass wood heaters! You're a lucky bum!
Thank you 💕 It’s really a testament to my amazing man. When we first met and I first slept in the house, I said it felt like I was in his head. It’s such a personal, thoughtfully designed house and it took him five years to build. I knew we were a match as soon as I came home here.
Love this Karla! I am looking to get educated on the safety of wood fire when it comes to smoke both our own health and the air… what are your thoughts on this?
There’s no issues in an energy efficient, tested and verified, modern wood stove. When you hold up one of these stoves against the life cycle, from mining to refining to transport of other heat and energy sources, there’s no comparison. Local wood, chopped and properly seasoned before burning in a certified, well sealed stove is as good as it gets. 🙂
Thank you for taking the time to reply! I have learned so much from you. The question comes from news I’ve been reading about how wood fire smoke is a significant air pollutant in urban spaces (right now, unfortunately that’s where I am). I was thinking of moving over to a gas fireplace for this reason, though it breaks my heart to do so because I love my wood fireplace so.
So just trying to understand all the sides…
Do you think that research outcome might have to do with wood that is not local or properly seasoned?
Thanks so much again, Tara, for your insight!
Oh so sorry this was the edited question…
Your home sounds so beautiful. We are working on building a 500sq ft home for us and want to do a passive design with good materials. Can I ask, do you have insulation? If so, what did you use?
Hi Willow, what insulation did you end up using, if any?
We used havelock wool insulation and have been really happy with it so far
I recently left the city and moved into a ~custom tiny home~ in the woods. This was the most affordable way for my to get into a more "non-toxic" environment. My builder was pretty accommodating with the materials I chose– non-toxic paint, hardwiring ethernet ports (5 ethernet ports in a tiny house!! Lol). I asked them to leave all the wood raw, and I finished it myself with hemp oil. It still has modern crappy insulation, but I am pretty pleased with this being my home for this season of life, while we save up and continue soaking in information to prepare us for starting our own homestead.
Congratulations! What an excellent way to get out of the city and set yourself up without taking on astronomical debt just to have a place of your own.
Hi Tara, this post is so interesting and super helpful. As we are looking for renovation objects in Norway this comes so handy. I have been thinking a lot about it already, but sometimes things are a bit above my head. I have no knowledge yet on renovating and it can seem daunting. This will help us a lot in the right direction! Thank you :) I was wondering since I read your post on having off-grid systems in place that do not rely on electrical dependencies like the solar panel systems. I was wondering how you would do that with refrigerators and freezers and such? My only idea now is that you would probably just can everything, even meat? But would that be doable? Or do you have other tactics?
Well, it all depends on timelines. So, if the power goes out here, what we do is dependant on how long. Because we freeze all of our meat in the fall, power outages aren't a big issue throughout the winter because it's so cold and our freezers are in an unheated building so everything stays cold. If it is summer time and we are in a long power outage, our freezers are quite low on meat and we would can what's there. We also have a generator hardwired into our house and the outbuilding so everything would be fine for an extended time.
If we're talking about the collapse of the grid altogether, it would be as it would be for everyone. Back to salt and smoke and air for preserving. Skills everyone should know.
I was interested to hear about this as well. I’ve been talking about independence with my man a lot lately and he’s running with it. He just upgraded our fresh water storage by a factor of three and next is a hardwired diesel generator and a diesel tank. I’ve been on the fence about going into a battery bank and solar. Not sure it’s worth it, except for our well pump. I always want to be able to get water out of our well, and what if diesel isn’t available? We do have excellent clean surface water not terribly fair away, but again, without fuel or electricity for a pump, it would be really hard to get it to our house.
How are you set up for water? Does your well need an electric pump?
Our pump was our achilles heel. We have a lot of water around us so if things got bad, it's easy to haul water, but that's really not ideal. The madness of the current world convinced us that this year was the year to finally bite the bullet and get the Bison Pump we've wanted for ten years or so now. Honestly, it's such a relief.
Oh those are interesting! How deep is your well? Ours is over 400ft.
Just saw that they go to 300ft :(
Our well is bit of a stinker, except for the excellent water lol. It’s also a really slow producer.
