Hello Friend

I know you are looking forward to summer and if you want to spend most of your days outside instead of cleaning inside, you are going to want to do these steps now so you have less stress when summer comes! When you simplify your Spring cleaning system, you will feel less overwhelmed and more at peace.

There was a time when I felt that I was wasting so much time always cleaning, but that was before I simplified my life. It felt like a never ending cycle of cleaning one area and by the time I got to all the areas, I needed to clean the area I started with again and it was exhausting! I am not a type A person, so I’m always random because I always want to fit the most important part of my life first and I don’t want God or my family to just get leftovers.

As my life gets fuller and fuller with a larger family with more Grandkids, I want to spend time with them and not time cleaning and keeping up on the house and I bet you understand this as well!

You have to make a plan and what it is that you really want to get done. This is a big deal! When you plan your time and add it to your calendar, you are bound to get alot more done! Even 15 minutes at a time will help you get ahead!

Next, start decluttering. When you have less items to manage, you have less mental stress and less you have to keep up on, so I want you to start with one room of your house and eliminate anything you do not use. This may take a little bit of time, but I promise you, it will be worth it in the end! What a game changer it is to have to clean less because you have less to organize and manage! Once summer comes, you can be outside without having to waste time in the house cleaning or organizing!

Next, reduce what you clean with. I only use a few items for cleaning and this reduces overwhelm in having to keep up on what you have on hand so it keeps cleaning simple and also saves money! We have a multipurpose spray that we use for most of the cleaning, some toilet bombs, and vinegar with essential oils which covers almost everything!!!!! If you want the recipes for the DIY cleaners, I will leave the link in the show notes! I also have other simple items on that you might like as well! Enjoy!

If you don’t have a roomba, I suggest putting it in your budget when you can get it -we don’t have animals in our house, but it is works incredibly well. I have an app and have it scheduled for times it works for our family and it just automatically runs! It doesn’t get everything, but saves me from having to dust or mop the floors more than a few times a year or if it gets soiled!

I like to go through my clothes, cupboards and bathroom every Spring to just eliminate anything I don’t need. It doesn’t take me very long because after Christmas, I like to purge as much as I can too, so it is just a matter of seeing if there is anything you haven’t used or won’t use for the summer season.

I spend most of our time outside, with family or at our cabin in the summer if it works, so I don’t do any purging, decluttering or organizing usually until Fall, and that is usually a quick declutter of canning and preserving items and getting the summer clothes swapped out for our winter clothes. With less stuff, there is so much less cleaning and you can spend time doing what you love and being outdoors! So much less stress!

Blessings!

Monica

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Hello Friend

Are you constantly searching recipes for the fad diets that keep you on the roller coaster of diet trends for years that mess with your metabolism? I don’t even know what the newest thing is out there right now since we just switched to nutrient dense food years ago and cooking from scratch.

From that time, I started learning about what is in the food we eat and how to eat more nutrient rich foods so I don’t ever have to diet. We want our kids to know how important it is to look at what is in the food, the dyes and also if it has more than a couple ingredients, it probably is something I would skip.

Now, as I have simplified and created a whole system around this, we still will get things on occasion that don’t align with this and that is okay. It isnt all or nothing such as diets. Just so the majority of the time, you are opting for healthy choices.

Live your best life by treating your body well. You only have 1 body, so feed it good food. When you have an active everyday life, you are naturally able to get exercise into your schedule-habit stack on each thing you do throughout the day!

Our favorite nutrient dense foods right now are meats such as venison, pork, beef and chicken. Did you know that nutrient dense means less food with the most amount of nutrients. You don’t have to eat large amounts of nutrient dense foods because they are just packed with goodness. We eat seasonally so right now we are eating potatoes and trying to use up all our preserved produce before the new season arrives. Consumption of nutrient dense foods rich in protein, fiber, and essential vitamins and minerals are one of the keys to wellness!

Remember, With God~all things are possible!

~Monica

Website and Waitlist:

Claimingsimplicity.com

Simple Homesteading for Christians->

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Happy May Friend

Simplify your home-this will save you many hours of having to manage items and cleaning.This will truely create more time in your life. I didn’t realize how much my life would be simplified by decluttering. I now have less stress trying to manage all the stuff and if you have not done this yet, reach out and I will help you get started~the hardest part is figuring out where to start. When everything has a place, it tends to be super simple to keep up with and when you have a super simple systems, you are able to spend more time doing the things you love with the people you enjoy being with and it feels so much lighter to have less to manage.

