14 Simple Ways to Be More Self Sufficient

Since the pandemic hit, many people are looking for ways to be more self sufficient. And for good reason.

In early 2020, all of us faced the terrifying sight of empty grocery store shelves and shortages on important foods like flour, yeast, and milk. We were stuck at home for months, sometimes unable to get fresh fruits and vegetables. We longed for fresh air and open spaces, and we yearned for the feeling of control and safety that we’d lost.

The ongoing pandemic has highlighted the urgent need for self sufficient living. And the good news is that no matter where you live, you can take steps to be more self sufficient.

The Benefits of Self Sufficiency

Living a more self sufficient lifestyle has many benefits. And there’s no better time than right now to get started.

1. Self Sufficiency Can Help You Survive Tough Times

Self sufficiency can help you weather tough times. If the economy tanks and you lose your job or someone in your family suffers a medical setback, you have the skills and resources to take care of yourself. For example, a well-stocked long term food pantry and a thriving garden can provide you with weeks or even months of food. You can bake a loaf of bread for pennies compared to buying a loaf at the store.

Growing your own food also protects you from unexpected shortages or price spikes at the grocery store. When your pantry is full of home-grown canned food and your freezer is stocked with frozen fruit, vegetables, and meat, you don’t have to worry (as much) about the outside factors that influence supply and demand. This peace of mind is priceless.

2. Self Sufficiency is More Sustainable

Becoming more self sufficient means that you become a maker and producer, not a consumer. Instead of buying what you and your family need, you make or grow some of it yourself. Your vegetables aren’t shipped 1,000 miles or more to get to your table, your eggs aren’t laid by chickens living in a factory farm, and your bread isn’t full of preservatives so it can last for weeks on a store shelf.

Making, growing, and producing what your family needs often has a smaller carbon footprint that buying those items from a company or store. It’s better for the environment, and better for you.

3. Self Sufficiency Means More Exercise

Many of the skills you need to be more self sufficient involve movement. For example, baking your bread requires you to stand in the kitchen, mixing and kneading the dough. Raising your own chickens requires several trips a day out to the coop or run to check on the chicks, and give them food and water. Tending a garden involves weeding, tilling, and lugging around a watering can or hose.

In short, almost all the skills to be more self sufficient will result in more movement and exercise. And this exercise can have tremendously positive benefits in your life. According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, regular exercise can:

• Help you lose weight
• Reduce your risk of heart disease
• Help combat depression and anxiety
• Manage insulin and blood sugar levels
• Help your mind and thinking skills stay sharp as you age
• Reduce your risk of cancer
• Improve your sleep
• Help you live longer

4. Self Sufficiency is Empowering

Doing something for yourself for the first time is a rewarding experience. And when that something helps you become more self reliant and independent, it feels even better.

I still remember how I felt when I made my first jar of jam, when I baked my first loaf of sourdough, when I collected my first egg, and when I installed my first hive of bees. I remember the bite of the first radish I ever pulled from the garden, and the deep sense of satisfaction from splitting my first log.

Learning to be more self sufficient is hard work. However, there is immense value in that hard work, and the result is that you gain confidence and a greater sense of self worth with every step you take.

Our Journey Towards Self Sufficient Homesteading

I can remember the exact moment I realized I needed to learn how to be more self sufficient.

My husband and I had taken our two boys, then 2 and 6 months old, on vacation to a remote mountain cabin. We quickly started a fire in the wood stove to take off the chill, and then began to unload the truck while our toddler followed us in and out. My heart stopped when his screams brought us running back inside: he’d touched the glass on the now-blazing wood stove and severely burned his fingers.

I had no idea how to help him, and didn’t even have a first aid kit with us. I felt completely powerless and, as a mother, completely irresponsible for not being prepared to help my child when he needed me most.

That minor emergency could have been so much worse. However, it ignited a desire within me to learn everything I could to treat medical emergencies myself. I would never be caught unprepared again.

