I met KyAnn through Instagram and mutual friends a while back. We live in the same city and share a lot of common interests. Some of these interests include motherhood, business, urban homesteading, and home education–and learning to balance it all as busy moms! KyAnn is a mama to three incredible kids. She is passionate about helping busy moms find simple rhythms to reduce overwhelm and bring peace to their days.
KyAnn is the type of friend who will watch 8 baby chicks for you when you have to go out of town for an emergency. (Trust me, she watched ours for a week on a moment’s notice earlier this year!) She is humble and honest. She openly shares her own experiences and struggles and how the Lord helped her through some difficult seasons postpartum.
KyAnn is also disciplined and wise beyond her years. Through her podcast and course, Simple Rhythms for Busy Moms, KyAnn helps thousands of young, busy moms through stressful times. She teaches SAHMs attainable ways to implement simple rhythms and routines into their days.
Use my code THEMILLERACRES to save $50 on the Simple Rhythms for Busy Moms Course!
Earlier this year, KyAnn started the podcast, Simple Rhythms for Busy Moms. Her podcast for busy moms quickly ranked in the top 1% globally! It is “the go-to podcast for busy, Christian moms who want to get more done and still be present with their family!”
It was such an honor to interview KyAnn and learn more of her story. We talked about her Simple Rhythms for Busy Moms podcast, motherhood, homemaking, and homesteading. Keep reading to learn some of KyAnn’s best tips for busy moms who want to stop living in survival mode!
This post contains affiliate links. KyAnn may earn a commission if you choose to order through the links below at no additional cost to you.
Tell me about yourself and your family.
Hi! I’m KyAnn-I’m a wife of (almost) 9 years to my husband and best friend, Mat. We struggled with infertility for 3 years at the beginning of our marriage. Then, [we] were blessed with 3 kids in 3 years. [This was] to our absolute shock and delight.
After what our life looked like trying to have our first baby, we never imagined that this would be our story. But, we are absolutely so GRATEFUL for the Lord’s graciousness in that. Our kids are now 4, 3, and 1.5 and the absolute joy of our lives!
Our life is a bit wild; sometimes chaotic at times. [We are] keeping up with growing littles [and] homesteading on our little ¼ acre backyard homestead. [Also, we are] starting our homeschooling journey, and constantly re-evaluating our priorities in each season that we’re in as the Lord leads us. We wouldn’t change it for absolutely anything!
I’m also a podcaster! [I] feel very called to bring hope and encouragement to empower moms in the trenches of the little years. [Through my podcast, I] share all about helping busy moms find routine in their days and implement intentional rhythms to get more done and still be present with their family.
I am blessed to be able to do this work that really lights my heart up in the cracks of time throughout the day while staying home full time with my babies. So, that’s a little of how I spend my days currently!
What are you passionate about and why?
Faith + Family
So many things, where do I even start?! I am passionate about my faith and relationship with the Lord first and foremost. Then, my marriage and my kids coming right after that. I always want those 3 things to be my top priorities in life, no matter what season we are walking through. I pray that those are reflected in my daily decisions and habits.
Hospitality
Outside of those core priorities in my life, I also am very passionate about investing in my community. [This means] both our inner circle of close family and friends as well as being hospitable and opening our doors and lives to other. [People] who may be lonely, needing community, or just needing a safe space to land.
I’ll be honest in that hospitality is actually not a natural inclination for me. I can easily get caught in the trap of perfectionism and wanting everything to be “just right” before inviting others in. This is an area I’ve been actively trying to grow in the past few years.
I believe the Lord calls us to love others and through that, reflect the love of Christ to them. I think one of the biggest areas we can do that is through hospitality and welcoming others in to our lives and homes, even when it’s messy or often even inconvenient.
Slow Living
I’m also incredibly passionate about helping encourage and empower young moms that a slow, intentional life is attainable through small daily decisions that help to prioritize that over the hustle culture we live in today.
Savoring little moments with our kids, simplifying our home systems to decrease the chronic overwhelm and stress that plagues so many of us, saying no to a life and calendar overflowing with appointments, jam-packed schedules, and responsibilities that we easily say yes to without realizing that we’re sacrificing the BEST yes to the most important priorities in our life by doing so.
I’m so passionate about sharing that life doesn’t have to look this way. Living a slower paced life with intentional room for margin and grace is a much more sustainable version of motherhood in our fast-paced world of chronic burnout, overwhelm, and fatigue.
