The Homemaking Life: An Introduction

How do you sum up years of homemaking? Babies and houses and dinner guests? Coffee cups, changing nappies, and candlelit evenings? Spills and baking and dreaming?

There’s so much life bursting out of every inch of these years. Homemaking is like a boat at sea. There are seasons of quiet and order, followed by seasons of crazy circumstances. Just when you think you are doing well, a baby starts teething or you have to move house. The homemaker needs expertise and strength to anchor the boat through the changes of life. The home needs the homemaker, and the homemaker needs God.

The Dramatic Tea Set Rescue

It’s always unnerving to wake up to the sound of smashing glass. It was a Saturday morning, and someone was filling up a skip near the back of our house. Then came the familiar sound of breaking china. (Being a mother of five little ones, I know this sound all too well). I leaned further out of the window and could see an old tea set being thrown into the skip piece by piece. I leapt up and called to Aaron and the children to run downstairs and rescue it. Delighted with their mission, the children leaned over the edge of the skip and pulled out as much of that china as they could carry. Plates and teacups kept appearing upstairs in excited little hands. Sadly some were beyond repair, broken into fragments.

It was beautiful 1950s English china. Maybe a treasured wedding present from decades ago? Someone was throwing it into a skip, I couldn’t believe it! This small experience tells the sad story of homemaking over the last century. It isn’t just about old china. Many of the values, virtues and practical skills of previous generations have also been smashed and replaced with shiny new ones. They may look exciting, but I’m not convinced they will last.

The Homemaking Life

Today, a woman who
cares for her home
and family full-time
is incredibly rare.

Today, a woman who cares for her home and family full-time is incredibly rare. Lifestyles and trends change, and yet the homemaking way of life has been around for thousands of years. A poem in the Bible written by a wife and mother describes a homemaker over two thousand years ago. I share many of her tasks thousands of years later, and I can feel connected across history to other women who have lived this way.

This New Series

The purpose of this blog series is to present the foundations of homemaking [following the key phrases in this ancient poem, from Proverbs 31]. You may be just setting out on this journey, newly married or with a baby or a couple of pre-schoolers at home. Maybe you dream about it but haven’t found the courage to take any steps yet. Maybe you have been a homemaker for years but are weary and looking for a way to get out. You may be a long way from any of this as you wonder if you will get married one day. Whatever your circumstances I hope that my insights and experience will give new vision for a lost way of life which has great depth and beauty, character-shaping potential, and memories which you will treasure for the rest of your life.

Here is a look at some of the topics I’m going to write about in the coming months:

• “Willing Hands”: The Joy of giving everything up to be there
• “Food for Her Household”: What a food-making woman means to a family
• “Portions for her Maidens”: The unique training and love of daughters
• “Dressed with Strength”: Physical and emotional strength from giving birth to gardening!
• “Dream by Lamplight”: From wasted leisure time to fruitful free time
• “Fruit of her Hands”: How to do joyful and useful work
• “Open hands to the Needy”: What it means to open up your home
• “Not afraid of Snow”: Wisdom and faith for new babies, new seasons, and new challenges
• “Fine Linen & Purple”: Pursuing beauty without social media
• “Teaching of Kindness”: The right place for wives to teach
• “Household Ways”: A culture-shaping woman
• “A Woman who fears the Lord is to be Praised”: Your fundamental source of comfort and hope

Back to the Tea set

We stacked the cups and saucers onto a tray, along with a tin of freshly baked shortbread, and made a lively procession through the village to a little spot by the stream. We were celebrating our rescued china with friends. The husbands and children sat lined up on the wall, while my friend and I sat on the bench admiring the design on the teacups. The coffee tasted better than normal! The homemaking life today is a salvaging life. It is picking up the pieces that our culture has cast aside and saying ‘I believe this is beautiful. I believe God says its beautiful, and I’m going to make it beautiful again in my own life’. I hope you’ll follow along on this journey.

Pin it for Later

Find Out More

About