And it's not as hard as we may think! This hand written and drawn book of charming tutorials is both fun and accessible. It's full of simple skills that anyone can and should learn. From creating tinctures and salves to concocting all-natural cleaners and body products to gardening basics, this book is great for anyone looking to live more simply, create a comfortable nest, and truly do it yourself.

    It's easy and inexpensive to mix up effective, nontoxic alternatives using basic kitchen staples — baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice, herbs, and borax — plus a handful of easy-to-find essential oils. Karyn Siegel-Maier offers 150 all-natural recipes for cleaning everything in your home — from bathrooms to bedding, carpets to cabinetry. The formulas are so simple that anyone can make them, but they are at least as effective as the commercial options. Try making your own Rosemary-Geranium Floor Wipes for electrostatic floor mops, Weekend Warrior Wicker Wash, Telephone Dirty Talk Tamer, Clear the Air Room Spritzer, or Lavender Lift Automatic Dishwasher Soap.

    With easy-to-follow instructions on canning, drying, and pickling, you’ll enjoy your backyard bounty all winter long. Also available in this series: The Backyard Homestead Seasonal Planner, The Backyard Homestead Book of Building Projects, The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals, and The Backyard Homestead Book of Kitchen Know-How.

    Learn a few basic country skills, she reasoned, and she would be able to produce at least some of the food and resources she used every day.Goodbye, fast food and Wonder Bread; hello, homesteading. With enthusiasm and joy for the tasks at hand, Woginrich embarked on a journey that has been sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking and always soul satisfying.From the fulfilling work of planting a garden and installing honeybees, to the bliss of gathering fresh eggs for an omelet or playing an old-time ballad on the fiddle, Made from Scratch shares the honest satisfaction of doing for oneself, and brings the reader to a deep appreciation for the value of simple skills performed well.

    We are in the midst of a massive cultural shift away from consumerism and toward a vibrant and very active counter-movement that has been thriving on the outskirts for quite some time — do-it-yourself-ers who make frugal, homemade living hip are challenging the notion that true wealth has anything to do with money. In Making It, Coyne and Knutzen, who are at the forefront of this movement, provide readers with all the tools they need for this radical shift in home economics.The projects range from simple to ambitious and include activities done in the home, in the garden, and out in the streets. With step-by-step instructions for a wide range of projects—from growing food in an apartment and building a ninety-nine-cent solar oven to creating safe, effective laundry soap for pennies a gallon and fishing in urban waterways Making It will be the go-to source for post-consumer living activities that are fun, inexpensive, and eminently doable. Within hours of buying this book, readers will be able to start transitioning into a creative, sustainable mode of living that is not just a temporary fad but a cultural revolution.

    Author John Seymour, the father of the back-to-basics movement, shares his singular vision to transform lives and create communities. More relevant than ever in our hi-tech world, The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It is the ultimate practical guide for realists and dreamers alike.

    Sure, it's even simpler than it was before. Of course, you don't have to worry about fertilizer or poor soil ever again because you'll be growing above the ground. However, the best feature is that anyone, anywhere can enjoy a square foot garden - children, adults with limited mobility, and even complete novices can achieve spectacular results. But, let's get back to the ten improvements. You're going to love them: 1. New Location - Move your garden closer to your house by eliminating single-row gardening. Square foot gardens need just 20% of the space of a traditional garden.2. New Direction - Locate your garden on top of existing soil. Forget about pH soil tests, double-digging (who enjoys that?), or those never-ending soil improvements.3. New Soil - The new "Mel's Mix" is the perfect growing mix. We give you the recipe, and best of all, you can even buy the different types of compost needed.4. New Depth - You only need to prepare a SFG box to a depth of 6 inches! It's true - the majority of plants develop just fine when grown at this depth.5. No Fertilizer - The all new SFG does not need any fertilizer - ever! If you start with the perfect soil mix, then you don't need to add fertilizer.6. New Boxes - The new method uses bottomless boxes placed above ground. We show you how to build your own (with step-by-step photos).7. New Aisles - The ideal gardening aisle width is about three to four feet. That makes it even easier to kneel, work, and harvest.8. New Grids - Prominent and permanent grids added to your SFG box help you visualize your planting squares and properly space them for maximum harvest.9. New Seed-Saving Idea - The old-fashioned way advocates planting many seeds and then thinning the extras (that means pulling them up). The new method means planting a pinch - literally two or three seeds - per planting hole.10. Tabletop Gardens - The new boxes are so much smaller and lighter (only 6 inches of soil, remember?), you can add a plywood bottom to make them portable. Of course, that's not all. We've also included simple, easy-to-follow instructions using lots of photos and illustrations. You're going to love it!

