Dawg… I can’t believe I’m even having to explain this in 2025.
Earlier this week, I posted a completely innocent tip on Instagram about using my essential oils to keep my dishwasher from getting that weird funk smell. You know, just regular homestead housekeeping stuff. I figured people would comment about their favourite cleaning hacks or maybe ask which oils work best.
Instead, I woke up to a bunch of comments from people who were apparently personally offended by the fact that I own a dishwasher.
I’m sorry, what now?
Since when did having basic modern appliances become some kind of homesteading scandal? Are we really doing this? Because if we are, buckle up, because I have thoughts.
I am a modern-homesteader, not a historical reenactor.
Let me make this crystal clear: I am a modern homesteader living in the year 2025, not some historical reenactor trying to cosplay as Laura Ingalls Wilder for your entertainment.
My goal here is to blend traditional skills and self-sufficiency with the reality of modern life. I want to grow my own food, raise my own animals, and preserve my own harvest while also not dying of completely preventable diseases or spending 12 hours a day just doing laundry.
I love the Little House books as much as the next person—they’re classics for a reason. But here’s the thing: it is not my life’s ambition to recreate every single hardship from the 1800s just to prove some point about authenticity.
Modern homesteading is about taking the best wisdom from traditional living and making it work in today’s world. It’s about food security, environmental sustainability, and building resilience while still having access to medical care, the internet, and yes—appliances that make the massive workload manageable.
If you want to hand-wash every dish and beat your clothes on rocks by the river, more power to you. I genuinely respect that choice. But don’t come at me like I’m somehow less legitimate because I’ve made different decisions about where to draw my lines.
Am I complaining? NO WAY!
Before anyone starts with the “but homesteading is supposed to be simple” nonsense, let me be clear: I absolutely love this life. I chose it. I work my ass off for it every single day, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
But I’m also not going to stand here and pretend that running a working homestead while raising kids and managing an online business is some kind of minimalist fairy tale.
The workload I have from my garden, barn chores, milk cow, food preservation, from-scratch cooking, and everything else is intense especially compared to the lifestyle of someone who can just hit up Whole Foods for organic everything and call it a day.
My day starts at 5 AM with animal chores and doesn’t end until everything is fed, milked, collected, processed, cleaned, and put away. That’s on top of the regular human stuff like keeping the house functional, managing finances, and raising kids who hopefully won’t end up as helpless as most of their generation.
If I decided to reject all modern conveniences just for the sake of being “authentic,” I’d spend my entire day washing dishes by hand and stirring soap with a wooden spoon. And sure, if complete authenticity is your goal, you should probably toss your computer and smartphone too—those are definitely modern inventions.
The reality is that modern appliances don’t make me less committed to this lifestyle. They make it sustainable.
If you ever swing by my homestead, you are likely to find me:
Here’s what a typical day actually looks like on our homestead, complete with all the modern conveniences that apparently make me a fraud:
– Talking on my phone while milking the cow because multitasking is a survival skill when you have this much to manage
– Washing my stainless steel milking equipment in my dishwasher because proper sanitization matters when you’re dealing with raw milk, and dishwashers actually use 70% less water than hand washing
– Using my immersion blender to bring homemade soap to trace because spending three hours stirring by hand when I could spend that time on other projects is just inefficient
– Running cloth diapers through my washing machine while hanging them outside to dry, because I’m not about to hand-wash diapers when modern washing machines use the same amount of energy as hand washing but get clothes significantly cleaner
– Using my slow cooker to render lard because low, consistent heat for 8 hours beats standing over a stove babysitting fat all day
– Operating our tractor instead of digging post holes by hand because this isn’t a punishment, it’s a lifestyle choice
– Grinding home-butchered meat with an electric grinder because I value my time and my sanity
– Baking bread in my regular oven instead of a wood cookstove, because while I’d love to have a wood cookstove someday, it doesn’t fit in my current kitchen and my bread still tastes amazing
– Using my food processor to make fresh salsa, chop vegetables, and whip up homemade butter because it takes 2 minutes instead of 20, and the results are consistently better than doing it by hand
– Writing blog posts on my laptop while my pressure canner processes home-grown vegetables because sharing knowledge and building community is part of modern homesteading too
I have zero shame about mixing modern convenience with traditional knowledge. In my opinion, that’s the entire point of modern homesteading.
The beauty of living in 2025 is that we get to choose which old ways serve us and which modern tools make our lives better. I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone—I’m trying to build a sustainable, self-sufficient life that actually works for my family.
Here’s some data that might blow your mind: Energy Star certified dishwashers use as little as 3 gallons of water per load, while hand washing the same dishes uses up to 27 gallons. A full dishwasher load uses about 13 liters of water to clean 144 items, while washing by hand uses about 100 liters on average. So not only is my dishwasher saving me time and energy, it’s also more environmentally responsible.
My washing machine? Modern energy-efficient models can save up to 50% more energy than older units while getting clothes cleaner and extending their lifespan. And my food processor can make homemade nut butter, fresh pesto, perfect pie dough, and dozens of other things that would take hours by hand.
These aren’t luxuries—they’re tools that let me focus on the parts of homesteading that actually matter: growing nutrient-dense food, raising healthy animals, building soil, and creating a resilient food system for my family.
If you prefer to wash dishes by hand or find some kind of spiritual meaning in digging post holes with a manual digger, I genuinely respect that. I’ll be the first person to celebrate your dedication. And I absolutely admire people who live completely off-grid—that takes serious commitment and skills that I’m still developing.
But for now, I’m perfectly content in my mixed-up world of traditional knowledge and modern efficiency. I’m not apologizing for having a dishwasher any more than I’m apologizing for having indoor plumbing or electricity.
You know what else? I’d bet good money that if Ma Ingalls could have fit a dishwasher in her covered wagon, she absolutely would have. The woman was thrilled to get a sewing machine and was over the moon about electric lights when they finally got them. Historical homesteaders weren’t trying to make their lives harder—they were trying to survive and thrive with whatever tools they had available.
The difference is that now we have better tools. And I’m going to use them.
If that disappoints some people, that’s their problem to work through. I’ll be over here living my best life, growing food, raising animals, and using every modern advantage I can get to make it all sustainable and enjoyable.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go load another batch of canning jars into my dishwasher. Because proper sterilization matters, and my dishwasher does it better and more efficiently than I ever could by hand.
This is modern homesteading. Deal with it.
