Homestead

Our family lives a dirty, messy life. We travel a ton, bringing all sorts of sand and grime home. Our suitcases usually land on a dusty floor in the bedroom before we run around dealing with chickens, sheep, goats, dogs and cats. This particular Neato Botvac review is definitely putting the vacuum through its paces. Grime is next-level around here, along with Cheerios, LEGOs and a whole manner of other random trinkets that wind up under our feet. If anything were to break this piece of glorious technology, it would be us.

Setting the stage for the holidays? We always know to sweep the floors, clean the windows, and wipe down the counters – but there’s a whole host of stuff to think about beyond that. Guests see the whole picture when they visit! Here’s a cleaning list that will make sure you get all the most important little crevices in ship-shape for the holidays.

We all crave our own space. A place to get away. A place that isn’t invaded by others, by other issues, other memories. A place with a clean slate to call our own and to escape to so we can process everything we’ve had to deal with throughout the day. Sometimes a quiet place to rest or just read a book.

A few people have asked how we manage all the rescue cats that I impulsively adopt. The answer? A BIG litter box! We have an auto-feeder and one of those self-changing litter box things, so the cats are pretty self-sufficient. As I said, though, the box is large. And the inside of our one-level farm house is pretty small. Ongoing renovations have shrunk our useable space even more lately, so the only place for our big litter box to go right now is a few feet from our dining room table.

We have readers reach out on occasion with questions about our kitchen sink organizer situation. Since we posted about our kitchen hub awhile back, it seems that minimalism in the cooking area is a hot topic! The organization in this space can’t really be contributed to a specific organizer or individual design purchase, though. When it comes to our farmhouse, Nate and I have made a long series of decisions that have contributed to a simplistic space in general. Here are some of our favorite kitchen sink organizer ideas.

Along with traveling about half the year, Nate and I own a low maintenance farm in the rural hills of San Diego. This is definitely one of the things we get asked about most. How on EARTH can we manage to be away for days, sometimes even weeks at a time, while still keeping a bunch of animals alive?

Living on a small farm, we’ve had a LOT of cats. Indoor cats, outdoor cats, feral cats, domestic cats. Fancy breeds and mixed, short hair and long. We’ve adopted both kittens and adults, and talked about it all here on the blog. It’s not surprising, then, when readers email us with questions like: wet or dry food for cats? Which should I pick?

So, a few months back, Chelsea and I were perusing a blogging conference and ran in to some of the great people from Kidde. I was excited to speak with them and was stoked when they reached back out to us last month and asked if we could talk about Kidde carbon monoxide alarms. Despite the fact that we’ve been a Kidde family for…well…as long as I can remember, they still sent over a plug-in CO alarm. I’ll talk about that later, though.

We still have that quirky outdoor laundry shed that I told you guys about a while ago, with no plans to bring the laundry machines back inside. We get emails asking us how we feel about this setup every few days, and the answer is that we love it! We’ve gone full steam ahead converting the old indoor laundry area into a master bathroom, and our whole family has easily adjusted to using the space opposite the washing machine as our new home stockpile. Since so many people have asked to see the other side of the room where the magical washing and drying stuff happens, we’re bringing you into the mix. It’s time to see how we store ALL the things. Come along and tour our laundry area!