Woman as Guide of the Home

The Bible speaks specifically of a woman as the guide, or guard of the home. Many people misunderstand this to mean that the women have to do all the work at home, but this is not true. If it were so, she would be worn out before she even got started in the care of the home.


In being the guide of the home, she is like the Chief Information Officer. She may not put everything away, but she knows where it should go, and will assign the task to someone in the family. She may not wash the dishes all the time, but she knows how it is to be done, and will guide others into helping her.

She may not take out the trash, but she will inform others of the need of doing it. She may not answer the phone all the time, but her family knows she wants a record kept of them. She may not do all the cooking, but she has a general plan for the meals. She may know where every thing is, even if it has yet to be put away.

As CIO she always knows where people's shoes, phones, wallets and keys are, even if she does not take care of them or put them away, herself. She is the keeper and guide of the home, not the industrial worker, keeping a time card. She is there to find ways to make the home run smoothly and function at its best for the development of the family, not just as a janitor.



Members of the family should never get the idea that just because the woman is at home she should do all the work. That is not what she is there for. The work has to be done, it is true, and there are some things that only she can do. For example, I have a few rooms that I cannot employ anyone else to do because the items require my personal evaluation before putting them away or discarding them.



The homemaker's job is to guide the home and see that the things are accomplished so that the members of the family can function. It is not her job to pick up after everyone or wait hand and foot on everyone. Generally her energies should be reserved for those who are more helpless, such as babies and toddlers and those who are not well or physically able. The family is not there to be catered to constantly by the homemaker, but rather to aid her in fulfilling her noble purpose of guiding the home.


In helping her fulfill her role in guiding the home, it is important that the other members of the family, including husbands and sons, not create more burdens upon her. At work, they would would not be allowed to leave piles of personal posessions around in other people's work space, and so at home, their consciences should be stricken if they create more work for the keeper of the home. If they are not bed-ridden or severely handicapped, they can do something to aid her in her goal of guiding the home. They should be aware of her likes and dislikes. They should care about how she feels about the home.

Remember, that being a keeper of the home does not mean that she spoil everyone to the point that they become helpless, and create more distress for her and more messes around the house. Some homemakers can be stretched to the point that instead of enjoying their beautiful homes, they would rather be somewhere else, just because the members of the family are so inconsiderate that they expect her to do things that they physcially can do for themselves. They should not create unnecessary work for her.





Sometimes husbands and grown children get the idea that because they are out working somewhere else, bringing in a paycheck, that it constitutes a right to slack off and be pigs at home. In claiming to be completely relaxed, they drip food all over the house, leave their plates and cups wherever they last sat, and strew the newspaper all over the floor. They leave these messes just waiting for the homemaker to "do her job" and pick them all up. This is a completely ignorant misunderstanding of the work "guide" and "Keeper" of the home.

If a man wants to be the king-of-his-castle, he needs to help the keeper of the castle in her job, and not turn it into a slum. If a man wants to be proud of the home and the family and look at it as his own accomplishement as well as his wife's, he needs to be considerate. This does not mean he has to take his turn doing dishes. It does not mean he will be in charge of the laundry, the vacumming, the bed-making, or cleaning the toilet. It does not mean that the husband has to make his side of the bed when he gets up, or that he has to clean out his closet. What is means is that, in view of the fact that the women in the family will be doing the laundry, he doesn't make it more difficult for them by leaving his own laundry all over the place for them to hunt down and pick up. Bad habits such as leaving things out, will not be tolerated in the work place, so why should irresponsiblity reign so much at home? Asking everyone to be courteous of the homemaker does not mean the household will be ruled mechanically with an iron fist. It just means that the other members of the family love her enough to help her.

The working son or daughter who has spent the day away from home, knowing the burdens of washing the dishes, will be considerate and not use all the glasses in the shelf, and then, when it appears there are no more, go to the china cabinet and get out the better ones and use them all up. They will find innovative ways of diminishing the work load. The best way to be conscious of this, is to pretend they are a guest in someone else's house, or that they are in someone else's place of work.

