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back to another episode of y ‘all are crazy as always super excited to be with you guys today today we’re gonna be talking about the importance of living a simple oklahoma grassfed beef life and what we have learned about doing that over the last few years part of our life has been really simple and there’s part of it that’s not yeah for sure so the reason we thought about doing this episode is because finally we are pouring foundation on our new home
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next week.
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Yeah, it’s been several years in the making.
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When we sold our big house in Arcadia, we bought land out here. We thought we were gonna start building right away and it has not worked out that way. It has been a journey. And we’ll be sharing more stories with you guys about our home building journey and things along the way. But for us, the way we thought things would go is not the way things went. And it’s like that a lot of times in life, right?
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It happens a lot. But to be fair, we’ve had a lot happen since we’ve moved out here. We’ve bought a lot more pieces of land than we initially bought. You know, just a lot of things have changed.
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That’s right. We’ve pieced a lot of land together that we didn’t think we were gonna get, which is such a blessing. And we are on our third set of house plans. We have changed our mind a few times.
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So we came from a about 4 ,800 square foot house. When we sold that house, we moved into a 2 ,300 square foot ranch style 70s home. We’ve talked about that a little bit before. It basically hadn’t been lived in in a while and we flipped it. But when we moved into it, it was in January. So it had no heat. We were sleeping on air mattresses on the floor. We had a flood one night. This house hadn’t been lived in in a long time.
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So you discover things in a house that hadn’t been lived in in a while. So the crazy thing is, the funny part is, we went from a super nice house to like being, to being just kind of reality check. Put back into an old home that we were like, okay, this is gonna be a different lifestyle. Yeah, but it’s good. So today’s episode talking about living simply and.
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you’ll see a lot of sacrifices that was made in order to achieve what we wanted to achieve. And I think living simply has taught us a lot of good lessons. You know we didn’t know that house didn’t have heat. I think the heater actually worked and so we thought it’d be fine but then the air ducts were filled full of dirt and like uh sand was blowing out of them and not much air and so uh you know needless to say we had no heat in January so that was a lot of fun.
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That was I remember sleeping on the air mattresses because we were waiting for our I don’t know why we didn’t have our beds set up. I think we were waiting for our new mattress to arrive because we ordered a new mattress and so it was like three weeks shipping or something like that.
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Yeah.
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And so we were like well we’ll just sleep on this air mattress until it comes in. Well it took like three weeks to come in so we had a three month old at the time. Branch was three months old so he was sleeping with us at the time.
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So, you know, because he was nursing and so I was like, he’ll just sleep by me. Well, he slept with us on the air mattress and then you got the stand blowing up and it’s freezing. So we have space heaters in each and every room. And yeah, just what a time that was when you think back on it. But gosh, God has shown us so much over these last three years. And by the time we actually move into our new house, it’ll be four years. So from the little house we lived in, we actually have turned that into an Airbnb, the 70s ranch style home. And so that’s now one of our Airbnbs and it’s actually super cute now. It gets a lot of bookings and it gets great reviews.
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Yeah, it’s a good one.
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It’s a really good little house. This was the house that I talked him into coming to Chandler to look at houses when we’d never been in Chandler before, didn’t even know where it was. God led us out here.
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And that’s the house I was like, babe, we need to buy this because I think our family is gonna live in this house someday.
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Yeah.
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And you’re like, what?
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You must be crazy.
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You’ve told me that more than once, is the funny part. But we did, we lived in it, so. We lived there for about a year and a half. And then, we’ve never shared this story on the podcast. You were going on a oklahoma grassfed beef business trip of some kind and I called you and I was like, hey babe, there’s this cabin on the market and it’s out by the ranch. I think I wanna go look at it. It’s on 10 acres. It’s a cute cabin. It would get us out of town and I think it’d be really good for us. But you were out of town. And the funny thing is, was we’ve seen this cabin a little bit before and I text the listing agent because I know him and I was like, hey, if this ever comes back on the market, call me.
