Everyone has a soap box these days.
Social media has turned every person with a smartphone into an expert on everything, and let me tell you, the noise level is getting ridiculous. Scroll through your feed for five minutes and you’ll find someone declaring that their way of doing anything—from parenting to gardening to cooking eggs.
The homesteading world is particularly guilty of this.
It’s exhausting, and it’s getting ridiculous.
I’ve been homesteading for over a decade now, and I’ve made every mistake in the book.
And you know what? I’m still here, still learning, still trying new things, and still occasionally screwing them up spectacularly.
But according to the internet experts, that makes me a failure at homesteading.
This perfectionist culture is killing the joy in traditional skills.
It depends.
Here’s what the soap box crowd doesn’t want to admit: the right way to do most things depends entirely on your specific situation.
The “right” way to preserve food depends on your family’s preferences, your storage space, your energy costs.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to homesteading, or to life in general.
But try suggesting this in any online homesteading group and watch the purists lose their minds. They’ll tell you that if you’re not doing things exactly their way, you’re compromising your values, selling out, or just making excuses.
It all depends on what season you’re in.
Here’s something else the perfectionist crowd conveniently ignores: different seasons of life require different approaches.
When my kids were babies, my homesteading efforts looked very different than they do now. I was operating on no sleep, had zero free time, and was just trying to keep everyone alive and feding.
Now that my kids are older and more independent, I have more time and energy to devote to homestead projects. But I also have different challenges—work commitments, aging parents, financial pressures that didn’t exist when we were younger.
And that’s perfectly normal and reasonable. The homesteader with a mediocre garden and mismatched chicken coops might be working full-time while homeschooling three kids.
Both are valid. Both are doing their best with their current circumstances.
But the online purity police don’t want to hear about circumstances or seasons. They want everyone to achieve the same level of perfection, regardless of the challenges they’re facing.
I refuse to celebrate mediocrity.
There’s a difference between accepting your current limitations and celebrating mediocrity. There’s a difference between doing your best with what you have and not trying at all.
I refuse to tell people that “good enough” is actually good enough when they haven’t put in any real effort.
Standards matter. Quality matters. Effort matters.
If you’re going to raise animals, you need to take proper care of them. If you’re going to grow food, you need to learn how to do it safely. If you’re going to preserve food, you need to follow tested methods that won’t make people sick.
But there’s a huge difference between maintaining safety standards and demanding perfection.
But I WILL celebrate trying.
What I absolutely will celebrate is people who are trying. People who are making the effort to learn new skills, even if their results aren’t perfect. People who are taking small steps toward self-sufficiency, even if they can’t go all-in immediately.
Every step toward self-sufficiency and traditional skills is worth celebrating, regardless of how small it seems.
I WILL celebrate learning.
Most importantly, I’ll celebrate the people who are learning. Who are asking questions, making mistakes, trying again, and gradually improving their skills over time.
The homesteaders I most admire aren’t the ones with perfect Instagram feeds and flawless techniques. They’re the ones who’ve been quietly improving their skills for years, who share their failures along with their successes, who help beginners without making them feel stupid.
They’re the ones who remember what it was like to be new at this, who understand that everyone starts somewhere, and who focus on progress rather than perfection.
These are the people who keep traditional skills alive and thriving.
Because here’s the truth the perfectionist crowd doesn’t want to admit: if we demand perfection from beginners, most people will never start.
If the barrier to entry is “do it exactly right the first time or don’t bother,” we’re going to lose an entire generation of people who might have become skilled practitioners if they’d been allowed to start imperfectly and improve over time.
We need more people growing some of their own food, even if they’re not growing all of it.
We need more people making some things from scratch, even if they’re not making everything from scratch.
We need more people learning traditional skills, even if they’re not mastering them immediately.
The goal isn’t to create a world full of homesteading perfectionists. The goal is to create a world full of people who have some connection to where their food comes from and some basic skills for taking care of themselves and their families.
You’re not failing. You’re learning. And that’s exactly what you should be doing.
The world needs more people who are willing to try, not more people who are afraid to start.