Once we got home, I started learning. I watched videos and read books during naptime, and signed up for classes on emergency first aid. Within a few months I knew how do everything from perform CPR to treat a gunshot wound. I built several comprehensive first aid kits, complete with trauma supplies, and kept one in our truck, a small one in my bag, and one at home.

Learning more about emergency medical care started me down the path towards self sufficiency, even though I didn’t realize it then. Over time, I began to realize that I should probably learn how to create a long-term food pantry, and organize an emergency bag to keep in our truck, and learn how to grow our own food. Slowly, I learned and acquired more skills. Even though we were still in the suburbs, my passion for the homesteading lifestyle was awakened.

Our Self Sufficient Homestead

My family and I now live on a 10-acre homestead in rural Tennessee. We’ve been on the path towards self sufficiency for years…long before we were able to buy land out in the country.

Over the years we’ve acquired many skills to help us be more self sufficient. Right now on our homestead, we:

• Raise chickens (26 and counting…) and ducks
• Keep bees
• Maintain a large garden
• Grow culinary herbs
• Can and dehydrate the food we grow
• Process our own firewood for our wood stove
• Grow medicinal herbs like yarrow, borage, tansy, echinacea, motherwort, St. John’s Wort, chrysanthemum, lemon balm, rosemary, mullein, shepherd’s purse, calendula, and more
• Make our own herbal tinctures, salves, syrups, and liniments from the herbs we grow or buy
• Use homemade, natural medicines like elderberry syrup and fire cider to stay healthy
• Know how to treat most emergencies, including traumatic wounds, and keep several well-stocked first aid kits with trauma care supplies
• Homeschool our two boys
• Cook food with a solar oven
• Cut our own hair
• Rely on a rain barrel and creek to water our garden and herbs
• Cook from scratch
• Ferment our own foods
• Use solar power to meet our power needs in the barn

We’ve learned many skills since we started on this path years ago. However, self sufficiency is a journey and there are still so many skills I want and need to develop. Some of the skills I will focus on in the next 12 to 24 months include:

• Build a root cellar/tornado shelter for our family
• Learn how to install a hand pump so I can move water from our spring to the garden
• Butcher our animals

How to Be More Self Sufficient

Just because you don’t have a large tract of land doesn’t mean you can’t learn to be more self sufficient. We started learning to be more self sufficient when we were living in the suburbs of Michigan!

It doesn’t matter where you live or where you’re starting from: you can learn how to be more self sufficient. Start now, wherever you are. Every skill you learn, and every action you take, is going to help you save money, be more independent, and feel empowered to do more. The list below, while certainly not exhaustive, is a good place to start.

1. Start a Garden

Growing your own food is probably the most important skill you can learn to be more self sufficient. Starting a garden will help you save money at the grocery store, provide your family with healthy food, and help the planet by stepping out of a cycle of foods with an enormous carbon footprint from pesticides and excessive transportation.

And, don’t think that you have to grow a huge garden. Starting a container garden on your patio or growing herbs on your windowsill are valuable steps towards self sufficiency.

2. Downsize Your Home and Belongings

Living in a smaller home can help you become more self sufficient because your cost of living goes down. When you live with less, you have less to maintain. Your property taxes are lower, utility costs are lower, and you’ll spend less on consumer goods because you don’t have anywhere to put them.

Before we bought our homestead, our family of four lived in a 423 square foot camper for a year while we traveled around the country. We now live in a 1,000 square foot home. You truly don’t need as much space as you think you do.

3. Cook From Scratch to Be More Self Sufficient

Learn how to cook meals from scratch. You’ll save money, eat a healthier diet, and your food will taste better.

We rarely cooked food from scratch before our children were born. We went out to eat or got takeout All. The. Time.

However, once our boys were born we were too tired to bother going out and dealing with kids in a restaurant. So, we started cooking at home more. Now, cooking from scratch is a habit.

