Compartmentalization is critical for extant life as it allows for the protection of biochemical reaction networks and prevents dilution and the invasion of parasites. In even the simplest forms of life, compartmentalization is achieved through phospholipids that spontaneously assemble into vesicles. Phospholipid-based vesicles have been studied extensively as a model for the cell membrane or as the building blocks for synthetic cells. Moreover, lipids are used as a protocell model for how life could have originated in a compartment-first hypothesis. Excitingly, even simple, prebiotically relevant lipids, like fatty acids, also spontaneously assemble into vesicles. Moreover, such vesicles can grow and spontaneously divide when supplied with building blocks. While fatty acids can assemble into compartments and show exciting life-like behavior, there is a critical difference between such systems and life as we know it. Life maintains itself outside of equilibrium by converting chemical energy and light into the building blocks needed for growth, division, and homeostasis. Even in homeostasis, a cell sustains itself by using resources to regulate its internal chemical reaction networks. For example, the cell continuously remodels existing phospholipids through the Land's cycle. Thus, in an approach towards the de novo synthesis of life or to create models for compartments at the origin of life, self-sustainment outside of equilibrium should be considered. We and others coupled the formation of compartments to non-equilibrium chemical reaction cycles. In such a reaction cycle, a molecule with high chemical potential (that we refer to as fuel) is converted into a molecule with low chemical potential (waste). The energy harvested from the fuel-to-waste conversion is used to transiently activate building blocks for compartmentalization. Reaction cycles that convert methylating agents, condensing agents, acylating agents, phosphorylating agents, and reducing or oxidizing agents have been well-explored.