When people hear the words “slow living,” I think they sometimes picture a very polished version of it. A quiet house, homemade bread cooling on the counter, children happily reading in the sunshine, and everything moving at this peaceful pace. That is definitely not our house. There are nine of us here, so our days are loud, busy, messy, and usually a little chaotic. There are animals to feed, school to do, meals to make, laundry everywhere, work, house projects, kids running in and out, and someone almost always calling for me from another room. For us, living slower has never meant doing less. It has meant becoming more intentional about what fills our home, what gets our attention, what we consume, and what kind of childhood our children are actually experiencing while they are growing up here.
Over time, we started noticing how much modern life is designed around speed, convenience, and constant consumption. Food comes packaged and ready. Entertainment is available instantly. Screens are everywhere. There is always another show, another app, another notification, another thing to scroll through, and another way to fill every quiet moment before anyone even has the chance to be bored. None of those things are automatically bad, but we realized we didn’t want them to become the default for our family. Slowing down has meant pulling back from some of that and choosing a life that feels more connected to our home, our food, the outdoors, and each other.
Becoming More Intentional About Food
Food has been one of the biggest areas where our thinking has changed. The more labels we started reading, the more uncomfortable we became with how many everyday foods are heavily processed and filled with long lists of additives, artificial colors, preservatives, flavorings, stabilizers, added sugars, and ingredients we would never use if we were making the same thing ourselves. We are not going to grow every single thing our family eats, especially with this many mouths to feed, but we can become more aware of what we are bringing into our home and make more of it ourselves when we can.
Growing more of our own food is a big part of where we are headed. There is something completely different about eating something when you know exactly where it came from because you planted it, cared for it, watched it grow, harvested it, and carried it into your own kitchen. The kids get to see the entire process instead of only seeing food once it has been washed, packaged, and placed on a grocery store shelf. They learn how much work goes into producing it, that sometimes things fail, that weather matters, and that food takes time. Even if we never become completely self-sufficient, every little bit we can grow ourselves gives us more connection to what we eat and more control over what we are feeding our family.
Raising Animals and Learning Responsibility
Raising animals has become another important part of the life we are building. Animals are fun, but they are also real responsibility. They need to be fed whether anyone feels like going outside that morning or not. Water needs to be checked, things need to be cleaned, and someone has to notice when something does not seem right. There are enjoyable parts and there are messy, inconvenient parts, and the kids get to experience both.
There are lessons in raising animals that are difficult to recreate in a workbook. The kids learn consistency, responsibility, patience, and how to care for something that depends on them. They also develop a much more realistic understanding of where things come from. Food does not simply begin in a grocery store, and caring for animals gives them a connection to that process that I think has become very easy to lose. It is hands-on, sometimes messy, occasionally heartbreaking, and very real. That is part of why it belongs in the life we are trying to build here.
Why Homeschooling Works for Us
Homeschooling fits naturally into this life because it gives us the freedom to let learning happen alongside everything else instead of keeping education in a completely separate box. We still have books, lessons, math, writing, and all of the normal academic things that need to happen, but there is also an enormous amount of learning happening through regular life. Growing food involves science. Cooking involves math. Caring for animals teaches biology, responsibility, and observation. Projects around the homestead involve measuring, planning, problem solving, and learning how to use our hands.
That flexibility works incredibly well for our family. If someone needs more time on something, we have it. If one of the kids becomes interested in a subject and wants to keep going, we can follow it. If the weather is beautiful, they can finish their work and spend the rest of the afternoon outside. Not every homeschool day is peaceful or productive, and there are absolutely days when somebody is crying over math while another child has somehow lost the pencil that was just in their hand. But overall, homeschooling allows education to fit into our family instead of requiring our entire family life to revolve around a schedule that someone else created.
Getting Rid of the Flat Screens
One of the biggest changes we made was getting rid of the flat-screen televisions in our home and switching back to VHS tapes and DVDs. We are not anti-tv by any means. We just did not love what modern entertainment had turned into for us. Smart TVs made it too easy to sit down, scroll endlessly through thousands of choices, bounce between apps, and always have something else waiting the second one thing ended. There was no stopping ads from popping up that weren’t appropriate and no matter how many parental controls existed, it wasn’t enough.