I love this series!! My husband and I are at the very beginning of this journey in setting up our home to be a haven - we only keep furniture/decorations that are meaningful & beautiful, but we still have a loooong way to go. Partially because we are still attached to the military, and will be moving at their whim a few more times over the next few years. I have been gathering ideas for our forever home, wherever/whenever that come to be, and this post is FULL of great ideas to research. Thank you thank you thank you!
Thanks, Molly. That was me for a few decades - dreaming a dream about a kitchen I would one day have. My husband likes to tell the story of when one of the military houses we had only had about 6 inches of counter space in the kitchen. We had a dishwasher on wheels that had a butcher block on top of it that I would prepare all of our food on. I would say to him, "Promise me, one day, I will have a real kitchen." He made good on his promise. 🙂
Thank you Tara, I can feel the energy of your home through your photos. I can even almost smell it, and it is exactly what I am going for in our home.
We are building a home on my in-laws land (i asked you years ago if that was something you would recommend and you replied-"that depends, how do you get along with your in laws? ;) " Well, i can now say after almost two years in their home---not very well!! but well enough that i can make it to the other side! hahaha. it has been challenging.
The home building process with two carpenters (father in law and husband) has also had it challenges (and amazing plusses of course) they do believe in letting the house breathe and are not into the "high efficiency" homes (or low flow toilets btw which are requiring loads more water in cities and causing septic tanks to be pumped much more often because they don't make a "slurry" but more of a sludge...) but they also firmly believe in the benefits of drywall so i have had no luck in my dream plaster walls. We protected our exterior wood doors with a linseed mix and my father in law joked that it couldn't be working because it didn't stink.
I often feel like one of the wealthy homeowners that my husband usually works for, telling the laborers what to do differently at every turn-things that are usually more costly and require more work. Most things don't pass. I help where I can. But we are insulting with wool in our walls! Apparently the supply chain worked in my favor for once because insulation is hard to get at the moment and the price shot up, so wool won!!
I refer to all your posts often, thank you so much for everything.
Haha, you deserve some sort of reward for your perseverance! How lovely that you have people you know and love building your home. And wool insulation! That's so dreamy. We can only do that in bits as walls come down. I hope you get in your home soon.
And now I feel I can stop my searching and searching for a floor sealer. Our home has lovely wood floors and the ones in our bedroom were sanded down, but not refinished. Time to look into recipes and processes for lye application with Castile soap.
I have been curious about your kill switch for years - what’s y’all’s alarm clock setup?
Approaching forty myself, my previous need for 12-14 hours of sleep a day is down to 9-11, but a room without a clock in it would be a big change.
My husband picked up a beautiful old wind up alarm clock for me years ago, and I was hopeful. Sadly, it is such a loud tick-tock that it dominates the entire house...
Alli, how you seal your floor (and Lord knows this was a painful lesson for me) is dependant on the type of wood the floors are made of. I used lye and castile soap on white oak and it doesn't work like it does on softwoods. The oak is too hard to permeate. It requires an oil to finish it. Look into WOCA products.
We just use an ipod on airplane mode as an alarm. It can't connect to anything anyway. Easy Peasy and doesn't need any plug in.
Oh my goodness, Tara. So much in here. I think I'm going to have to read over this one a few times. Thank you for the sanity bit about making small changes starting with what you have. I love and hate our house. I love it because we will soon be debt free. I hate it because there are so many things I see that are "wrong" with it. I need to change those in my head to "opportunities for improvement." 😅
Ha! Yes, you do. I have lived in some serious shit holes, Danae. But, to be debt free is an incredible gift and there are always things you can do to polish 'er up. Just a little love and appreciation for the life she's giving you :)
Would love a resource for the soap floor finish! A quick search has not led me to much. Would LOVE to do this when we reno our main floor in the next few years 😊
WOCA, but, please read the comment above 😉
Your kitchen is beautiful and calming, just looking at the picture. I learned a lot in this post, and very inspiring. Thank you for writing about what you have learned . I hope to research more and put some of these into our house.
Thank you, Julieanne. 💕
I always appreciate the succinct and impactful phrasing present in your writing, my favorite line from this blog being: “Desperation brings education in a way that interest can’t deliver.” Simply refreshing! I also feel very welcome to starting a conversation about “smart” digital technologies and how to find a balance.
