Many social media posts and videos I’ve seen lately revolve around homesteading trends that have wiggled their way into modern day. Sourdough starter tutorials, canning recommendations, crochet patterns and timeless recipes flood my feed and make me wonder if I’ve stepped back in time.

I love these kinds of activities, but I never thought I would see the day they’d be made popular again, especially among people my age. These things we associate with our grandparents’ generation, at least in my case, have me wondering if I should see more issues from their perspective.

This is easier said than done, with so many outside influences and pressures. But I think there are many things our grandparents got right: saving money, valuing family, enjoying what they have, living within their means. Focusing on these pillars could help guide our decisions.

Making tough decisions

With inflation skyrocketing, we may not know where to turn. A handful of groceries quickly adds up to over $100, and things don’t seem to last quite as long as they did in earlier days.

Putting myself in my grandparents’ shoes could help. I could find hearty recipes that use minimal groceries to keep me fed and stretch my dollar. Crocheting a hat could help me save the money that I’d put toward buying a new one.

What about tougher decisions, like land use? Scott Fritz says thinking like his grandparents helped him ultimately decide to sign some of his land into a solar project.

“I thought, ‘What would my grandparents do?’” Fritz says. “They were immigrants from two generations ago. What would they do?”

The change that solar has brought about may seem scary, but it’s no different than the change Fritz’s grandparents faced. He explains that, as immigrants, they traded their grocery store on the south side of Chicago for 320 acres of farmland in Indiana right at the start of the Great Depression. Talk about a change!

Channeling his grandparents seemed like it fit well with this modern change.

“They would’ve looked at solar and thought, ‘Yes, this is good for our family, it’s good for agriculture, it’s good for our community,’” Fritz adds. “It’s certainly an adjustment, but they would have signed.”

A new perspective

I think it can be easy to get caught up in what our neighbors and peers think about the decisions we make, but we ought to care more about how our grandparents would handle difficult situations. Their decisions revolved solely around their families and finding ways to make things better.

“Every move had to be a better life, and I think they would’ve looked at the solar and said, ‘This will provide us a better life than what we’ve had,’” Fritz says. “It’s a little different perspective, I think.”

That’s what it all boils down to: perspective. Instead of being overwhelmed by the entire picture, tightening up our perspective to focus on the simple things that were valued by our grandparents could help make sense of tough issues.