Prioritizing Homemaking, Homesteading, and Homeschooling without Overwhelm: An Interview with Amanda Feste

Today, I’m sharing some homemaking words of wisdom from my friend Amanda Feste. I met Amanda on Instagram, and I love following her account Homestead-ish Amanda, chatting with her, and learning from her.

Amanda is a homemaking, homesteading, and homeschooling mama to three girls. She has established rhythms and routines in her home to reduce overwhelm and create a peaceful environment for her family.

I admire Amanda and have learned so much from her about homemaking over the last year. I think what I admire about her most is her commitment to not taking on too much which leads to chronic overwhelm.

In this interview, Amanda shares some of her best homemaking, homesteading, and homeschooling tips for peaceful, productive days!

Table of Contents

Tell me about yourself and your family.

We’re just a regular ol’ family. My husband and I have been married for (almost) 14 years, and I still really like him. I know it sounds cheesy, but he really is my best friend and I like him more every year.

We knew pretty early on in our relationship that I would stay home to raise any babies we had, but I had no idea it would be this good. We have 3 baby girls. Yes, I call them all my babies.

Clara who is 11 – she’s really like another set of helping hands. My husband tells her how she does better work than some adult men he works with.

Elsie who is 7 – she’s our precious rainbow baby. Since her arrival she really has been our rainbow after back-to-back losses. She’s the definition of sugar and spice most days.

And our last babe, Noretta – she’s the whole family’s baby. She wants to be included in nearly everything, she’s so independent but she still soaks up being the baby. Her sisters say she’s their princess, and they definitely treat her like such.

What are you passionate about and why?

So much! My faith and family would make the top of the list – for obvious reasons!

Community – supporting our local communities but also being willing to help those that aren’t as local. I truly believe we can make the world better just by supporting each other more – not just financially but by sharing our knowledge more.

Living within your means – mostly so we can help others more – but also so we’re using what God has given us wisely.

Not being overwhelmed with life/home/kids – everything has a solution, you just have to find it and it probably won’t be what the world is screaming at you.

Growing where God has you planted, and truly making your home unique to your family. So many people are scared to start something because they can’t do it exactly like someone else or they can only do a little bit at a time. The truth is that’s usually not the best way for your unique family anyway and that’s okay – just get started!!

What are your top 5 values?

Can I just list the fruit of the Spirit? It’s more than 5, but it’s one of the most repeated Bible verses in our home on a daily basis so I’m guessing that.

What are some daily homemaking rhythms for your family?

Things that are non-negotiables for us during the week days: my husband kissing my forehead before leaving for work – he’s my alarm clock.

Good mornings from my girls followed by a hot breakfast for all of us girls, and reading at least 1 Bible verse. (Usually it’s our character cards but some days that’s just not happening).

At the end of the day talking about our day with daddy once he gets home and doing a whole house tidy before bed.

Can you share about some of your homemaking rhythms like ordering bulk food, gardening, and baking bread?

Just some more things I’m passionate about, truly my list could go on forever!

Ordering Bulk Food

The money savings is really what started this. But also we live about 25 minutes from town, so we love having an ingredients pantry. I’m not running to town for just a couple ingredients to make supper.

We also live on a budget and really try to eat a more whole foods, organic diet. Those foods are so much more expensive when we don’t buy them in bulk.

We have a 2-3 step ingredients pantry. [This means that] I have the small jars in my kitchen that we use pretty regularly. The bulk of those items are stored in our 2nd step. Some of those items may be stored in things like 5 gallon buckets. Then we have our 3rd step, which is [saving] some items in mylar bags for longer-term storage.

Besides the mylar bag items, everything else gets rotated through. I replace when the bulk containers get emptied into our 1st step that is stored right in the kitchen. Basically, it’s my fool proof way to never run out of things – or at least that’s the goal.

Read this post to learn all about how to store bulk food for beginners.

Gardening

I like to say we’re kind of lazy gardeners. We will only grow the things we eat on a regular basis, mostly foods that we harvest and store for preserving. Anything we do preserve, we will only grow in our favorite varieties.

More recently, [we grow even] smaller quantities with only a little extra to give away. [This way,] we’re never wasting anything. It has been much more manageable.

We also really love mulch so there’s not usually a ton of weeds. Just don’t look at our raspberry garden–we gotta find a better system [for that].

Baking Bread

This was another ‘customized to our family’s needs’ type thing. I just couldn’t bake all the sourdough stuff we eat in a week, every single week.

So I started a schedule for baking and would make enough for at least 2 weeks worth and freeze what we didn’t eat the first week. I was still always baking something weekly, but it wasn’t everything so it was much more manageable for my daily life.

For example: week 1 would be bread and bagels. I’d make enough for our family for 2 weeks worth of those items. Week 2 would be hamburger buns, hotdog buns, and tortillas. Same thing, I’d make enough for 2 weeks’ worth, freeze the 2nd week’s, [and] then start over again.

This way, I wasn’t spending multiple days on just bread items for our family but we were still getting homemade items.