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And he’s like, Ashley, it’s not gonna go back on the market. Like, it’s a solid deal, it’s not gonna bust. I’m like, if it does, call me. Well, while you were going out of town, he calls me. He’s like, hey, that cabin went back on the market. And I’m like, I’m coming to see it today. Well, he is out of town. So I call you and I’m like, I’m going to look at that cabin. Well, I go look in the cabin and I’m like, I love it. Now, granted, this cabin’s 1 ,800 square feet, three bed, two bath. Smaller than the ranch style home we’re in, but it gets us 10 acres of land that’s connected to our ranch and it gets us out of town.
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Yeah, and allows us to kind of live on the ranch while we’re working on getting the house going.
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Yeah, something funny just to kind of steer off of that for a minute is our kids had only Really remembered living in the country They they when our two littles were two firstborns were little we lived in town in a neighborhood But then like they just didn’t really remember that the first house that they really remember was like probably our Rockwell house on 10 acres I would say and So when we moved back into town, I remember the kids got out of the car and they looked around And they said why are these houses all around us? Yeah, why can you see all these roofs? Like what and we’re like they’re neighbors. They didn’t know what a neighbor was. They’d never remembered having a neighbor
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That was cute and they had to watch for cars in the street and stuff like that and they had they weren’t used to that They peed outside whatever they wanted to and it was like you can’t pee in the front yard when you live in a neighborhood They did it anyway, so yeah All a learning experience.
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Yeah.
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So anyway when he was out of town, we looked at the cabin I called him. I’m like, babe. I love it Like I think we need to I think we need to go ahead and jump on this and thankfully you trust me You trust my discretion. Oh, yeah, and you’re like if you think that’s good for us, let’s do it Yeah, so made an offer Got it under contract. And then when you got back in town, I was like, hey you want to go see the house? We just bought yeah It was like yeah might as well guys are gonna be living in it So let’s go check it out And so the cabin that we currently live in like I said just just such a godsend for us Like we can ride our Ranger
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directly from our cabin to our land. Just so, just a godsend, just amazing. It also has some nice outbuildings and things where you can do manly stuff.
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Yeah, that’s a perfect place. But it is a tiny house for nine people.
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It is.
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So it’s only three bedrooms.
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It’s three bedrooms. So we’re gonna get into that. What has living simply the last three years taught us? First thing, you don’t need as much space as you think you do.
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You really don’t. You hear stories of people in the early 1900s or whatever, maybe even the mid 1900s, and they have, my grandma raised seven kids in an 800 square foot oklahoma grassfed beef house or whatever. And it’s like, I mean, you could totally do it.
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Being in an 1800 square foot house, I was telling somebody a couple days ago that we have five boys in one bedroom.
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We do, so we have two bunk beds and then a toddler bed.
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Yes.
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And this room’s pretty big.
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Yeah.
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It’s a pretty big room.
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Five sleep in there, totally comfortable.
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Five sleep in there.
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You know, not a big deal. People are like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe you have five kids and it’s like in one bedroom. And I’m like, you don’t have to have a bedroom for each human.
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Right. You just don’t. And then our daughter currently shares the room with the baby, which he just has a crib in there.
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Yeah. You know, and our kids, we’ll talk about it later, but they are outside all the time or playing a sport or something. They’re not in their bedrooms very much.
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And we don’t really want them to be. That’s kind of our goal is we want our kids.
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To be with us. We want them to be out of their rooms. We want them to be outside playing ideally and We just we like them to be together. So that is our setup currently five boys in one room and then two in one room and You know, I think for us like we think kids sharing a room is a blessing or even thinking through our next house So we’re like, okay, who’s gonna be in what room and you know at this point We’re gonna put two and two and two and then our daughter and her own and now we’re like should we just go ahead and Put more in one room and we’re leaning toward that because we think bringing that brings them closer together It really does, you know I mean if you keep them separated and they’re like this is my room and that’s my room and then they Fight all the time because this is their room.
