Making a Home

I grew up in a culture that very much favored women working outside of the home. I would wager to guess that you grew up in that culture, too. Few today are raised to value the homemaker, the mom who cares for the household, her husband, her family, and her community.

I certainly wasn't for a majority of my young adult years. As I've gotten older, and spent more time diving deeper into God's Word, I have been changed by the Holy Spirit (thank you, sanctification!) to not just see the value, but trust God to add that value to my own family's life.

I left my job in June 2021 with a Master's degree, a whole lot of student loan debt, and a desire to serve God by honoring who He made me to be: a wife and a mother. We bought a house on about an acre, got some chickens, and planted a small garden. We started homeschooling, found a solid church, and starting catechizing our kids.

I thought that being home, in a new home, was going to be a fresh start--that the house would magically stay clean because it started that way, and I had the time to maintain it. Boy, oh boy did I quickly realize that was never going to be the case.

Growing up, I never learned how to clean. I know that sounds weird, but clutter didn't bother me, and someone else (usually my older sister) always cleaned up the shared spaces. Now, that doesn't mean my house today is DIRTY, but it is cluttered, dusty, and if you dropped by on the average day, I would need to wipe down that bathroom.

That is REALLY hard for me to admit, but it is the truth. I never learned how to manage the stuff, or the proper timeline for cleaning various areas of the home (like the oven, or the washer, or the WINDOW SILLS)! The sheer magnitude of things to clean was surprising to me, and it's something I've been wrestling with since I became a wife and had my own home to manage.

I thought that making a checklist would help. I googled and scoured Pinterest, and decided to take the best of both worlds and make my own. Each day had an area of the house that would be the focus, and each task was broken down.

Honestly, it worked great for a while, until we missed a day here and a day there, and then I felt behind. Then, we had company scheduled and I'd rage clean.

But that isn't what God's design for me was or is. He created me (and you!) to honor Him in ALL we do. Slacking on my cleaning, or rage cleaning was NOT honoring Him, or my family. If I am to do my job well, I need to do it fully. Overloading my days and letting that prevent me from keeping my house clean isn't okay.

Now, that doesn't mean that I can't do fun things and that I have to stay home and clean all day, but our world is chaos and insanity and my husband (and the rest of us who are home more!) deserve to live in a peaceful space. A messy, cluttered house is not peaceful.

This realization has been so valuable to me. God made me to be my husband's helper, and as a homemaker, that means managing the home as much as I possibly can. I don't have a traditional job, and only work a few hours a day. I am homeschooling my kids, but that doesn't take much time either. I have the time. I need to make the cleaning and tidying of my home a priority. If I am choosing other things that I want to do over the things that I need to do, that is sin, and I want to live in a way that honor's God.

This is a journey. Conviction is just the start of any change, right? And the truth is that I still have a lot to learn in my process of change. I already have learned that we have too much stuff. Trimming it down will help me significantly. But managing the main areas of the house and, maybe even more importantly, our bedroom, are first on my list.

So, here I go. I'm off to tackle one area of our room today in an effort to bring a more peaceful and calm feeling to our room. Pray for me! I'll need God's strength as I embark!