I am not a fan of having my privacy invaded by corporate and government entities. I do my best to control what I can and part of that control has led to having “smart” devices in my home. Due to my rebellious questioning and non-trusting nature, I’ve had several tribe members remark that they were surprised that I would have “smart” devices in my home. I tend to lead toward a more natural living experience that most of the time that takes me in the opposite direction of acquiring digital technologies. Due to the surprise of my tribe, I found myself reassuring them that incorporating these things in my living space wasn’t something I took lightly nor was it in contrast to my lifestyle. I spent months (and on some topics, like EMF, years) researching the purpose of “smart” devices and digital technologies, they’re composition, use, and privacy characteristics. My research lead me down a road I didn’t expect which was to find a place for some of them in my life. In the end the biggest conclusion I reached was answering the question, does it (the device) enhance my life and allow me the opportunity to focus on the things that really matter? The enhancement has to be present in every aspect of my life regarding my mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being. I’ve committed to a mind, body, soul life experience years ago and I won’t compromise on that commitment in any one area. The answer to that question is often no so my home isn’t some entirely automated establishment. I could share more of the specifics about what devices I’ve chosen to incorporate in my home but my main goal here is to share a different perspective from someone not living on an amazingly self-sustaining farmstead (#goalsaf) but in a major city with no yard to grow food and inches from my neighbors. Oh yeah, Tara has fans and supporters from block and the barnyard and that makes her work that much more important and necessary. So if anyone read this blog as a critique of their lifestyle, I’d encourage you to shift your perspective because that’s not how or why she writes. Rather ask questions of yourself and others about what she’s shared. Create a dialogue (publicly or within yourself) and commit to holding a space for other ideas and lifestyles while affirming your own.
Thanks so much, Tracie :) It's always good for all of us to hear from different perspectives and approaches. So much of where I ended up was a result of getting sick for so long. It made me evaluate EVERYTHING! I couldn't afford to leave a single stone unturned. Then, as I got better, I kept what was working for me and that was that. 🙂
Hello Tara! My husband and I are thinking of "soaping" our floors. Any advice?
Only do it if they're a softwood species. Don't make the mistake I did and soap a hardwood like oak. Oi vey... what a disaster.
Thank you! It is all douglas fir so we should be good!
I need more of this. So incredibly helpful. Fabulous, Tara!
I’ve read and re-read and gazed at these beautiful photos since you published it. Among other things, you’ve made sense of the feelings I’ve always had in the historic houses I’ve lived in where I could hardly wait to start tearing out linoleum and stripping things back to masonry and wood. You’ve offered so much here that I feel badly asking for more, but I would love to know what you use for a mattress. I’m somewhat skeptical of what’s marketed as natural and organic, but don’t know a reliable guide on that topic.
Thank you, Emily. We use an organic mattress that's made here in Canada from natural rubber latex the company farms themselves. It's hard, there are so many scam mattress companies. We are buying a new mattress this year, from the same company. Their covers are certified organic cotton, then a GOTS certified wool and then the inner, aforementioned, natural rubber latex. There is so much BS with latex. Honestly, it takes a masters degree to just buy a mattress nowadays!
Ugh, Tara, I am so mad at myself. I mentioned to you almost a year ago that we would be building a house from scratch, and hoping to go with a log house. That did not pan out. Every turn we took things got more expensive than promised and we ended up in such a hurry that we are now invested in building a conventional house. I thought maybe I could at least use wool insulation, but our budget is so tight I don't see being able to afford it. Forget plaster. We'll have plenty of windows for air circulation, but it makes me sick thinking about what we could have done, and now we are building something that will inevitably go in a landfill someday.
I don't know, at this point the goal is just to move out of the city, maybe someday we'll move again when we're in less of a hurry and think this through better.
Taryn, your house will be beautiful and warm and full of your love. Who cares if it's not exactly right. Fill it with your gracious admiration for all of the things it has going for it. Bless it with your joy. Christen it with your gratitude and appreciation. You can diddle around with other things to ensure good air and chemical free living. I'm so happy you will be in your own home. ❤️❤️
So good! And I love the pictures! All the nitty gritty details of what you do - it's so very valuable. I am simply so grateful that you are willing to share all of this wonderful wisdom. Thank you.