What are your top 5 values?
My top 5 values are to be:
- Christ-centered in everything I do
- Family-focused
- Servant-hearted
- Ambitious in excellence
- Kind and respectful in my interactions with everyone
I had so many I wanted to include, but I think that gives a good overview.
What are your dreams for your family?
Ultimately, I truly want my family to be gospel-centered in everything we do. I want our family to show the love of Christ, be hospitable and a safe place for others to land. [Also], I want my kids to grow up knowing the Lord and the beauty He created, seeing that beauty and knowing how to affirm that in others.
I hope to have a family that is close-knit through the years and creates a culture that our faith, family and home life is integrated with our work, our passions, and our lifestyle.
The feeling you get at night when you walk through your home, everyone is all tucked in peacefully, only the lamp lights remain on, you grab a cozy blanket and curl up to read a book in the quiet next to your husband and everything feels right in the world?
I want our family and others to feel that when they think about our home and the culture in our family. That cozy, safe place to be fully themselves and seek community, wisdom, and peace.
What does a typical day look like in your home?
MORNING ROUTINE
Typically, I start the morning a couple hours earlier than my kids in this season. I work on my business and my work in the pockets of time I have while staying home full time with my kids, so that usually looks like early mornings and nap times right now.
I try to get my quiet time in with a cup of coffee ideally before my kids wake up, but sometimes, it still happens after they are awake later in the morning and I enjoy letting them see me practice that rhythm in front of them as well.
Once the kids are awake, we do breakfast and typically start our homeschool day as they are eating. My oldest is in preschool, so we have a loose rhythm and structure that includes lots of read alouds, memory verses, letter work, our morning basket, arts and crafts, etc. I truly believe that kids learn best while playing so we incorporate lots of fun activities, games, and independent play throughout the day as well.
We usually do our more structured homeschool work, worksheets, things like that first thing and then spend time reading books, independent play, getting outside, and doing arts and crafts throughout the rest of the morning. I usually use their independent play time to accomplish various homemaking things–laundry, dishes, making sourdough, trying a new recipe, etc.
AFTERNOON ROUTINE
We have a set “quiet time” in the afternoons after lunch time, so we’ll tidy up the house quickly before lunch, have lunch together, and then we have a couple hours for quiet time.
My oldest doesn’t nap anymore so she will read books, color, or do an activity quietly while the younger two take a nap. I am using this time to work, more often than not.
EVENING ROUTINE
After that, the late afternoon/evening typically holds a little more outside time or a walk. [We also may] have evening plans [such as] getting around and leaving for church activities, small group, or making dinner and having family time.
Every evening is a little different, just depending on our plans for the day, but we like to tidy up again before bedtime, do our bedtime routine, and then my husband and I enjoy some time together after the kids go to bed. That’s a general daily routine in this season!
Can you tell me more about your podcast, Simple Rhythms for Busy Moms?
Absolutely! My podcast is called Simple Rhythms for Busy Moms. It is all about easy systems to find balance in Christian motherhood and homemaking.
I love sharing intentional daily rhythms and boundaries to simplify life. [I also share] resources and encouragement to help you slow down in the busyness of mom life. [My podcast has] heart to heart conversations about growing in finding your identity in Christ, not your to do list.
If you’re ready to ditch the overwhelm in your days and get out of survival mode, start living out what truly matters most to you in your daily rhythms, and finally find a way to feel BALANCED in your life and home, while keeping Christ-centered priorities in your motherhood and homemaking… then this is the show for YOU! I would be so so honored for you to listen in and subscribe to the show!!
Can you tell me more about your course, Simple Rhythms for Busy Moms?
My course, the Simple Rhythms for Busy Moms course, teaches you all about how to simplify your home systems for more time with your family. It is for the stay at home or work from home mom that finds [herself] feeling overwhelmed, struggling to balance it all, and is TIRED of feeling overwhelmed and stressed constantly. You’re tired of ending the day feeling guilty for not being present enough and you really want flexible routines and rhythms that work with your busy schedule.
My course is the roadmap to figuring out how to be more productive at home with littles while also building in more intentional time to be fully PRESENT with your kids. I walk you through easy household systems to make managing your home simple again.
[I also discuss] boundaries to get control of your calendar. [My podcast teaches] rhythms to prioritize rest and finally find time for yourself again. [Additionally, I talk about] clarifying your priorities to make sure your big picture priorities for your life are being prioritized in your small, daily habits and rhythms.