If you want fresh bread but don’t have time to bake it, check out my bread maker review here!

Can you share about your family’s homestead and the story behind it?

[Here’s the story behind] our little #festeshack [as I like to call it]. My husband really found it just driving back roads to and from a job he was working on – we weren’t looking at all. We hadn’t even been dating a year yet, but we went and looked at it. It needed some serious work and it’s small (under 1500 sq ft) but we really loved it.

We prayed, he put in a low ball offer, and they turned our offer down. We were expecting a counter offer verses just a NO but knew if it was God’s plan it would happen. About 3 weeks later out of nowhere the realtor came back and said they’d accept our offer.

[So,] we moved in about a month later and have been here ever since. Our original plan was to do an addition within 5 years and have it paid off in 10. [But] then life happened and hit us pretty hard. God’s funny like that, he’ll take your plans and make them even better – usually with some major life lessons along the way.

We moved in [during] August of 2008, and by that December my husband got laid off. Thankfully at that time I was working full-time, so while he was home he would do small upgrades once we’d save up enough money for them.

Focusing on What Matters Most

For the next 4 years, he [was] laid off every year for 4-6 months each time. [During this time], we learned a LOT about what was important to us.

We also got married, got in a car accident, [and] lost our sweet pup. I quit my job and came home to start a little daycare before we started our own family. We [also] had a baby in that time.

All that to say, we’ve been here for almost 16 years now. We did get it paid off 3 years ago. We [also] added 2 more babies in our arms and 2 in our hearts. And a whole lot of life happened in there too.

Still no addition or major updates, but we still really love this piece of Heaven on earth. [We] are so grateful to tend to this land.

What are some of your homesteading priorities while raising kids? Did you grow up homesteading or farming?

I think we really just want them to have the skills we’re learning/providing. I didn’t grow up with much gardening, or canning, or bread making or kitchen skills in general. My husband comes from a big ag family farm, and he did help with gardening and preserving.

[However], our gardening style has been very different from what he was used to. So, it’s new for both of us. We grow some different things that he never had experience with growing up.

We really want our girls to have that head start for when they move out on their own. Just knowing my girls will be able to bake a loaf of bread if times are tight for only a couple dollars and whip up a meal with what they have in the cupboard is really encouraging to me.

What advice do you have for a mom with young kids who feels overwhelmed by homemaking and like she can’t keep up?

Get rid of the excess – mostly clothes and toys and set up a “zone cleaning” system. Kids truly don’t need much (toys or clothes) and the whole home atmosphere can be less chaos-filled if you’re not overwhelmed by the mess.

Also, LET THEM HELP. In those younger years they want to be included so very much, [so] let them. No, it won’t be up to your standards but they will be learning which means once they do get older they will be a tremendous help and probably do things better than you can!

I promise you won’t remember that one Tuesday in 2024 that you had streaked mirrors because your babies helped you clean or a sticky spot on the floor because they missed a whole section while mopping.

Advice for someone who wants to prioritize homemaking and homesteading but doesn’t have a lot of extra time or money to invest in it?

Someone told me once the cheapest thing you can do is stay home. You can do SO MUCH with very little financial means if you’re home to do it. There are so many people who are always wanting to get rid of things for free – utilize that.

Up until recently we had nearly no extra funds to invest in homesteading, specifically gardening, yet we’ve had a decent size garden for over a decade and have grown thousands of pounds of food for under $20 a season.

Buying heirloom seeds and seed saving has saved us so much money. We have more time than money, so we will put in the time so we can save the money.

What are your dreams for your family?

My husband would say to be a full-time garlic farmer. I really think just to continue to stay on our current path – remembering what our priorities are and putting those first, always, even when the world is telling us to do what’s on trend.

We’ve definitely talked about different ideas for our little homestead – things like getting our own bees or pigs or goats for milking. But we are also willing to change those ideas tomorrow. Mostly because we love supporting the local farms we get those things from.

We would really like to try our own butchering though–[definitely butchering] our own pigs every year but possibly even beef. The older I get and the older our girls get the more I find myself wanting to take less on our plates.

Finding a Homemaking Balance Between the Modern Day and Forgotten Ways

We want the knowledge to know how so that if need be we could be fully self-sufficient, but we don’t have much left for homesteading that we desire to do on a daily basis. We really like and enjoy modern day necessities – though we definitely dream of a wood stove heating our whole home. South Dakota winters can be intense and it’s not at all unusual to lose power for hours-days.

We’ve grown our own wheat before just to see how to do it and how much we’d need. We’ve put in a wood post “old fashioned” type fence. [We did this] with very little added equipment and just our family [working on] it [so that we could] teach ourselves how to do it.

I think our major dreams are just to continue to learn the forgotten ways. Learning is just fun and doing it alongside each other and [with] our girls keeps fun memories coming!

[I’d also like to expand] our knowledge into flower gardening. I’ve recently had this deep desire to create our own beauty.

