Beautiful Homemakers

photo credit What time do you plan on eating dinner?  Most organized women begin dinner preparations at 4:30 p.m. OR, preferably, before breakfast!  Early risers lay out all the nonperishable ingredients and dishes, and do preparation such as chopping celery and grating cheese.  Shocking, but true!    I'm not an early riser, so in the beginning 4:30 p.m. was always my starting time, unless I was using a crock pot, in which case preparation must be done in the morning, and at 2:45 p.m. if using a bread maker.  You must begin at 4:00 p.m. if you need to clean up your kitchen beforehand.   If you plan to eat at 6:00 p.m., then 4:30 is your LATEST starting time! Have a child set the table.  Check his or her work.  Make sure you have taught them properly, and remember to SMILE and praise them!  No criticizing!  Ask your children to come up with a centerpiece.  Keep a Bible handy to read a passage right aft...

We cut 60% from our grocery and eating out budget when I quit working.  photo credit Sorry! This post was so outdated that I removed it.  An updated and greatly expanded version appears in my book How to Thrive on One Income.     

1951 Arthur Sarnoff The aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as becomes holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children; to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed. These are not suggestions; they are God’s will for us! To be Sober:   To be moderate, self-controlled, humble, well-balanced, steady, calm, cool, collected, quiet, thoughtful, serious, earnest, sincere, use common sense,  to do one’s duty, to simplify, and to learn to make wise decisions and judgments. To Love Their Husbands: Be sexy for your husband!  Love on him physically and provide a place he wants to come home to.  Meet his physical and material needs in the home. To Love Their Children:   Seems like an easy one, but I hate it when I hear mom’s bagging on their teens....

AdvertisingArchives I knew that God had called young women to be “Keepers at Home” (Titus 2:5), but someone recently pointed out to me that raising my son at home is a “sacred responsibility.”  God has given me a sacred responsibility!  Am I living up to it?  Am I doing what God requires of me?  Am I wasting money?  Wasting the hours of my life?  Wasting the hours of my son’s life?  Am I content?  Fearful? In the past I have been very unhappy with our home.  It just wasn’t what I had in mind.  Slowly, through prayer and hard work, I have accepted the house and have been making it more ours.   There were so many little detail things I could have done to make it nicer, and I am finally accomplishing them.  My heart is now fixed on my home. I have always wanted to “keep house,” but not moving into an empty or clean home when we married really put me off balance.  I felt I was failing miserably, first because I ...

RetroRenovation.com I have always wanted to be “at home” and so I am reveling in it.  I thoroughly enjoy each day.  I know I have taken excellent care of our son, and myself….but my husband and our home?  Well, I had wimped out.  It “wasn’t my fault” I came into a dirty, cluttered up house. I have always wanted to care for my home, and did just fine before I married my husband.  I enjoyed cleaning, laundry, and decorating to a degree.  I’d get up early and bake muffins and light candles and dream about the future.  After I got married and real-life hit, I wasn’t quite so good as I thought I would be about being a homemaker.  It was easy to just pick up after me, but do HIS laundry?  Clean up his kitchen messes?  I certainly was not his slave, and I was feeling like a martyr.  Once I “came home” I first adjusted my attitude, realizing that while I finally had my dream of being home, my husband still had to go off to work...

Wendy Hilty 1955 When I first moved into my new husband’s house, I developed asthma.  The place was so dusty that I would begin itching whenever I entered it (he hadn't been living in the house).  I began to see an allergist and found I was extremely allergic to dust.  When we removed the carpet we were relieved to find hardwood floors underneath.  Eliminating the carpet eliminated my asthma. Decluttering all the rooms & drawers took a long time (I still have one room I call the junk room that is filled with family memorabilia I haven’t gone through yet).  But during this time of clearing out clutter, I began to feel physically bad.  We found lots of products, including banned pesticides like DDT, and I began to wonder just how much my new environment was affecting me.   H ome Safe Home I bought the book Home Safe Home by Debra Lynn Dadd which has 400 pages of How to Determine If a Product is Toxic To You, How Safe is Your Home, I...

photo credit Up until fairly recently, when we finally let go of tons of stuff, I needed constant ENCOURAGEMENT. I would get overwhelmed and discouraged easily. So I learned to surround myself with things that strengthen and inspire me, and get rid of what drains me. If I looked at an item and it reminded me of something I didn’t want to be reminded of every time I looked at it, out it went. Discarding really cleared up a lot of useless thoughts. Out went the Tigger sweatshirt because every time I looked at it, it reminded me of who gave it to me. A neutral memory, but annoying!  So out it went.  I didn’t want the constant reminder of that period in my life.      I love to read, and love to learn how others do things. I scoured the library system for homekeeping tips, and frankly, not much existed. So I decided to put together my own binder of encouragement for me. I filled it with pictures that inspired me on in clearing a...

photo credit “Scrub dear, don’t tickle” – Kim Woodburn and Aggie MacKenzie from How Clean is Your House? Why clean the house when it’s just going to get messy again anyways?  Why make the bed when you are just going to get back into it in a few hours?  I know many people who live this way, and sometimes I do feel like throwing in the towel and saying “Forget it!  I’m sick of doing the same things over and over again!” BUT… 1)      I want my house to be a home for me, my DH & our son – not dustmites, flies, fleas and pests! 2)      I can tell if a week has gone by and I forgot to change the sheets and swiffer under our bed – my throat and ears begin itching (I’m horribly allergic to dustmites).  Dustmites need to be killed in HOT water.  They can cause asthma, eczema, allergies, etc.  They feed off our skin flakes!  Yuck!  So dusting with a damp microfiber cloth, vacuuming, changing b...

From the first day my first son was born, I’ve asked myself daily “ If he died tomorrow, would I regret anything I did today?”   Up until he was four months old I couldn’t stand to hear him cry.  I could not “nap train” or let him cry it out – because if he had died I would never have forgiven myself.  I also could never have let someone else care for him.   The Contented Little Baby: The Simple Secrets of Calm, Confident Parenting by Gina Ford was hugely helpful in helping me train my son to sleep through the night at age four months.  Maybe it’s because I’m an older mother, but I cannot effectively function on less than 7 hours of sleep.  I thrive on 9, and try and always get it, and my husband also needs 8-9 hours.  While I am all for co-sleeping and breastfeeding on demand if you can do it, I could not.   Our son slept in a cradle where I could hold his hand by our bed, and I fed him during the night until he was four months ...