How to Thrive in the New Home Economy

Inside: why home isn’t just where you recover from your life, and a look at the New Home Economy that’s quietly changing everything.

There are ways to thrive with less that really feel like less. You can set your thermostat to 65 in winter and you would survive. You would save money and you would be okay. Or. You could start a fire, keep everyone together in one warm room in the evenings, head to bed with your dog for company and draw the canopy curtains around you. You will save money and you will, almost as a side effect, be happy.

A Shift is Happening (Or Already Did)

The economy. Everyone talks about it. It drives government decisions, personal decisions, housing decisions, and more. For most of us, it’s just a bunch of acronyms and numbers on a screen. GDP up, interest rates down, Dow Jones numbers. Credit defaults. Pretty much boring and abstract.

And the truth is, the real economy exists in every individual household. Are we doing better than we were last year?Are we eating well?Do we have enough free time? Do we take enough trips? Do we need a new car and can’t afford one? Do we have things we want but can’t get? Have we gotten too many things we wanted and can’t pay for?

And this economy is much less abstract and much less numbers-based, and that’s a good thing. because you can do things like cut back on work hours, sell your car, do things that will look bad on a spreadsheet, but will pay real dividends in your actual life.

And the shift towards this has already started. You can see it in the interest in things like sourdough and back to the land and canning and gardening. Not just hobbies, but strategies.

The New Home Economy is all about your family and your home. It’s measured in every decision to make something instead of buy it, to grow something instead of order it, to stay home and build something that is genuinely, stubbornly yours.

It isn’t homesteading, exactly (though it might include a few chickens!). It isn’t prepping, though it doesn’t hurt to have a full pantry. It isn’t a retreat from the world so much as a turn toward what’s real and within reach and yours to control.

You can decide that home is not where you recover from your life. Home is your life. And it is worth building.

Down with “More is More”

For years (for decades!) we’ve known that more is better in a way we know that the sun comes up in the morning. One vacation a year is good? Then two is better. And three better still. We’ve endured horrible airports, traffic, lines, stress, packing, unpacking, hoarding rewards points for some dubious purpose, crowding airport lounges for free poorly made martinis, all in the name of more and thus better.

But what if we… didn’t? What if we, for spring break, rented a rototiller and plowed up a big sunny spot in our backyard and planted seedlings we had grown ourselves starting on some dreary February day. What if we checked them and watered them and waited…. waited… waited… in the manner of an obsessive concert ticket buyer, not because we would die without the tomatoes, but because something in us would die without the mission?

Turning Home Into a Place of Production

For most of our lives, home has been a place of consumption. We bring things into it…. groceries, packages, takeout, streaming subscriptions, stuff. It absorbs our money and gives us shelter in return. A place to sleep between the parts of life that, you know….actually matter.

But home was never meant to be just that. For most of human history, home was where things were made. Food was grown and preserved and cooked from scratch. Clothes were mended. Skills were passed down at kitchen tables. The home wasn’t a refuge from the economy…it was the economy. A producing, generating, self-sustaining unit that gave back as much as it took.

That version of home didn’t disappear because it stopped working. It disappeared because the consumer economy needed us to stop doing it.

And here’s the thing. Deep within your Wall-E character self (the one who hasn’t grown a tomato or baked a loaf of bread or mended anything in years) the instinct is still there.

How to Thrive, Not Survive

There is so much you can do to change your mindset, but here’s where to start.

1. Stay home more, and like it. If you’re constantly pulled away from your home out of boredom, frustration, or anything else, you’ll never see it as the happy hub it can and should be.
2. Reduce your dependence on outside inputs. This can be done in big and small ways. It can mean buying 10 pounds of flour instead of 5 so that you have to go to the grocery store less often. It can mean composting all your food so you don’t have to buy fertilizer. It can mean growing your own apples so you don’t have to buy those anymore. Tiny changes add up over the years and make you less reliant on the outside world. This helps you resist things like inflation, shortages without any pain.
3. Rely less on technology. Energy gets more expensive every year and that will probably never change. Besides that, social media is addictive, apps are annoying, and a paper and pencil are good for the soul.Let it go as much as you can.
4. Do it yourself, even when the math doesn’t work. You’ll never save money sewing your own clothes. But focusing just on that is entirely missing the point. Anything that turns you productive will save you so much in so many incalculable ways.
5. Live below your means. No widget or iced coffee is worth the financial stress and anxiety of being over your head. Never, ever, ever. I promise.

I know a life of sacrificing consumption and travel of restaurants feels like giving something up. There are so many good restaurants, and beautifully exotic cities, and awesome cute polos in the world. But right in front you in the ability to create (actually create) the things you want and need in your home. All you have to do is stand up.