Helping Busy Moms Prioritize Rest and enjoy Family Time
“How you live your days is how you live your LIFE”, this quote by Annie Dillard has truly transformed how I think about managing my days and what I fill my time with and reflects so much of my heart for this course. It can be so easy to get distracted by all the “must-do’s” every day that making time for the less urgent but more important work like investing in your marriage, quality time with your kids, and prioritizing rest to help yourself reset and relax regularly gets pushed to the bottom of the urgency list.
If you’re tired of living in survival mode and counting down until bedtime every night, I have BEEN THERE and I want a different story for you. If you’re ready to simplify your days as a SAHM to develop rhythms and routines that work for you in the season you’re actually in, I’d love to connect more!
Use my code THEMILLERACRES to save $50 on Kyann’s Simple Rhythms for Busy Moms Course!
What inspired you to start your podcast for busy moms?
The podcast was really born out of a need I saw of needing resources and encouragement from other moms that were in the trenches in the little years right now. I [saw] a lot of podcasts or online resources that were from the perspective of an older mom (either, with kids grown and on their own or just older elementary or teenage kids), which is absolutely SO needed and helpful. There is nothing like the wisdom from a mom who has walked through it!
Designed for Busy Moms Who Are in the Trenches of the Little Years
But, I had a lot of questions myself around routines, Biblical rhythms that really helped keep [my] priorities in line, or even as my kids got older–questions around teaching the gospel to my children, discipling them, or verbiage to point them back to Jesus and Biblical truth in moments they were struggling to obey.
And I found that for] a lot of the questions, older moms were struggling to remember the specifics of how they dealt with them. [This was] simply since it had been 20 or 30 years or more since they had practiced this (totally valid!). I wanted to be a resource not of having it all figured out, but sharing what is working well in our home while we are in the thick of currently having and raising littles. [I want] to encourage others in the same place.
Business Boundaries During Busy Seasons
The other main part of starting the podcast was more practical and that was running into boundaries in my own life of having very limited time to work on my business. Through a lot of prayer, seeking wisdom, and studying Scripture, I really felt that the Lord was calling me to leave Instagram.
[This] had been my main way to build an audience and traffic for my previous 2 businesses. [I felt called to] focus all my attention on podcasting instead. This was not an easy decision by any means and there were a lot of sacrifices that were made. [However], the podcasting journey has been such a rewarding and joy-filled one and I absolutely LOVE sharing episodes every single week!
What are some daily rhythms that changed the culture of your home as a busy mom?
Ooh this is a great question! I’m so nerdy about rhythms, routines, and systems that I could talk about this for a long time. So, I’m going to pick the 3 rhythms that have made the biggest impact on the culture of our home:
Waking up before my kids
As hard as this is to prioritize, this has truly changed the culture of our home and days. I am a better mom, wife, business owner when I start the day slowly and from a place of peace of intention.
Starting the day with a cup of coffee, ideally doing my quiet time first thing (sometimes it happens later in the day), and knocking out some of my work right away while the house is still quiet helps me to steward all my roles well to make sure I’m ready for the day by the time my kids wake up and join me.
15 minutes of intentional quality time with my kids daily
This one is so important and is one of the main “starting-step” rhythms to learning to be fully present with my kids, not so distracted and constantly jumping to the next thing all day. Carving out even 15 minutes to sit on the floor with my kids and play, read their favorite books, set up a sensory activity and play WITH them, or even just go on a walk around the neighborhood sounds so small.
But, it adds up to a BIG impact on both their little hearts and my own. Making the commitment to slow down enough to be fully in the moment with them, put down my phone, and simply soak up intentional time together takes practice and consistency. But, the benefits of this have been unending in our life.
Weekly reset meeting
This is another building block rhythm that really builds more and more over time. For our weekly reset meeting, the main focus is to plan out our week. [I also] communicate and get on the same page with my husband so we all know what to expect. [We] meal plan and place a weekly grocery order, and then [I] leave some time at the end to connect with my husband.
This covers a lot of different bases in one small weekly meeting. But, planning ahead and communicating has alleviated so many pain points and frustrating miscommunications in our marriage and life. The practical aspect of my meal planning system helps dinner to flow SO much smoother for everyone!
But honestly, recently, the connection time to ask intentional questions to not only check in on how each other’s week was, but to carve out space to really get a little deeper on how we can be praying for each other, how we can help each other to be a better mom/dad, if there’s any areas of tension or stress that we need to talk out and work through instead of brushing it under the rug has been really key in investing in our marriage.