Switching back to physical media changed that completely. Now we have a shelf of movies, the kids choose what they want to watch from what we actually own, put it in, watch it, and when it is over, it is over. There is no algorithm feeding them another hundred suggestions and no endless catalog constantly asking for their attention. It feels much more intentional, and honestly, much more like the kind of childhood we are trying to give them.
Making More Room for Books
As screens become less central, books naturally have more room to become part of everyday life. We have books everywhere, and I like it that way. Children’s books that have been read a hundred times, novels, graphic novels, reference books, old favorites, and random books someone picked up because the cover looked interesting all have a place here. Reading requires a different kind of attention than scrolling. You have to stay with something, imagine it, think about it, and give it enough time to unfold.
Nobody here is sitting silently reading classic literature all day. That would be a wildly inaccurate picture of our family. But books are normal and accessible. Sometimes one of the kids disappears into a story for hours, sometimes someone grabs a book because they want to know more about something, and sometimes they go through phases where they barely read at all. The important part to us is simply making sure books are there and that our children have enough room in their lives to reach for one because they actually want to.
Letting Kids Be Kids Outside
One of my favorite parts of this life is how much room the kids have to simply be kids. They ride their bikes, run through the sprinklers, get muddy, build things out of whatever they find, chase bugs, dig holes, invent games, argue over the rules, change those rules five minutes later, and come inside sweaty and starving before heading right back out again. They have room to play without every minute being structured for them.
Boredom is not something we feel the need to immediately fix. When nobody hands them a screen or plans an activity the second they announce there is “nothing to do,” they eventually figure something out. Bikes come out. Someone starts drawing. A book gets opened. A fort appears. An older sibling convinces several younger siblings to participate in a plan that probably makes absolutely no sense to anyone over the age of twelve. They learn to entertain themselves because they are actually given the opportunity to do it.
There are more grass stains, muddy feet, scraped knees, wet clothes tossed somewhere they shouldn’t be, and strange sticks and rocks being brought into the house because apparently they are extremely important. That’s okay. Kids are good at being kids when we give them the space to do it.
We Are Trying to Give Them a 90s Childhood
We actually are trying to give our kids a 90s-style childhood. Less screen time, less constant access to entertainment, and more time outside riding bikes, running through sprinklers, reading books, getting bored, making up games, and just being kids. We are getting rid of the flat screens, bringing back physical media like VHS, and making entertainment something we choose instead of something that is always on in the background.
We are also trying to give them more connection to real life through homeschooling, raising animals, and growing more of our own food. We want them to know where their food comes from, understand the work behind it, and grow up with fewer ultra-processed foods and unnecessary additives whenever we can help it. Our kids are still growing up in 2026, but inside our home, we are intentionally bringing back some of the parts of childhood we think were worth keeping.
Why This Works for Our Family
A lot of these choices create more work, not less. Growing food takes work. Raising animals takes work. Homeschooling takes a tremendous amount of time. Cooking more at home takes more effort than reaching for something ready-made. Physical media is less convenient than having thousands of movies available instantly. Letting kids spend hours outside means more mud, more mess, more laundry, and occasionally having to ask why there is a bucket containing something alive sitting beside the house.
But this life fits our family better. The kids spend more time outside. They read. They are learning how to care for animals and how much work goes into producing food. They help with the things happening around our home and get to watch this homestead grow alongside them. They have time to ride bikes, run through sprinklers, get bored, invent games, help with projects, and simply exist without something constantly demanding their attention.
Our life is not slow in the literal sense. It probably never will be with a family this size. It is loud, busy, messy, and full, and there is almost always something that needs to be done. But slowing down was never really about creating a quiet life. It was about creating one that feels more connected to the things that matter to our family.
We know more about what we eat. We spend more time together. The kids are outside. They are learning through the life happening around them. Home is not simply somewhere we sleep between everything else we have scheduled.
It is where our life is happening.
And that’s exactly what we want it to be.
