1000 Hours Outside

The 1000 hours outside movement has been around for a few years, but this is the first year I really committed to tracking our time outside and seeing if we could hit 1000 hours outside in one year!

Ok, full disclosure: I did GREAT tracking our progress until early August when the pregnancy/morning sickness was so bad I couldn’t get out of bed. My family still spent time outside daily, but I was mostly in bed from July-October, and I completely stopped tracking during that time.

BUT! At the end of July when we fell off the tracking wagon, we had just hit 800 hours…and August, September and October were all months that we spent a lot of hours outside. Even now in November and December we are spending significant time outside. So, I am fairly certain that we easily hit over 1000 hours in 2022.

In case you are stumbling on this post and haven’t followed our family for any length of time, here are some stats about us. We live in South West Ohio and in May of 2022 bought a 5 acre homestead, where we now have pigs, chickens, a bunny, a puppy, rescued kittens and a faithful housecat who lived with us before we moved to land. Our hours outside significantly increased when we moved to acreage, but I am fully believe we would have still our goal even if we still lived in suburbia.

We have three children- 8 years old, 6 years old and 4 years old. We also have our fourth baby due in March 2023. My husband works in law enforcement (crazy shifts) and I teach 1st grade at a hybrid school two days a week and homeschool the remaining days of the week. Because of all these factors, it feels like our schedules are often exactly the opposite of the rest of the world and hiking or being outside is a refuge for our family.

Anyways, I just thought I would put together a little recap of our year and look back at some of the hours that we spent outside!

January

February

March

April

this cracks me up because this is the month that we hit 100 hours outside! I thought for sure we would NEVER be able to hit 1000!

May –

the month we moved to our homestead!

June-

did we even go INSIDE in June? Haha.

July

August

September

October

Nov/Dec

And that is a wrap on our 1000 hours outside in 2022! I am planning for sure on doing it again next year, but this time I am going to download (and pay for) the app to actually keep track.

Here are some things that we learned along the way:

• If we spend 30 min-1 hour outside each day in the winter we call that good!
• In the summer, we cancel all of our TV subscriptions and often usually even move the TV out of the house. It’s not even an option. We often spend 8-10 hours outside each day.
• Eating meals outside seems to lend itself to staying outside once done eating.
• As a parent, try to do any tasks that you can outside. The kids tend to follow Mom (or Dad) wherever we go, so doing our own things (even if it’s reading a book!) outside also means the kids will be outside.
• The kids often have a hard time finding something to do outside (without me) for the first 30-40 minutes. Then I find that they find that something to do and will do it for hours upon hours.
• You don’t have to have extravagant adventures with streams and waterfalls or beaches and zip lines to get outside. The back yard will do just fine! A local park is also great!
• 1000 hours outside lifestyles are not limited just to homeschoolers or those who travel a lot. We do not travel hardly at all, and although we do live a hybrid homeschool lifestyle, I want to encourage you to pursue time outside even if the kids are in traditional school five days a week. It is very possible to spend a lot of hours outside!