Did I say repetitive? I meant constant constant constant. It could feel drudgy and Sisyphean but it doesn’t have to be; I will go into that in another post.
Here’s just a short list of the very very constant tasks:
• trimming back vines & other vegetation
• lowering & lifting shade-curtains
• managing rain-storage tanks/tubs: the tanks themselves as well as the water in them
• putting out solar oven, repositioning as needed
• mending (clothes, window-screens, etc.)
• maintaining shade-trellises
• and of course all the same tasks a regular household has, including laundry, dishes, sweeping and mopping. But in a nature-oriented house, I find that the laundry and dishes are actually much lighter load because we know we don’t have machinery to rely on. So we work smarter, and without even thinking about it we generate less of a load in the first place. A little bit of Jevons paradox in reverse there!
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention
• harvesting food and medicine!
• refilling outdoor hand-wash / foot-wash stations
• managing compost, recycling, and trash
• negotiating trade-offs between shade, privacy, and airflow (this item actually spans multiple of the aforementioned categories including trimming back vegetation, pulling shades and so on)
I will add more as they occur to me but these are the big main ones.
Even on my tiny urban homesite (1/10 of an acre house and grounds included), these tasks are constantly ongoing. Especially as they are done with hand tools.
This is why I mostly advise people to resist buying a bunch of acreage. For many reasons – our own energy, and also saving room for other people and other species. Those of us steeped in colonizer culture tend to compulsively acquire and hoard a lot more space and other resources than we need. We can unlearn this, and must. For our own good as well as everyone else’s.
Terminology notes:
• A lot of us in doomer/prepper/permie circles use the word “homestead.” But Black and indigenous educators I trust deeply have pointed out that this term has racist and colonialist antecedents. I therefore prefer homesite, or smallholding.
• Our house is not off-grid, nor do we aspire to be. Rather, even while being on-grid we simply choose to minimize use of resources, including electricity and consumer purchases. According to my research up to this point, staying on-grid but minimizing consumption is actually the simplest, lowest-footprint, and least expensive option for most of us.