DO NOT overbook your schedule. Keeping your schedule simple can reduce overwhelm as a busy mom. There are times when I want to squeeze something in, but then I remind myself, that never works, so I don’t even try anymore and if it is something that someone asks me to do or help with, I just politely say, “thanks for thinking of me, but at this time in my life, I have to pass. I stopped being a yes girl many years ago.

Know your energy. Do your creative projects when you have the most energy and are focused. I hope these time management tips help you create more time in your busy schedule so you can get more done in less time! I am all about simple and efficient things!

Have a great week!

Monica

Website and Waitlist:

Claimingsimplicity.com

Simple Homesteading for Christians->

https://www.facebook.com/groups/claimingsimplicity/

Email -> monica@claimingsimplicity.com

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Pinterest -> https://www.pinterest.com/claimingsimplicity/

Hey Friend!

I still can’t believe how much prices have increased at the grocery store and I am extremely thankful we grow and raise as much food as possible, so we don’t have to spend much at the store, but there are always items you can’t grow in your location, so we do rely on the store a little and azure standard for our bulk items. I might notice it more as I don’t have to buy items very often and am still not used to it! If you are tight on money, start cleaning out your cupboards. No matter what, it is just a good practice to do so you don’t let any food go to waste. If you are like me, we do end up having a few random items expire and I don’t like to waste anything, so make sure to look at dates. This would be your freezer foods and canned foods.

As we were looking at the amount of hamburger and venison burger we had in the freezer, we realized that we wanted to save that because we are running low and we have 2 freezers full of pork now, so we have been trying different recipes that we typically use hamburger or venison for and replacing that with pork. Since we are now raising our own pork along with our chicken, we have an abundance. I just put a roast with potatoes, carrots and bone broth I took out from the freezer into the crockpot. This is such a simple meal as it sits on low all day and falls apart and tender

when it is ready to eat in the evening.

We are really trying to use as much as we can from our canned goods and freezers to use them up before the new gardening season starts to produce, so when you plan your meals every week, you want to look at what you have on hand and what you can make with those items and then your grocery list is usually quite short.

I took ground pork and added some ketchup, mustard and brown sugar for sloppy joes and my husband enjoyed that as much as beef, so that was good. I made up about 8 pounds and then froze several portions, so he always has a variety each week for his work lunches with different meals.

We also made taco meat with the ground pork along with tacos bowls. This is such a great way to have something in the fridge at all times for a quick meal. I just keep bowls of rice, corn, black beans that I soaked, and then add cheese, salsa, sour cream or any other items you like on your taco bowls. If you don’t want to have bowls, this can easily be made into burritos as well. This is one of my favorite meals actually-chipotle at home!

When you are using items you already have at home, you will save alot of money. Don’t let your food go to waste and just buy what you need. As always, remember to keep it simple! You can make several nourishing and nutrient dense meals in a short amount of time.

Have a blessed week friend

~Monica

Website and Waitlist:

Claimingsimplicity.com

Simple Homesteading for Christians->

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Email -> monica@claimingsimplicity.com

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Hey Friend

Now that we will have 100 laying hens, people always ask what we are going to do with all the eggs! Just for your information, we will not be keeping this amount of chickens, we are raising some to about 12 weeks for friends, 25 of them could be roosters or hens, so the roosters we will be butchering because we have our one and only gentle rooster named frank sinatra that we love so much and don’t need another rooster at this time, so we could be less than 75 before we know it!

My teenagers sell the eggs and this is a really good gig for them since we pay for the feed and they make the money on the eggs!

We boil at least a dozen or two boiled eggs during the week. It is a great grab and go snack for the whole family. Sometimes we will make deviled eggs out of them for a snack depending on if we have extra time.