After 9 years of marriage, this has been such a gift to us the last few years. I truly don’t know what we did before we implemented this weekly rhythm!
Where did you first learn about rhythms vs. routines for busy moms?
I really struggled with postpartum depression after having my second baby. When I realized I was in a bad place with this, it also really opened my eyes and I realized that my life behind the scenes was kind of a mess. We had a successful business, things seemed to be going well from the outside, but in reality, I had accidentally fallen into some workaholic tendencies in my life (I had been a full time entrepreneur with my husband for about 5 years at this point and a few years longer as a solo entrepreneur).
I had let work really rule my life and command my time, to the point that I had never taken the time to set up systems that helped me manage my time, home, and life in a way that helped me to be able to balance all my roles well. So the work portion of my life was overruling everything else.
I was also a new mom that was really struggling to balance it all and didn’t know where to start making changes. And I needed intentional rhythms that helped reflect the big picture priorities in my life–my faith, my relationship with my husband, and my kids in my small daily habits.
Creating Guardrails
I knew I needed to use these intentional rhythms I was trying to create as guardrails in my life to help prevent me from getting back to a place so far off from my priorities. To help me to be more aware of the impact of how I fill my days and time and how that directly correlates with not just what I SAY are my top priorities, but what I’m actually walking out in my day to day life.
I don’t remember where I first came across the term “rhythm” but I do remember that when I heard it, I was HOOKED. I immediately resonated so much with the idea of a rhythm, a loose structure or framework that could shift and pivot WITH my life instead of the typical routine that I had felt chained to in the past. The routines that really often felt like they were working against my life as soon as one thing changed rather than WITH my life.
Rhythms vs. Routines
How I like to explain rhythms vs. routines is routines are more restricting and concrete. Once you set them, if things change, you have to reset the entire routine to make it work for you. [In contrast], rhythms give us a loose structure and framework to go throughout our day. To make sure that the things that are important to us are happening regularly, but without us having to consciously decide to do all of those thing over and over each day. It sort of just ebbs and flows in the background of our life.
Once you have the tools to know how to inventory and assess your rhythms as your season changes, you can tweak small portions to get back into flow when your circumstances change (as they inevitably do) and that’s one of my favorite part of rhythms! They work FOR you to reflect your top priorities and make sure what is most important to you is happening.
What was the most overwhelming thing for you as a young mom? Can you share about a rhythm you implemented that helped you and that may help other busy moms?
I think one of the most overwhelming things for me as a mom has been (and still is, many times) the overstimulation. The moments where I didn’t wake up before my kids and I wake up to a crying baby and a million questions from the toddler peering over the side of my bed.
The toddler needs breakfast RIGHT NOW, the baby needs to nurse at the same time, you trip over the toys left all over the floor in the living room the night before on the way to the kitchen, and then absolutely lose your cool when you realize there are ZERO clean dishes anywhere so you have to clean dishes just to be able to make breakfast so that everyone can just.stop.crying. Ever had a similar situation in your life? Just me?
There is so much in our lives that is out of our control. But, there are also are so many helpful rhythms that we can implement that can help us to get out of this chronic overwhelm and overstimulation cycle that so many of us believe is just normal as a mom.
Don’t Add to the OVerstimulation
I could go so many directions with this, because I’m so passionate (obviously!) about teaching these rhythms and systems to help you really get control of your life and priorities again, but the main thing I want to focus on specifically is one rhythm that helps with overstimulation.
When I get super overwhelmed and I get to the point that I honestly just want to scream (too raw? whoops), my natural inclination in trying to calm myself down is to start playing a podcast, put on a TV show in the background, scroll social media endlessly, retreat inside myself and GET AWAY from the chaos.
I’m sure that many of us have this desire when we get to that place of overwhelm. We don’t want to deal with it, we’re trying to just finish one thing, we just want to numb out and distract ourselves, right? We deal with the immediate issue, get our kids settled, and then instead of looking at the root issue in the situation, we cover up any internal thoughts or desire to work on the root issue with NOISE to simply distract and move on.
One rhythm that has really helped me in this specific area is cutting back the noise in those moments of extreme overwhelm. Instead of immediately turning something on and adding to the chaos and overwhelm, being intentional to turn OFF any external noise or input that is happening (phone, TV, podcast, whatever it may be).