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Don’t come into my room You know kids, you know put signs on their doors like no trespassing and
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It’s like, yeah, I don’t think that’s the culture that we want to create with our kids We want our kids to want to be around each other Enjoy each other Be close or friendship grow up and still be you know, like to be around each other and You know when they share rooms that that helps that now they still fight Oh, yeah for sure But I think they’re they’re closer because of it and it just keeps us as a closer family unit Absolutely.
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So we we were recommend it We think kids sharing rooms is a blessing. We think it makes your family closer. Um Another thing I have really enjoyed about living simply is less clutter in a small house You know where everything is
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That’s been kind of nice. It’s not like well, it could be here here here It’s like no, it’s probably and there’s not many places it can be. Yeah, it limits the options so Obviously, I’m just gonna say we look forward to having our big house our new house We look forward to having more space We look forward to being able to host people probably more than anything Because we love hosting and we just haven’t been able to do that much in our current house because it’s small That’s true.
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That part has been the downside is I mean you can’t you can’t have people over inside and You know not easily.
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Yeah with the cookouts.
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I mean it’s so small.
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So so we look forward to it like very much
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but I told him I said I’m probably gonna miss sometimes our little cabin because it has been sweet. Another thing about it that I’ve enjoyed is it’s easier to keep clean. True. I can literally clean and hit every area with the vacuum every day.
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Yeah that’s true. You know for me it’s like we share a little tiny closet in the master and I mean I’ve got one side and it’s me to get rid of a lot of oklahoma grassfed beef clothes and then you realize you don’t need that many clothes you know I mean if you’ve got a big old closet you’re gonna fill it up and when we get a big closet I’m sure I will.
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Yeah we’re gonna have a very big closet in the house.
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But it’s like you can live a whole lot simpler and you don’t really need a whole lot and then if you get new clothes you know throw the throw the other ones out you don’t need to save them if they’re not you know.
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Yeah it’s some things have been a challenge because like I like coffee bugs.
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Well, we have a very small cupboard for cups and mugs. And so he always is like, okay, if you get a new one, you gotta throw one away, which works a little bit. But I have a, I love some of my mugs, so I can’t throw them away.
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But you’ll never drink out of 50 different coffee mugs. You know?
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That I like to keep about a dozen, because it does depend on how I feel that day. Ladies will understand this. Cups matter.
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Tons of them. But in the small house, it literally forces you to not clutter.
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It does, which probably allows you to save money too, because you don’t buy as much, because you don’t have room for it.
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I mean, you talked about getting a Sam’s Club membership the other day and.
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Buying some stuff in bulk. You’re like, well, we can’t buy too much in bulk because we got nowhere to really put it.
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Yeah And so you just have to be strategic but yeah, absolutely The end and I think that I’m excited to use it But once again, like don’t have a lot of storage for it. So we kind of have to buy as we go. Yeah, so But there’s good. There’s good things about that and there’s good things about being able to like clean your house easily So if you have a small space like hey, don’t feel bad about it. Think about the positives that go along with it Another thing that we love is just having more family time together When you’re in a small house, you kind of know where everybody is all the time And so you can see each other you can talk and it forces you to just be together I think something that we have always done is we’ve never had TVs in our rooms
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or our kid’s room, like any of the rooms. So that has forced no one to stay in their room. Everybody comes to the family room to hang out because there’s nothing really keeping you in your room. For the kids, like sometimes they’ll lay in and read their books in the room or obviously if they need to change clothes or, but most of the time they are not in their rooms. Even our daughter, she’s almost 13 and sometimes she will go shut her door and read a book or she’s like, I’m gonna just go take a little nap after school, but most, but even her, like most of the time she’s out there with us.
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I think that’s, it goes into like a more purpose driven.