    With room-by-room strategies for your space and methods for maintaining your stuff, the book guides you through what to do and when to do it, culminating in one cleaning calendar. All you have to do is stick to the schedule.

    Stephanie Tourles shows you how to use fruit, flowers, herbs, and minerals to craft healthy products that promote radiant skin, strong nails, shiny hair, and an elevated mood. Pamper yourself from head to toe with products like Strawberry Cleanser, Pineapple Sunflower Scrub, and Almond Rose Body Lotion. Gentle on your skin and free of harsh chemicals found in commercial products, you’ll want to indulge yourself over and over with these luxuriously aromatic bath blends, face masks, and body scrubs.

    A fresh take on modern homemaking, this is a practical (and sometimes sassy) guide to maximizing your time, effort, and energy in the kitchen and beyond. With a focus on less consumerism, it will teach you how to organize your kitchen and home to make the best use of your time. For those yearning to live a more ecologically minded, grounded lifestyle, this book is full of practical, no-nonsense advice, fabulous recipes, and time- and money-saving techniques.

    It is the most complete source of step-by-step information about growing, processing, cooking, and preserving homegrown foods from garden, orchard, field, or barnyard. This book is so basic, so thorough, so reliable, that it deserves a place in every home whether country, city, or in between. Carla Emery started writing The Encyclopedia of Country Living in 1969 during the back-to-the-land movement of that time. She continued to add content and refine the information over the years ad the book went from a self-published mimeographed document to a book published by Bantam and then Sasquatch. The 10th Edition reflects the most up-to-date and the most personal version of the book that became Carla Emery’s life work. It is the original manual of basic country skills that have proved essential and necessary for people living in the country and the city, and everywhere in between. The practical advice in this exhaustive reference tool includes how to cultivate a garden, buy land, bake bread, raise farm animals, make sausage, can peaches, milk a goat, grow herbs, churn butter, build a chicken coop, catch a pig, cook on a wood stove, and much, much more.

    A necessary resource for anyone interested in alternative approaches to healing, this book contains more than 600 easy-to-follow recipes for essential oil treatments and aromatherapy.

    Created to both inspire and instruct, it returns readers to an era before power saws and fast food restaurants so they can rediscover the pleasures and challenges of a more self-sufficient, economical, and healthy lifestyle. Packed with hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, charts, tables, diagrams, and illustrations, it explains how to dye your own wool with plant pigments, graft trees for propagation, raise chickens, create a hutch table with hand tools, and make treats such as blueberry peach jam and cheddar cheese. The truly ambitious will learn how to build a log cabin or an adobe brick homestead.

    Food is instant, ready-made, and processed with unhealthy additives. Dry cleaners press shirts, delivery guys bring pizza, gardeners tend flowers, and, yes, tailors sew on those pesky buttons. But life can be much simpler, sweeter, and richer–and a lot more fun, too! As your grandmother might say, now is not the time to be careless with your money, and it actually pays to learn how to do things yourself!Practical and empowering, How to Sew a Button collects the treasured wisdom of nanas, bubbies, and grandmas from all across the country–as well as modern-day experts–and shares more than one hundred step-by-step essential tips for cooking, cleaning, gardening, and entertaining, including how to• polish your image by shining your own shoes• grow your own vegetables (and stash your bounty for the winter)• sweeten your day by making your own jam• use baking soda and vinegar to clean your house without toxic chemicals• feel beautiful by perfecting your posture• roll your own piecrust and find a slice of heaven• fold a fitted sheet to crisp perfection• waltz without stepping on any toesComplete with helpful illustrations and brimming with nostalgic charm, How to Sew a Button provides calm and comfort in uncertain times. By doing things yourself, with care and attention, you and your loved ones will feel the pleasing rewards of a job well done.

    Choosing fabrics, cleaning china, keeping the piano in tune, making a good fire, folding a fitted sheet, setting the dining room table, keeping surfaces free of food pathogens, watering plants, removing stains -- Home Comforts addresses the meanings as well as the methods of hands -- on housekeeping to help you manage everyday chores, find creative solutions to modern domestic dilemmas, and enhance the experience of life at home.Further topics include: Making up a bed with hospital corners, Expert recommendations for safe food storage, Reading care labels (and sometimes carefully disregarding them), Keeping your home free of dust mites and other allergens, Home safety and security, A summary of laws applicable to the home, including privacy, accident liability, contracts, and domestic employees and more in this practical, good-humored, historic, philosophical, even romantic, guidebook to the art of household management.--back cover