There once was a time when my family was smaller, my children were younger, and life was a bit simpler. In that season, I found it very easy to commit myself to weekend-long food preservation marathons during which I would process hundreds of jars of food at a time. It felt so wonderful to see boxes of jars being added to the pantry all at once, and over time I began to think this was the best and only way to achieve a stocked pantry full of home-preserved food.

During that stage of my life, bulk preserving was a very efficient and effective way to tackle the abundance of the harvest season, but eventually life began to change. Our family grew, and school—as well as its accompanying activities—started to occupy more of my time throughout my days on the homestead. The months of August and September were no longer just busy with harvests and canning. They also happened to be the months when school and extracurricular activities were ramping back up for the year.

In this new season of life it became increasingly difficult to carve out large segments of time for canning projects. I found myself becoming discouraged that I wasn’t preserving the same quantities of food as I was when the children were younger, and entire weeks would go by where nothing really seemed to get accomplished on my very long food preservation project list.

I had a few choices: I could give up and resign myself to the fact that my life no longer allowed me the same opportunities, I could get less sleep and start staying up late to get the work done, or I could learn to do what I can given the time that I do have available on my busy days at home caring for my family. I decided to choose the latter, and this is how the “Every Bit Counts Challenge” was born.

Making the Most of Small Windows of Time

As a busy homeschooling mother of eight children, I rarely have uninterrupted time to spend an entire day processing food, but what I do have are little pockets of time sprinkled throughout my days—fifteen minutes here, a lengthy naptime there, or an evening where everyone is occupied, leaving me time to tackle a project.

We all have at least fifteen minutes in a day to accomplish a task. Maybe it means fifteen minutes less we spend scrolling on our phones or watching television, but most of us can find a way to make that happen. Fifteen minutes could allow me to get the peppers I brought in from the garden washed, chopped, and frozen. It could also allow me to get some fruit in the roaster to cook overnight and reduce into a sauce for canning. It could even allow me to get a small batch of veggies fermenting in a jar.

I began to shift my thinking. During the busy harvest and food preservation season, I challenged myself to do something every single day, no matter how small. If I only had a few minutes, I could at least run to the garden, cut some herbs, and get them hanging to dry. Or if I was blessed with a few hours, I could get a batch or two of fruit in the canner. These little projects may seem insignificant by themselves when you consider how much preserved food it can take to get a large family through the winter, but when you add all of the little projects up over the course of the entire food preservation season, they turn into a full and diverse pantry.

From A Personal Challenge to A Social Media Movement

In 2020, I started sharing about this change in perspective on my social media accounts, and others who found themselves in the same position—with little time for canning marathons—started to join me. We created the #everybitcountschallenge on Instagram and YouTube, and a food preservation movement was born! Thousands of people started encouraging one another to use their resources to the best of their abilities and to make it through the month of August one little step at a time.

Over the last four years that this challenge has been spreading, we have seen so many benefits documented from the community that has been created. Committing yourself to preserving something every day will force you to look around your garden and property to find creative ways to get something preserved. Maybe it’s a day in which you don’t have large quantities of produce accumulated to process, but maybe there are neglected herbs and other little harvests sitting in the garden just waiting for you to do something with them. This challenge motivates you to get it done.

When I used to set aside whole days or weekends for food preservation, I found myself focusing on the big harvests of crops—the bushels that would come in from the garden or that I might have purchased from a local farm. But if I challenge myself to do something small every day, I find myself expanding my definition of what is able to be preserved. There have been days where there is nothing from the garden needing to be processed, so I decide to walk around the property and forage for wild fruits that I can turn into jams and jellies or get into the freezer for later. These extras that I wouldn’t necessarily focus on preserving without the motivation of the challenge really add to my pantry shelves.

In the old preservation mindset I described, I would typically process many jars of just one specific type of item in bulk quantities. For example, if I was doing a canning day with a large quantity of apples, I would just process many batches of applesauce to get them into jars as quickly as possible. But I find that with the “Every Bit Counts Challenge” and doing a little bit every day, I’m not only less likely to get burned out over a specific task, but I also diversify the ways in which I get something like apples into jars. Because I spread the work of the apples into projects over several days, I find myself trying different preservation methods. If I only have twenty minutes one day, I may just chop apples for the dehydrator or freeze dryer with my time instead of canning it into sauce. This leaves me with a much more diverse selection of food items within my pantry, and the key to pleasing a large family whose members each have different tastes and preferences is having many options available. It’s a win-win!

Applying the “Every Bit Counts” Mindset Beyond Food Preservation

“Every Bit Counts” is a mindset that helps us use our time more efficiently while eliminating waste, and it’s something that extends far beyond the realms of homesteading and food preservation. Life can get busy and we often find ourselves with more on our to-do lists than we have time to accomplish. It’s a rare day that we get the opportunity to check off all the necessary boxes, but that matters little so long as we are actively making progress toward our goals. Every bit of our effort counts and gets us one step closer to the finish line. During harvest season, every bit gets us one step closer to a stocked pantry for winter.

If you find yourself at a place in life where harvest season leaves you frustrated and overwhelmed, perhaps you would benefit from a change of perspective. We would love for you to join the movement! Every August, thousands of people come together on social media to encourage each other using the hashtag: #everybitcountschallenge. You can use that hashtag to share and search on most platforms to glean inspiration from others who are participating and share what you’re preserving with others. Together we can inspire each other in our knowledge of various food preservation methods like canning, drying, freezing, and fermenting, and help others find creative ways to make the little harvests add up. Every bit truly does count!