One of my favorite ways to use a dozen at a time is to make egg bakes and freeze them. I usually will make 4-6 at a time and then we will take them out of the freezer the day or night before and let them thaw and bake them in the morning. We love to have egg bakes in the fridge all week-not only for breakfasts, but if we need to heat a quick meal up in between sports or an event. If you go to my website below and go to the blog, you will see our favoirite egg bake recipe. Everyone raves about this one and we have been using it for over 20 years along with a few of our other favorite ones.

We will scramble up dozens of eggs and cook them, cook sausage, and brown hashbrown and make breakfast bowls and freeze them and our family loves these as well.

It is really important to me that my kids get a nourishing breakfast every day before school with protein, fat and healthy carbs to sustain them. It has been many many years since I have bought breakfast cereals and items from the store. There is always something in the fridge they can access within a few minutes to make it convenient. These are our convenient foods! No package needed, nutritious, simple adn cheap!!!!

We like to make omlets and quiches, egg salad sandwiches, potato salad. There are just so many ways you can use eggs.

I will take a day and make months worth of sourdough noodles which take alot of eggs-the amount just depends how big I make the batch.

There are so many ways we can use eggs up in our house and it makes for simple and easy meals if you want something quick.

I just ordered a refurbished freeze dryer, so that is another way we will be able to preserve them for 20 plus years if needed! I can’t wait! I’m really going to have to get that you tube channel up and running for you so that you can see all my wins and failures as I test out so many food items.

Chickens are really worth getting because there are so many ways to use the eggs!

Happy Homesteading Friend!

~Monica

Website and Waitlist:

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Simple Homesteading for Christians->

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I really do beleive that alot of it has to do with the food we eat. There are so many hidden poisons in packaged food that are banned in other countries, so I believe diving into food labels and simplifying our choices can have a profound impact on our health and well-being. This topic is close to every homesteader's heart – we all want to deciphering those food labels and embrace the beauty of minimal ingredients.

Picture this: you're standing in the grocery aisle, scanning rows of products, each has an array of ingredients you can barely pronounce. Sound familiar? It's time to reclaim control and return to simplicity!

Why should we care about those tiny print labels? Well, they're like treasure maps, guiding you to the healthiest choices. By adopting a "more is less" approach – aiming for foods with less than 2-3 ingredients – this will help you not just simplify your shopping trips, but also nourish your bodies with wholesome goodness.

So, what's the secret sauce to deciphering these labels? It's all about prioritizing quality over quantity. Look for real, recognizable ingredients – think fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins. Skip the lengthy chemical compounds and opt for foods that Mother Nature herself would recognize. When it says other natural ingredients, that should be avoided as well as you don’t really know what that is.

Look at your bread you have right now if you get it from the store. I looked at a loaf the other day when I was grocery shopping and there were about 15 ingredients in it! Bread is flour, water and yeast. If you don’t have time for sourdough, you do have time for regular bread-I have a recipe that takes less than 10 minutes plus bake time and you can make multiple loaves at a time. I make mine in bulk, so I only have to make it 1 day every 5-6 weeks and that gives me peace of mind that I am helping with my family’s health and wellbeing.

If you have not already, please get on the waitlist for my program that is going to help you start making simple swaps from the store step by step so you can fit this into your life no matter how busy you are. I am the queen of simplicity and I love teaching others to do the same! The link to my website to sign up will be below!

I get it – life gets busy, and convenience is king. That's why i’m not suggesting you ditch all pre-packaged foods entirely. Instead, just get savvy with your selections. Seek out brands committed to transparency and integrity, with short, sweet ingredient lists you can trust.

And let's not forget the joy of homemade food! Channel your inner homesteader and whip up your own pantry staples – from creamy nut butter to zesty salad dressings. Not only do you control what goes in, but you'll also savor the satisfaction of creating something from scratch. You won’t ever want to go back to store bought items after you see how simple they are to make and how you can save money!

So, dear friend, let's make a pact to simplify our plates and nourish our bodies with foods that speak the language of simplicity. Remember the journey to wellness begins with just 2-3 wholesome ingredients.

Until next time, keep claiming simplicity in every aspect of your life friends!

~Monica

Website and Waitlist:

Claimingsimplicity.com

Simple Homesteading for Christians->

https://www.facebook.com/groups/claimingsimplicity/

Email -> monica@claimingsimplicity.com

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Pinterest -> https://www.pinterest.com/claimingsimplicity/