I thought I’d take a moment to share a bit about things here at the Emporium, the business end of things, since I’ve been sharing so much about life on the homestead, the personal side of things. I feel it’s important to keep you all in the loop!

There’s no doubt about it, life is busy here around the homestead and the emporium right now.

However, keeping the business running as smoothly as humanly possible has always been a top priority! Things within the business (and home) are changing though.

With my husband away, it means there’s only one of us to take the kids where ever they need to go, just one of us to pay the bills, get the groceries, run errands, AND, get to the post office to ship all these packages. I won’t even begin to say I’m doing the single parent thing, because I’m not. I still have a husband, my kids still have a father, he’s just not home and able to help right now. He is still my constant support though, and I won’t take that for granted!

On top of it all, Alesia, my biggest helper within the business, is now working not just one job (on top of working for the emporium) outside of the home, but two.

So what’s this mean for Homestead Emporium?

Well… we’ve had to do some reorganizing, restructuring, and… upgrading!

It’s the ONLY way things can continue to run smoothly.

The first step was to figure out a way to decrease Alesia’s work load within the business, without overloading mine.

So, I invested in an electric cutter! It’s great! I now cut all the inner fabrics as well as the tops. Alesia and I will share the cutting of the backs (the windpro fleece), but she will no longer be doing the inners. This is a big weight off her ‘todo’ list.
It does mean there’s a bit more work on my end BUT, the electric cutter makes it quick enough that it’s ok. I can handle it.

The next restructure will have me going back to packaging all the orders.

This is a big one… this job takes aprox. 10-14 hours each and every week. We were sharing this job before, I would print out the orders, she would then print out the shipping labels, gather the orders/products with help from another sister and put them in their packages. I would then go through and close up packages and get them ready to head out the door. Previously, at this point dear hubby would take them TO the post office.

Now, with her gone to work 7 days a week, I just don’t think I can ask this of her any longer. I’m going to do my best to take this entire job back over.

In trade, Alesia will now be taking the packages to the post office. Her main job at the grocery store just happens to be right beside the post office so that works out rather well and saves me from having to get to the post office during open hours amidst driving her and Joshua back and forth to work every.single.day. We’ll simply try our very best, as we have done for the past years!

The absence of remaining home is the VERY biggest part for me to get accustomed to.

I lived for TWO years without a vehicle. THAT’s how much of a homebody I am. THAT’s how I grew this business and still maintained the home, the schooling and life in general. Being on the road SO MUCH now, has changed that a LOT. I just keep reminding myself it’s just TWO more months until they get their drivers licenses.

In the meantime, I think I’ll need to slow down on taking custom orders. As much as I always want to help customers out, even when they are in a bind and need something quickly (baby due soon, etc.), I’m realizing I can’t do it ALL and I need to take a step back and slow down on trying to meet EVERY need. Something always suffers for it, and lately it’s been my children, and my own health. That’s not something I can allow to continue.

So although there are changes taking place here at the Homestead Emporium, be assured that they are good changes and we will always try our very best to keep customer service, and product quality, at it’s very best!