We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Julie Brown a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Julie , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

The last thirty years I have worked in the home cleaning and organizing industry. Growing up in a home with eighteen siblings, we always had chores, and house cleaning was a natural career path for me. I spent time in hundreds of different homes and around the families. I was born with an inherent love for children. I have 10 younger siblings, and 50 nieces and nephews. I babysat many of my one hundred first cousins, and some of my client’s kids. As I worked in these homes and spent time helping those children learn chores, over time, I developed a desire to write books to help children learn in a fun and interactive way. In 2023 I published my first children’s book on the adventures of the imagination. In 2024 I am working on a series of children’s books and traveling the country to read and share these books and lessons in elementary schools.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Julie Brown. I am ninth of nineteen children. My parents have been married for fifty seven years. I have twelve brothers and six sisters. My mom birthed eighteen children in nineteen years. The youngest was born seven years later with Down Syndrome. My parents homeschooled us. Dad taught the academic classes and also worked as a train engineer. Mom taught the language, music and arts classes, and was a stay at home mom. We lived in a big old Mormon church that was not used as a church anymore. The chapel was separated off into separate rooms, one being a library/den, across from that, the master bedroom, and the stage was turned into a quiet meditation room. The classrooms were shared bedrooms for the kids, and the cultural hall was used as a gym for our recreational activities. It had a basketball hoop, a trampoline in one corner, and a swing set in the other. We would roller skate on the wooden floor and there was a weight gym on the stage. Our family vehicle was an actual school bus. We rode bicycles in the parking lot and strung clothes lines for the multiple loads of wash we did everyday. We had a garden and fruit trees where we grew and produced our own food. We also had chickens and goats for milk and eggs, and made homemade bread with flour from wheat that we ground. We all had chores and a daily chart of tasks and classes to mark off and be accountable for. Each older child would help one of the younger children, like a buddy system.
We had a myriad of musical instruments at the house and it was one of our assignments to practice daily. Dad would make up fun songs and sing them to us on the guitar as he would put us to sleep at night. These fun kid songs had learning lessons and catchy tunes to help us remember. This last year, different siblings and I have been working with my dad to get these songs published into kids books to share with the world. Some of us are co-authoring with him, others are doing illustrations, music, marketing and even the publishing. Our mission is to share a message with other families striving to raise their children with good lessons, life skills, teamwork, discipline, self reliance, motivation, imagination and making your dreams a possibility. Our message is targeted to every age, personality and different ability, as we represented and navigated all of those beneath our own roof. We used to sing, speak, perform and tech as a family at retirement homes, churches, and schools etc. The last few decades as I have worked with families in their homes, I have been able to pass along many of these lessons and modalities for families to function more smoothly and peacefully, and to bring calm to their chaos. I love teaching structure and simplicity, family involvement, motivating kids, and even how energy effects our environment. The things that we allow into our home are responsible for what we will experience. I have loved working 1 on 1 in homes with families. And this year I’m traveling around the nation to elementary schools to help kids influence their parents in a fun and learning way.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

One of the important lessons we learned growing up was to stay on task until a job was finished. This is a especially important these days with interest span being shorter. There were times when we were little when we did not want to keep cleaning the house until it was done. Dad and mom would make it fun by turning on music, having us all work together at the same time, working with us to train us how to do the task properly, and then having a fun chore chart that we could mark off the individual tasks with stickers as a reward and to see our progress. There were also consequences for non-cooperation, a poor attitude, or being disrespectful. We would lose certain privileges such as going out with friends, or TV time etc. For our punishment, Dad always believed in being productive. So he would have us write positive sentences or copy scriptures or do something where we were safe but always learning.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Growing up in such a big family and being home schooled, we did most everything together and as a team. We would help people in the community. If someone had to move for example, we would go as a family and dad would have us do something he called ‘The Chain’. One person would be in the truck stacking everything like a puzzle. Then all the rest of the kids would lineup single file to where the boxes were stacked to be loaded. We would just start passing the boxes down the chain of people from one end to the other. We would get fire wood this way, set up chairs at church, or load or unload the car after a trip etc. Tasks were organized and got done quickly. A story on resilience: One fall day we had all gone to an orchard to pick apples together. It was part of our family and schooling experience and was not an option. It had been a long day, It was getting cold, we were tired and hungry and begging dad to go home. He reminded us that “we always finish a job that we start and leave a place better than we found it.” I remember crying and being a little disgruntled. He said the better attitude I had and the faster we worked, the sooner we could leave. I remembered that lesson and utilized it many times later in life. When I was on a huge task or in a home that seemed daunting, every single time I stayed and finished. I remembered to have a great attitude. It always made the time go by faster, made the job more fun, and positively influenced the people around me. I ended up with amazing clients and career opportunities because of that lesson.

Contact Info:

• Website: Livewithimpact.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100093292514654&mibextid=ZbWKwL

Image Credits
Julie Brown Jen Dehlin Brown Phil Brown / Omuugn