Choosing to pray or simply just sit with my thoughts to calm down, to notice the signs my body is giving me on what is actually helpful in those moments of overwhelm or overstimulation, instead of constantly overpowering the situation with adding more noise.
What advice do you have for busy moms who are really struggling with overwhelm?
I wish I could reach through the screen and just give you a big ol’ hug and let you know that YOU ARE NOT ALONE. That is the first thing I would say.
I was in a spot where I felt so overwhelmed just trying to manage it all, feeling like if I was being really productive and staying on top of things in one area of my life (my home or even my business), then inevitably, I was dropping balls in all the other areas of my life. I just felt ALL OVER THE PLACE.
Overwhelm doesn’t have to be the norm for busy moms
My main encouragement for you is that it doesn’t have to stay this way. I know it feels really overwhelming, I know you have no idea where to start, you feel paralyzed because EVERYTHING needs to change and that is so overwhelming that you just feel stuck exactly where you are. But, you have so much more control than you realize.
We can’t control everything and there are certainly circumstances that we can’t control, but the encouragement is that you can decide that enough is enough and something has to change. You dreamed of motherhood for so long, but this is not the motherhood experience you dreamed of.
That quote that talks about how your kids only have one childhood experience, but you also only have one motherhood experience absolutely guts you because you know that this isn’t how you wanted it to be.
Start with Prayer
There are so many practical steps I could give you, but I believe the first step really is to pray and give it to the Lord and ask Him for wisdom to know the next right step. Ask Him to lead you to a resource, a friend, a mentor that can help you make some simple adjustments to find more peace and less overwhelm in your days.
You know this isn’t how you want to remember these little years with your kids. You don’t want to waste them being stuck in the overwhelm and stress, you want to feel like you are truly enjoying this season for exactly what it is. The beautiful and the hard.
And trust me, you can do it! I promise! It’s not hard as much as it just takes simple consistency and intention.
What is the best place for busy moms to start if they feel like everything needs to change?
Start Small
I really recommend starting small. My natural inclination is to want to burn everything to the ground and restart everything entirely, all at the same time. And it’s so easy to get to that place when it feels like everything is overwhelming and it ALL needs to be revamped! However, when we jump all in and we try to just cold-turkey change everything all at once, 99% of the time, we end up sticking to it for a day or two and then completely falling off the wagon because it’s too much too fast.
In order to make sustainable change that actually last and works for us, we have to go slow (often, much slower than we would personally like, if we’re being honest!). Sometimes, the hardest part of the process is taking a step back and realizing that BIG change doesn’t happen in big actions-it happens through consistent, repeated actions over time.
It’s so easy to undervalue the effect and impact of tiny actions over time, but if you look at anyone who has had huge success in their life (Olympic athletes, business owners that have built a multi-million dollar company, your neighbor who lost 80 pounds), it always comes down to the small, consistent actions they made over time that had the biggest impact on their success.
Find the Root of Your Overwhelm
So my first recommendation is to look at your days and spend a little time thinking through what area of your day is bringing you the most stress right now? Where is the root of that overwhelm coming from?
Is it your morning routine, maybe constantly rushing out the door with the kids and trying to get everyone’s things together while you’re running late? Is it putting the kids to bed at night, feeling frustrated that nobody is listening and everyone is crying all while trying to make sure they don’t get to bed late again? [Or] is it trying to cook dinner while everyone needs you all at the same time?
Whatever area it is for you, spend a few minutes journaling and writing out where you feel like the root of that overwhelm is coming from. Be specific. And then write out 3 starting steps you could try to make that process or time of the day less overwhelming (example: setting clothes out the night before, packing kids’ backpacks so they had everything they needed for a day at the zoo, making breakfast that you just need to warm up the night before, etc.). Start there!
What are some of your must-have resources or toys for kids that you utilize on a weekly basis that you’d recommend to other busy moms?
Oh my goodness, so many come to mind! I actually have 2 YouTube videos that I share all about my favorite toys for toddlers/preschoolers-you can watch the 2023 version here and the 2022 version here.
Off the top of my head, some of current favorites toys/resources for our kids:
Pikler Triangle
Our Pikler triangle-we absolutely LOVE this climbing gym! My kids are currently 4.5, 3, and 1.5 and all of them still love it! We’ve had it since my oldest was a little over a year and we have definitely gotten our money’s worth out if it!
