Introducing the Homemaking 101 Series

The skill of homemaking seems to be a lost art in our world today. We have tools and gadgets our great grandmothers couldn’t of imagined to make our lives easier and more efficient and we seem to have less time in the care and upkeep of our homes. Most of us in my generation and younger (ahem – much younger) weren’t trained in the basics of managing a home and caring for a family. Some of our moms were working moms, if our moms were home we were in school all day while she was taking care of the day to day management of the home and missed learning valuable life skills. Many times our mothers did everything themselves in the home and didn’t’ take the time to let their daughters work alongside them and learn.

I am guilty of this last one with my own daughter. It was quite a bit later in life that I captured the Titus 2 vision and started teaching my daughter how to care, manage and be a keeper of her home.

I would like to share with you in this series what I have learned after 27 years of being a keeper of my home. My hope is to not make you keep your home exactly as I do but to motivate you in areas where you are struggling and give you ideas, examples and other resources to be a help in the management of your home.  Let’s make this a community where we minister to each other by sharing your tips, ideas, thoughts and questions here at the blog and on Facebook.

Some areas we’ll cover in this ongoing series are:

The Importance of Our Role
Our time with the Lord
Basic Homemaking Skills
Healthy Eating and  Meal Planning
Stewardship/Budgeting
Time Management
Schedules and Routines
Organization and Decluttering
The Pros and Cons of Technology use in Homekeeping
Hospitality Tips
Home Decorating
Caring for our Physical Appearance

The list above just gives us a small sample of all that we deal with as wives and mothers on a day to day basis. We have a lifetime ladies, it will never be mastered while we live on this fallen earth but we can continue to be learners and with the Lord’s help live our lives in a way that please God. Not perfection but “working heartily as unto the Lord” (Colossians 3:23). This series is for women in all seasons of life. Single, married, young children or older children, and empty-nesters.

As always I am going to encourage you to enlist an older “in person” woman in your life that can help keep you accountable and give good guidance and advice. Stay teachable and don’t think you know it all young mama when you are talking with your mom or an older woman in your church about home management and child raising. Give her the benefit of walking this road before you and she has much to offer biblically (if she is a believer) and in life experience that you haven’t experienced yet. As we grow older we realize how much we still have to learn. We look back at our younger years and are reminded we didn’t know more than our parents but needed to heed their advice more often than we did.

Homework

Each post is going to leave you with a voluntary homework assignment so we might as well begin right now. I’m going to give you some encouraging reading assignments to do at your leisure. Below are some links to several articles and some scriptures to meditate on and read.

Assignments for this post:
Read and meditate on the following scriptures: Titus 2:3-15, Proverbs 31:10-31, Colossians 3:23, Philippians 2:1-18, 1 Corinthians 13, Ephesians 5 and Philippians 4:8.

Take some time to read or listen to this Revive Our Hearts Series called, Home-Making is Not a Dirty Word. There are two messages in the series:  A Home that Reflects God’s Grace and The Joy of Generous Hospitality.

Don’t Miss a Post or Giveaway

If you don’t want to miss a post in the series let me pop quietly into your inbox. There will still be other posts on the blog in addition to this series but my hope is to get a weekly post up for the Homemaking 101 Series. I will do an occasional surprise giveaway for a resource or tool that will help you in your home keeping.  You can subscribe here to Thankful Homemaker.  I’ll put a tab at the top of the blog for the series and a quick link on the sidebar too. You can also follow me on Facebook or Twitter for updates.

An Encouraging Resource:

My dear friend Jennifer at The Focused Homemaker has made a wonderful DVD called Homemaking 101 and it goes beautifully with this series. Jennifer brings us into her home and shares with us how she deals with the day to day task of keeping home. This is a DVD for women of all ages, but young moms you will be blessed by Jennifer’s heart for her family and home. She covers time management, cleaning, cooking, budgeting, home decorating, hospitality, chores, scheduling and much more! You will be encouraged and motivated by this DVD and will turn to it again and again to remind you of the important role the Lord has called you to.

“In contrast to the wise woman, the foolish woman is not content to be a keeper at home. She is not satisfied with where God has put her. One of the things the feminist movement has done so successfully is to stir up discontent in women with being homemakers and to convince them that other pursuits can increase their sense of self-worth… Fueling discontent and pushing women out of their homes in search of greater meaning and satisfaction has resulted in off-the-chart stress levels for many women who can no longer survive without pills and therapists… The greatest spiritual, moral, and emotional protection a woman will ever experience is found when she is content to stay within her God-appointed sphere. This does not mean that she never leaves her house, but rather that her heart is rooted in her home and that she puts her family’s needs above all other interests and pursuits.”

~Nancy Leigh DeMoss

 

Related Posts:
How Well Do You Manage Your Home?
Helping the Younger Women to be Keepers of Their Homes
Teaching the Younger Women
Teaching Our Daughters to Clean a Home