[Not] on the homesteading front, my girls and I are wanting to perfect our sewing skills to make our own quilts and clothing.

What does a typical day of homemaking and homeschooling look like in your home?

Every day seems to be different but still the same, if that makes sense. We don’t really follow a time schedule but more of an order-of-events type schedule.

Morning

My day starts when my husband kisses me goodbye in the morning – most days at least one of the girls are already up and they’re watching something on TV.

Noretta will often crawl back in bed if I’m not up yet, but the big girls are pretty early risers. Once I’m up I go straight to the kitchen and start making everyone breakfast. We have a hot breakfast 99% of the time – at the very minimum eggs are a must.

While they’re all eating we are singing our monthly hymn followed by our morning basket which usually includes Bible, character building cards, catechism, pledge of allegiance, a question a day, and a short read aloud.

It’s usually 8:30ish by this time, and they get started on their morning animal chores. If they haven’t already, [the girls] get ready for the day/unload the dishwasher. [During this time,] I make our bed, get myself ready, start a load of laundry (or switch the load if I put it in the night before), and then make my breakfast.

Once I sit down to breakfast, they’ve got to go play somewhere or stay quiet if they’re in the same room so I can eat and read my Bible. At 10 my alarm goes off for us to take our morning walk – depending on the weather we’ll go walk for 30 minutes.

Afternoon

Once we get back home, the big girls go to different rooms – more than likely with a little snack. Noretta and I jump on the couch to read her pick of books for 20 minutes while she snacks. We try to be done reading by 11 and then Clara starts school. She’s pretty independent now, so I like to start doing some zone cleaning during this time.

The little girls will do their zone cleaning jobs. [Wiping] down baseboards/door knobs/outlets/doors/furniture are their typical jobs for whichever zone we’re in. They have to help for 10 minutes every day I’m doing something in the zone until their jobs are done. Then they have free play until lunch.

We typically eat a later lunch between 1-2. By this time, Clara is done with school and I’ll do our history read aloud book while we’re all eating. After lunch Clara will take Noretta and ‘play school’ while I do lessons with Elsie.

Evening

We’ll do a whole house tidy right before daddy gets home and then almost right away I start supper prep and finish the day’s laundry if I haven’t at some point earlier.

After supper and clean up – the girls get some tablet time while my husband and I get to have our daily date time – where we just get to hang out for a bit with no interruptions.

Typically the girls get bored of their tablets so they’ll start playing or head outside and we’ll follow to do a walk around the property and garden/animal check. Or, we’ll just continue to relax until they come in to play some games or watch some TV. We’re loving Little House On The Prairie series right now.

We have an hour+ long bedtime routine with so many girls in the house. [I want to try] to instill better self-care habits in them than I’ve had until the last couple years.

After the girls go to bed, my husband will usually [go to bed], too. I will finish any house tidying so the next day starts out well. If there’s no tidying that needs to be done, I’ll watch part of a cheesy movie before I head to bed.

How do you balance motherhood, homemaking, homesteading, and homeschooling?

Simply put, I don’t do it all myself. We’re 100% a team in our home, and we all help out when needed. If there’s a day I can’t get to something, my husband or girls pick up my slack and vice versa.

If it’s just an overall busy season we’re in, then motherhood always comes first. We’re doing this for them so that only makes sense in our minds.

Obviously we have animals and have to tend to their lives regularly as well as our children, but we have no problem with saying no to make sure our family team is thriving.

We have worked really hard to build a lifestyle that we’re not overwhelmed with and can easily juggle all the balls easily. We do not like overwhelm, we do not thrive on that kind of lifestyle, and we work really hard to make sure we don’t allow that to be our normal day-to-day lifestyle.

What is your homeschool philosophy?

I’d say we lean toward the Charlotte Mason philosophy the most. But we are also willing to branch out and have thrown in some Montessori, Classical, and even unit studies at different times and with different children.

We’re always learning, as in my husband and I, so if something isn’t working I am not opposed to switching things up.

Advice for someone who wants to start homeschooling but doesn’t know where to start?

I’d first tell them: You’ve already taught your child so much. You’re more than capable of homeschooling them.

Then I’d suggest finding some information on what the different homeschool philosophies are and start researching curriculums that are based on that philosophy.

There is SO MUCH out there for free or used at a much lower price. White-out is a homeschooling family’s best friend if they buy used materials. There are definitely options for every family and every price point.

Anything else you would like to share about homesteading, homeschooling, homemaking, or your other passions?

I think I’d mostly just like to add (a reminder for myself as well) that every family is different. God created us so unique, so take points from a bunch or different outlooks and make it unique to your family specifically.

Don’t be too prideful to realize something isn’t working and you need to try something else. This life is so, so beautiful, and we just need to find the beauty in our everyday.

Where can I follow along with Amanda and her homemaking, homesteading, homeschooling journey?

If you want to follow along with Amanda and learn about homemaking, homeschooling, and homesteading from her, you can follow her account Homestead-ish Amanda on Instagram here and on Facebook here.