We love to build forts with it, use the slide as a ramp for cars, obviously climb and slide and all the things. They get so creative with how they play with it, and I love having an indoor option on days when it’s really cold or rainy. It’s the go-to playdate toy that we always bring out when friends come over as well!
Morning Basket
This is not so much a specific toy or item, but we LOVE having a morning basket to start our mornings and homeschool time.
For us personally at the moment, this includes a couple specific books for each week, a themed-based book that we work through for a month or two, memory verse of the week, catechism, our letter of the week, and then I typically include items to do a little activity or craft along with whatever our homeschool focus is for that week.
You could make this as in depth or as simple as you wanted, even for kids as young as a year or two old. I wish I would have started earlier! The kids LOVE it, it’s such a great way to keep them engaged and learning, and make learning fun for them.
I know Lauren has INCREDIBLE morning basket bundles (we loved her summer bundle!!) to simply print off + start using here!
Toy Rotation
The last thing I wanted to mention is a toy rotation! Again, this is not a specific toy (I really believe that kids can be so imaginative and have so much fun with SO many different options, especially with open-ended types of toys), but this has been huge for us in helping our kids to play well independently.
I show our toy rotation a little bit in the YouTube videos I mentioned above, but there are lots of amazing resources online. Essentially, it’s just rotating through the toys you have and only having about 6-9 toys out in an easy to access place for your kids.
It helps cut down on clutter, but it also really helps our kids play so much better and for longer stretches as well!
Can you share about your family’s backyard homestead and the story behind it?
Absolutely! We are so passionate about homesteading and I think a lot of that passion really started when I started trying to simplify our lives, routines, and rhythms. We had talked about dreams of homesteading in the future, but we currently live on a ¼ acre lot in the city so we always thought that would be a “someday” kind of dream. Once we started researching more and “caught the bug”, so to speak, I was determined to dive in and just start where we were at!
We jumped all in our first year and really transformed our ¼ acre lot from a never-used city backyard to filling it as full as we possibly could with efforts to grow as much of our own food as possible. We got dairy goats to supply our dairy needs (we even had multiple kiddings right here in our backyard, which was SO fun!), chickens for eggs, ducks, and carved out a large garden to start growing as much produce as we could.
It was a LOT of effort and intention, but we’ve absolutely loved it! It’s far from perfect, but we are learning so much along the way. Almost 3 years later, I feel like we’re really establishing our priorities and finding our rhythm in managing homesteading along with raising kids, homeschooling, running a business, and all that comes with being a busy mom with lots of different responsibilities.
What are some of your homesteading priorities while raising littles?
Right now, our homesteading priorities have shifted a bit in the last year. We [made the] hard decision to re-home our goats until we get more land. [Also], we had a few neighbor issues as well as the Lord really just convicting my heart that we needed to let something go for a season.
We had big dreams to double our already large garden space to fill the space the goats left this year. Honestly, we went a little too big too fast. We had to scale back our garden efforts for now because the truth is, we can’t do everything.
With a growing business, 3 small kids, starting homeschooling, and various other demands, we realized we needed to take a step back and be really intentional about our time and priorities in this season of homesteading.
So for now, we have chickens, ducks, and a smaller garden this year. Several of our crops just didn’t do well, combined with not having the time to expand the space as we hoped to. So, that project will be tabled for a future year!
Our main focuses right now are cooking from scratch, growing as many ingredients as we can in our backyard in the capacity that we currently have, and growing in our skills to be able to apply when we are able to get a larger plot of land and expand our homestead in the future!
Did you grow up homesteading or farming?
I did not! Actually far from it, I didn’t even have a dog growing up! I didn’t dream of homesteading as a kid. Although, looking back, I DID play Little House in the Prairie outside any chance I got, complete with the apron, digging in the dirt to make dinner, and gathering branches for a fire. [This] honestly isn’t that far from what my reality looks like these days!
I remember several of my lifelong friends’ [astonishment] last year when I shared videos on Instagram of one of our goat’s kidding process. I had to pull one of the babies [out by] myself. [It was] one of those moments when you realize how much your life has changed-standing in my city backyard in the middle of the night, helping my goat deliver a baby while my kids watched. Definitely something I never saw coming!
But, it has been one of the best journeys and getting to do it with my husband and kids is such a huge huge blessing. We are so passionate about teaching our kids where their food comes from.
Advice for busy moms who want to homestead but doesn’t have a lot of land or extra time?