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Intentionality of how we want it to be and we don’t want kids just in their rooms the doors shut playing video games or well Whatever it’s kind of funny because we literally have one TV and our kids range from 1 to 13 Almost and it’s like they have to agree on one show when they watch one which is tough You got a one -year -old the 13 year old you know what it forces to happen is they have they have to learn to agree on a show and it’s Normally a show that probably are 11 and 13 year old would rather not watch because it’s maybe a little more Babyish whatever but it kind of forces them to do that which I actually love like though I watch a lot of veggie tales and stuff like that because the little kids like it the big kids can still like it They just have to have it on and they get sucked into that but it teaches them good lessons. Yeah, it does
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So something else that I think having a small space living simply does is it forces kids to play outside which is Greatly needed in today’s oklahoma grassfed beef society. We love our kids playing outside We love to be outside. Yes, and when you don’t have a lot to do inside It forces you to go outside.
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Yes, and in today’s world of screens phones iPads You know video games computers, I mean there’s gonna be plenty of time for that I mean in their school they have to be on a computer a lot, right? So in our job my job, I got to be on a computer a lot all day I’ve got you know for computer monitors on my desk at the office and so
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the more time that we can spend outside, not looking at screens, having kids play in the dirt, climbing trees. Remember the other day you said that Barlow, was it Barlow that was in a tree that was like, he was like way up there?
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Oh yeah, they all do.
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Yeah.
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And I had to set a limit.
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But he was like abnormally high up there that day.
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Oh yeah, they’re like, hi mom, and they’re like 25 feet in the air. And I’m like, okay, so now we have a limit on, you can only go 10 feet in a tree. Think about how tall a basketball goal is.
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Barlow’s five years old and climbed 20 feet high in the tree. And part of me is like, scared what if he falls? And the other part of me is like, kids used to do that all the time. And they learn and they, it’s like, that’s okay. You look at playgrounds like back in the 50s and 60s.
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Those are some of my favorite pictures.
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And it’s like, those kids were on big old monkey bars, like high in the air, doing what dangerous stuff, but.
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It’s like now you just want to protect them put them in a bubble give them a screen and it’s like man That’s just not not good for them all the time Yeah, some of our favorite things that our kids do is they build forts together in the woods So and it’s pretty amazing to see the creativity kids have when you just give them freedom and basically like nothing Right, and they build something out of nothing. They will come show us Mom and dad come look at our fort and we go out there. They’ve got rope swings They’ve made little shelters for each of them. Yeah, they find stuff in the woods.
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Yeah, like where did you get that? Over there in the woods and it’s like man.
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They my dad my mom and dad think it’s so funny cuz they get
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For Christmas, I think last year, they got them these big blue tarps and ropes. What’d they get those boys? What are those things called? Tool belts. With like hammers and nails. And so the kids just think it’s so fun. And then you look in our yard when you drive by in the trees and it’s just like tarps and ropes. And it’s just like, oh goodness.
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Looks like a homeless camp out there.
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But they’re having fun. So I try to just, and when I go out there, sometimes it’s hard for me because it’s like, what a wreck. It’s just so messy. But they’re having fun. I try to just be like, let it go. This is their space. Just let it go. But they have fun out there and they all play together, which I love. When they get in the zone, they can spend hours out there.
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Right. But that’s a good, simple life. There’s, you know, they get to be outside together, build things together, you know, talk.
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You know, a lot of kids don’t talk to each other very much. You look out there sometimes and they’re carrying like logs, who knows what, and they’re just like figuring it out oklahoma grassfed beef together.
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It’s great.
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It’s so great. We also have a trampoline. I think kids love a trampoline and it burns energy and it’s fun. They can do it together. We sometimes will do a kickball game or they’ll play football, play catch together, things like that. I do a walk outside every day. So when the kids are with me, there’s usually somebody walking with me and I’m usually pushing two, maybe three in a stroller. But we walk up and down our driveway a lot.
