Curing Homestead Burnout

Like my last post said when I got back home from vacation, I got pretty depressed because the one thing that I realized was that my life consisted of work...work...and more work. Never having time to really enjoy the fruits of my labor or anything else for that matter because I was always working on something. Well, that is the past and now here is the present and future. Farming is not my life...it is part of my life and I am working now on developing other aspects of my life. I have done some major cleanouts lately and gotten rid of clutter not only from the house but from the barns. I am so OCD about clutter that when things are cluttered and untidy then I feel cluttered and untidy. We had piles of "might use someday", my get repurposed someday" and "might get fixed someday" all around the farm. Most of those are now gone having either been scrapped, given away or taken to the dump. What was left is now neatly stacked and stored under the shed. We have just about finished cutting up and clearing away one tree and even though we have several more to cut up and clean up this one was nearer to the barn and so the barn area looks much better and tidier...happier me. The house has been given another going through and probably will have another one in a couple of months. Part of how we accumulated so much is that same "depression" mentality that my grandparents had. My grandparents both grew up during the depression and saved everything (I mean everything) because it might be able to be used someday. My husband and I have always struggled with living on a tight budget to say the least and disposable money to just always buy something when we needed it has not been there so most times we have had to make do with what we could scrounge, build, or repurpose from what we already had around. This meant that we always kept something around. So all this decluttering and freeing ourselves of those "someday" piles has really been liberating for me. I have done some more work on my front porch and in my front yard. I have always loved cottage type decorating and have really done a cottagey number on the front porch. It is now my retreat and I am enjoying starting my day on the front porch with my coffee, the computer and being able to watch the chickens run around as the sun comes up. This is what country life is supposed to be like. Morning chores are simplified and streamlined so that they only take an hour of my life now. Keeping the house daily takes about another hour. Schoolwork is done in the morning and the afternoon is spent enjoying my children and working on hobbies that bring me pleasure. I hope to soon get back to that painting that has been sitting on my easel for 4 years (yes I said 4 years). This Friday the children and I are going on a short road trip to see some sights and end the day with an art walk in another town. Life is good again here at Whisper Wind. The garden is under a major re-haul with the excess that we used to grow vegetables being transformed to grow berries and dwarf fruit trees. The whole thing is being mulched heavily so that I don't have to worry with weeds, but the space is being made use of. We won't be doing a CSA anymore and have decided more fruits and berries is much more lucrative than selling vegetables. Hope you all are having a good summer, ours is getting much better and I have a feeling this is going to be a good year. Blessings, Kat