My recommendation is to start where you are! Maybe don’t go quite as all in as I did, just from experience. But, start a garden, get chickens, whatever you are able to do in the place you are-start small and just get started!
Something we are constantly reminding ourselves is that even though we may not be able to do everything we dream of doing right now, that doesn’t mean that we can’t start learning the skills now.
If you are suddenly handed 20 acres but have never grown a single plant or learned to cook bread from scratch or learned how to can those items from the garden, you may have the land available to you that you are so craving now, but you won’t have any of the skills you need to actually utilize that land yet!
I think it’s SO smart to do what you can with what you have to invest in learning skills that will help you all along your homesteading journey. I feel like the absolute best place to start really is in the kitchen. And you can do that anywhere! After all, if you don’t know how to use all of the food that you’re growing, those growing efforts can only go so far.
What are some of your must-have homesteading tools that you’d recommend to other busy moms?
I’m just going to mention the first things that pop into my mind, because there are so many!!
Zipties! (SO.MANY.zip ties constantly!)
Typical tools like a hammer, nails, screwdriver, and a saw [are things that have] come in really handy!
Pallets! We have really prioritized doing things as frugally as possible in this season, which does mean that they aren’t always as aesthetically pleasing as I would personally prefer. But, this has saved us a TON of money and especially in a season where we will not live in this home forever, it has served us so well! We have used pallets to fully make our garden fence, most of our chicken coop, all of our goat barn, so many different things!
A handy husband definitely is a HUGE benefit!! I’m so grateful for that, but my husband has also learned so many skills just by trying and learning along the way. I really think having the mindset that you are always learning and growing is so so useful in homesteading! Don’t expect perfection, just adopt the mindset of learning as you go. You don’t know what you don’t know!
YOUTUBE. #1 homesteading tool, for sure! We have learned so many things from good ol’ YouTube University!
How do you balance motherhood, homesteading, and running your business, Simple Rhythms for Busy Moms, in this season?
Letting things go. It is a continuous balancing act that I am always shifting and moving as the Lord leads. It truly has been a lot of leaning into the Lord, praying for wisdom and guidance on what is MOST important in this season, and learning to listen and obey when He gives me that wisdom. It’s not easy-I am the kind of person that wants to be doing ALL the things all the time and laying things down is so hard!!
But, truly NO ONE can do it all. It’s a give and take. When you say yes to something, you’re inevitably saying no to something else. And it’s a lot of trying to slow down enough to be really intentional that my yes’s are truly my BEST YES and I’m keeping my priorities in the right order.
I am not perfect at this and there is so much grace here. I truly learn more in this area every day! But ultimately, I think the biggest thing is continually checking in with yourself, evaluating your realistic capacity, and learning to listen when the Lord nudges you that something needs to shift or even be removed entirely from your daily schedule or plans for this season.
Where can other busy moms find you and follow along?
I actually have gotten off social media entirely (I know that sounds crazy as a business owner!), but the 2 main places you can find me are my podcast and my free Facebook group.
My podcast is called Simple Rhythms for Busy Moms and it’s all about intentional rhythms & systems to help you balance motherhood, homemaking, maybe a business on the side, and everything else you have going on. Helping you simplify your home systems for more time with your family, slow down, and truly be fully present where you want to be! I would love for you to listen in!!
My FB group is focused on helping other busy moms just like you find community with like-minded moms. We love sharing recipes we’re loving or easy tips for what’s working. [Additionally], we do challenges like screen time challenges to get off our phones more, quiet time challenges, things like that.
You can also grab my free morning routine guide in the group as well, to help you set up a morning routine that truly serves you in the season you’re in (even if you’re not sleeping through the night right now!). It’s a really fun space to be and I would LOVE to have you in there-come say hi!
You can find my YouTube channel here if you want to learn more about our homesteading journey, cooking from scratch, [and] simple-living type content.
Use my code THEMILLERACRES to save $50 on Kyann’s Simple Rhythms for Busy Moms Course!
I admire KyAnn’s dedication to creating consistent rhythms within her home. I’m inspired by her story and how the Lord has used difficult times in her life to now encourage and support other overwhelmed, busy moms. KyAnn’s advice on homemaking rhythms and prioritizing what matters most is a positive message of hope in a world that often feels chaotic.
This post was all about my interview with KyAnn Molina of the Simple Rhythms for Busy Moms Podcast.
Family photos taken by Glynne Ashley Photography.
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