When you’re not used to cooking from scratch it can feel intimidating to start. I know. I was there. So, go easy on yourself.

Start with one meal a week. Use tools like a slow cooker or Instant Pot to make it simple. I cook with our Instant Pot several times a week, and it’s one modern appliance I definitely can’t do without! We live out of Archana Mundhe’s book “The Essential Indian Pot Cookbook,” as well as Nisha Vora’s “The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook.”

4. Prepare for Emergencies

Are you prepared for a tornado or hurricane? Do you have an emergency bag in your vehicle if you and your family ever got stranded?

We keep a large first aid kit and go bag in our truck just in case we’re ever in an emergency situation and need to survive on our own. Some of the items in our emergency bag include:

• Ponchos
• Small water filters (a few Lifestraws and a Sawyer Mini)
• 2 high quality emergency blankets
• A tarp
• Paracord
• Large knife
• Compass
• Lighter and matches
• A Solo cook stove and small pan
• Tactical flashlights
• Local maps
• Gorilla tape
• Small emergency radio

Start building an emergency kit for your home and vehicle today. Ready.gov has a comprehensive article on how to put together a disaster supplies kit, and where to keep it.

5. Line Dry Your Clothes

Line drying your clothes is a great way to save electricity at home. Your clothes will last longer and smell fresher, you’ll save money, and you’ll reduce your carbon footprint by up to 2,400 lbs. per year. Yes, it takes more time but you’ll get more exercise.

You can still air dry your clothes even if you don’t have a backyard, or you live in a neighborhood that forbids it. Purchase a drying rack and air dry clothes in your laundry room or bathroom.

6. Keep Chickens to Be More Self Sufficient

Even if you live in the city or suburbs, chances are you can raise chickens (although adding a rooster to your flock is a different story.)

Chickens will provide you with eggs for breakfast or baking, manure for your garden or plants, bug control, and meat for the dinner table. They also don’t need a lot of space, so even if you have a small yard chances are you still have enough space for one or two.

7. Keep Bees

Bees are responsible for pollinating up to one-third of the foods we eat. However, because of pesticide use, Colony Collapse Disorder, mites, climate change, and habitat loss, bees are in trouble.

One of the best ways to ,our pollinators and become more self sufficient, is to keep bees yourself. Bees will provide you with healthy honey (up to 60 lbs. per year, per hive), and pollinate your garden and flowers.

Almost anyone can keep a hive a bees. Urban beekeeping has grown exponentially in recent years as people in the cities and suburbs are discovering the joys and importance of keeping bees. And, every single hive helps grow the bee population and improve the health of local plant life.

The only downside to beekeeping is that it can be expensive to get started. Beekeeping requires a lot of equipment like hives with multiple boxes, a smoker, a beekeeping suit, and the bees themselves. You can save money by contacting your local beekeeping association. Some members might have extra hives or equipment they could sell you at a lower cost than buying new.

8. Be More Self Sufficient By Learning to Can and Preserve Food

Learning how to can and preserve food is a skill our ancestors relied on to survive the winter. This is an essential skill to master on your path to be more self sufficient because it’s gives you the ability to preserve your garden harvest to eat when nothing else can grow.

The best way to get started canning is to learn how from someone with experience. That’s how I learned, and being able to watch the process first hand took all the fear and uncertainty out of it. If you know someone who cans, whether it’s family or a neighbor or someone in your community, ask if they could show you how to do it. Chances are, they’d love the opportunity to share their knowledge.

If you don’t know anyone who cans, pick up the tried and true “Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving,” which has very detailed instructions on water bath canning and pressure canning. You can also check out the resources and instructions at the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

9. Make Natural Cleaners

Another way to be more self sufficient is to make natural, homemade cleaners. Making your own natural cleaning products will keep harmful chemicals out of your home, save space in your cabinets, and save money.