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So the simpleness of these last four years, I think has been really good for us. It’s helped us to grow closer as a family and kind of give a different perspective on, I don’t know.
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new shiny things and stuff isn’t a priority in life necessarily, like you can have it or not and once you’ve had it and then you don’t again and you’re like, hey man, it’s fine.
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Yeah, something you and I talked about the other day is like, oh, we’re so excited to get our house built and trust us, we are excited. But we’ve also learned over these last three years, we’re content. We don’t, we can have it or we can not have it, but it doesn’t change like who we are, what we love. God’s just shown us like you can do a lot with a little.
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That’s kind of the power of like having peace and comfort and stuff like that and who you are and your family and what you’re building and not.
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Keep not keeping up with the Joneses.
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Yeah, you know, and not worried about what other people think and.
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You know, there’s a lot of power in that because today and today’s world everybody’s stressed to the max on antidepressants on different things everybody a lot a lot a lot a lot are and I think Being in a spot where you are at peace with where you’re at in life and now you’re still having goals and stuff like that too, but you just not wrapped up in the Material items of life that is easy to get wrapped up in well as we know like You’re the only true peace and joy is through Jesus. That’s it That’s the only way and if you don’t have him in your heart and in your life There’s a void right all humans have a void and they say we have a God -shaped hole And if you don’t fill that void with Jesus
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You’re always gonna be searching for what do I fill it with? Is it stuff? Is it drugs? Is it this? Is it that? What can the world offer that can fill this hole and nothing can know? That’s that’s nothing can fill it And so once you discover that you could you fill that with the one who created you Then you have true peace true joy and you learn that that does not come from stuff.
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No, that’s a very Good feeling to have when you know, like You have true peace through Christ and it is if you have nice things in life because you’ve earned it and you’ve worked hard That’s great
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you know, if you go through seasons where you don’t, but you’re still happy and have peace, like that’s the goal.
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That’s the goal. You know, and I think another big thing for us is like, what God gives us, we want to use to glorify Him. So when we get our nice house built, we want to use it to host people, bring people together, have our kids teams over, pour into them, just use what God gave us to grow the kingdom.
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Right.
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That’s the goal. And I think that when you use what God gave you to glorify Him, you live for Him, you tie, like you follow His commands, He’s going to continue to bless you.
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Amen to that.
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So
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If you’re in a simple life right now, and maybe you’re loving it, good for you.
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If you are wanting to build a house or buy a bigger house down the road, that’s okay too, no shame in that. We’re really excited for ours. But basically, like I teach our kids oklahoma grassfed beef , wherever you are, be there and be happy. Don’t always be like, well, I’ll be happy when this happens. I’ll be happy when that happens. One of our kids, our daughter came home from school a while ago, and she was like, oh, you know, school, the school, this, it’s not fun. And I’m like, okay, here’s the thing. You have to be in school. Where would you be if you weren’t in school? I don’t know, just home, and I might be bored, and I might be this. I’m like, you have to be at school, so you might as well be happy when you’re there.
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If you have to be somewhere, be happy to be there. Here’s your two choices, you’re happy or you’re not happy. You might as well be happy. So wherever you are, let God teach you the lessons, learn what he’s trying to teach you, and just be present and be happy to be there. Yeah.
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And I think if your life is chaotic, which ours certainly is a lot of times, looking for ways to simplify your life can be a very good thing to do. Yeah. So maybe it’s simplifying your evenings or simplifying your mornings, you know, stuff like that. Getting rid of some TVs, putting some books in the hands of your kids, kicking them outside, going for walks as a family.
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We do kick our kids outside a lot.
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You know, stuff like that to put some simplicity in your life and no technology or, you know, that kind of stuff.
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It could be very good for you.
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Yeah, so live the simple life as much as you can enjoy life be happy and Fill that void inside of you with the only one who can bring you peace and joy and that is the Lord It’s good. That’s today’s message. We’ll see you guys next time