The following may not be monumentally mind-shattering to most but it does give us something to think about. When we sit back, a little too confident in our abilities, we can falter, so take a look.

Preserve Food With Canning Jars – A sustainable, self reliant lifestyle is all about cutting out the waste in your life. Instead of perishable foods going bad, preserving them with some simple canning techniques will cut down on the waste and help you stock up your food supply. Through jarring, canning, preserving, pickling, and other techniques, you can preserve almost anything you could ever want to stay edible and delicious without refrigeration.

Master Some Basic Skills – With all of the modern conveniences we enjoy, you don’t really need to know how to do too many things to get by. If you can’t sew, you go to the mall. If you can’t cook, you order take out. If you can’t treat your own ailments, you go to the doctor. This all works well for the time being, but self sufficiency is all about being able to provide yourself with everything you could possibly need. This means learning some basic skills to help get you through your day no matter what happens.

Learn To Conserve – Using less of everything is a big way to help achieve self sustainability. Even if you don’t necessarily NEED to cut back now, one day you might. Learning the best ways of doing this is huge for emergency preparedness and a self reliant lifestyle. Start trying to make do with a little less at a time. Making smaller, easier changes will make you more likely to succeed in the long run.
Whether it’s food, bedding, clothing, tools, or other supplies, having a stock of your essentials is a great start to achieving a more self-sustained lifestyle.

Expand Your First Aid Kit – You probably already have some form of first aid kit around, but are you really ready to deal with all sorts of medical problems, emergencies, and ailments? Building up your emergency preparedness first aid kit is key to the homesteading lifestyle. This first aid kit list will help you ensure that you have everything you could possibly need in case you can’t make it to the doctor.

See, all perfectly simple considerations and things you've probably been doing right along. However, they could also be  steps that you have not thought about in a while. It might be the right time to look into that first aid kit and update, making sure certain items lived well past their expiration or, for that matter, have become completely drained — think of batteries. They can't last forever!

For more information and some great graphs and pictures go to Little House Living.