For example, we use vinegar to clean just about everything in our home. We wash clothes with a blend of Borax, Fels Naptha, and washing soda. It’s inexpensive, effective, and completely safe.

You can make homemade cleaners using vinegar, lemons, baking soda, alcohol, or bleach. Oprah Daily has some nice recipes you can easily make at home.

10. Learn to Forage

There are wild, edible plants growing everywhere around us. All we have to do is learn how to identify them.

Here on our homestead we forage for wild foods and medicinals most of the year. We hunt for morels, gather chickweed and plantain, harvest mullein, gather ground cherries, and much more. We love to forage because it’s something fun we can do as a family, and we always use what we gather.

Getting a quality wild foraging book is essential for learning how to identify wild plants in your area. We use the Regional Foraging Series (for the Southeast region) and I think they’re an excellent resource for beginners and experts alike.

11. Create a Long-Term Food Pantry

How much food do you have on-hand, right now?

Before the pandemic, most people only had a few days worth of food in their pantry. There was no reason to keep more, simply because they could run to the store to get what they needed. There were no shortages, and no supply issues. However, the pandemic showed us how very fragile our food supply and distribution chain really is. As a result, many people have learned how to create and maintain a long term food pantry.

Having a long-term food pantry means that no matter what happens, you and your family have enough food to get by for several weeks or months. Start slow, buying shelf-stable foods when they go on sale, and rotate what you buy so nothing expires.

On our homestead I estimate that we have around 4 to 6 months of food put back. This is a mixture of pantry foods, Augusan Farms freeze dried foods, and shelf-stable, vacuum sealed food like beans, rice, and cornmeal stored in Mylar bags and 5-gallon buckets. We invested in these foods slowly, over several years, to minimize the expense.

12. Make Your Own Pantry Staples

Instead of buying ketchup, mayonnaise, and mustard, learn how to make your own. You can easily make salad dressing, marinades, and other sauces for a fraction of what you’ll pay in the store. Your homemade sauces will also taste better, and be healthier, than a store-bought version.

13. Use a Rain Barrel

If you’re on municipal water, you pay for every drop that comes out of your faucet. Even out here in rural TN, we pay a hefty penny for water. Which is why I use a rain barrel.

A rain barrel collects water from your roof and stores it for you to use later, watering your plants or garden. You can even use that water in an emergency situation (after you purify it, of course). I use our rain barrel water to water all our plants and herbs around the house. I haul water from our creek to water the garden.

You can easily make a rain barrel out of a plastic garbage can or large plastic barrel. This informative video from This Old House shows you how to make one for $40.

14. Build a Root Cellar

A root cellar is a enclosed container or space in the ground that maintains a constant temperature and humidity level all year long. With a root cellar, you can extend the storage life of many fruits and vegetables including apples, potatoes, cabbages, carrots, and onions. In the right conditions, these foods can last for months (compared to weeks inside your home.)

The benefits of having a root cellar can’t be overstated. A root cellar allows you to preserve your garden harvest well into the winter or early spring. It prevents food waste from spoilage inside your warm house (saving you money in the process.) And, if you had a root cellar you could stock up on great produce deals at the grocery store without worrying it would go to waste before you could eat it all.

Building a root cellar is at the top of my homesteading projects for this year. I’m planning on building mine big enough to double as a tornado shelter for all of us.

A root cellar doesn’t have to be a big production, however. You can bury an old freezer in the ground and line it with hay or sand, and it would make an excellent cellar. This article from Tractor Supply has instructions on how to build a root cellar using a steel trash can.

Last Word

Learning to be more self sufficient will provide you and your family with so many benefits. You’ll save money, live a healthier lifestyle, and experience the joy of being more self-reliant and independent. No matter where you live, you can take steps towards a more self sufficient lifestyle.

As for us, we will continue down our own path of self sufficiency. It’s hard work, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The rewards of this lifestyle are far too valuable.