For example, instead of getting out a drink and leaving the container on the surface in the kitchen, they will dispose of it themselves. Maybe they will scrape their own plate instead of leaving it all for the one who is cleaning up the dishes. Maybe they will put away the peanut butter jar instead of leaving it out after they have made a sandwich. They will rinse the sink after using it in the bathroom, so as not to disgust others who happen by afterwards, and not to spread bacteria. They will toss out their paper cup after brushing their teeth, rather than leaving it out. They will be conscious of the burden they are creating for the keeper of the home.

I married a man who for some reason liked to have a pen in every room, and a pen on every shelf, every surface, every table, every where. I could not figure this out for awhile, because I owned one pen, and I always knew where it was. I was from a large, poor family, and we did not have a lot of things. I had a pen that had a little lever on it that allowed it to drink up ink from a bottle. It was kept in a top drawer of a desk and it was never lent out. In those days (time changes so rapidly, "those days" were not so long ago), pens were personal because the way an owner wrote with them could wear down the nib in a distinctive way. Others would not be able to write as well with them.

My husband was from a family of only two children, and I was from a family of 9 people. Therefore when they got a package of pens, it mean they could all have several of them. He put them all over the house so he would not have to look for one when he needed it, and that is why I kept finding pens all over the house. Add to this the papers that usually went with them, the wooden toothpicks, the tie tacks, his favorite mints in cellophane, the mail, and a dozen other little "things," and my housekeeping was driving me crazy.

I finally put it all in a big sturdy basket and showed him where it was. From now on, everything would go in a wood box or that big brown basket. As I mentioned before, he only wanted me to be happy and would have been very sorrowful if he knew I was distressed about anything, so he happily complied to this. He now knows where to go to find his pens. I still have my one pen in the desk. (I think part of the problem was that there was a time you could only buy one pen, and it was quite costly. Now, you can buy them cheaper by the dozen in huge cellophane bags and they end up all over the house.)

Another thing I did was to show him the list of things I had to do: the ironing, the washing, shampooing the carpet, sorting the laundry, making beds, etc. I also showed him some of my favorite books of houses and house plans and interiors, and told him what I was trying to achieve, and how my mind rested so much better without too much clutter. In these pictures you rarely see a stinky old pair of tennis shoes and dirty socks in the middle of a room for someone to trip over.

While out on a shopping trip, we ducked into a nice shop that sold things for the home. He enjoyed going in there so much that it became customary for us to shop there. I pointed out that one of the reasons it was so pleasant to go there is because there was no unnecessary clutter that would spoil the atmosphere or the view. Our grown sons and daughters could use these lessons to help them understand how order in the home contributes to a feeling of well-being and calmness.

Students particularly are fond of coming into the home, slamming the door, dropping bags, going to the kitchen, eating, leaving a mess, dropping their clothes in a corner in their room, or even on the bed, and for weeks and weeks they live like this, while their mothers become more stretched out with their time and their nerves. The homemaker is the keeper and the guide of the home, and that does not mean she is just there to work.


We all have yard clutter, too, and paintings like this are good teachers for the family, as they can appreciate the serenity of the house. Yard tools and such can be housed properly, and people do not need to create more stress for the homemaker by expecting her to put them away.

In the end, the place we love the most will be the home, but the homemaker is not the only one responsible for its atmosphere. Other members have to be responsible to make it run smoothly. Remember, she probably does not get a paycheck and is trying to make a profit by doing most things herself. She doing this out of the goodness of her heart and the conviction that she is in charge of it.

To summarize and as a reminder of the main point: The woman is the guide of the home. She may not do all the work but she is responsible to see that someone does it and that somehow it gets done. The members of the family are responsible to help her achieve her goals of completion of tasks, cleanliness, orderliness, and beautifying. In doing so, they stand to benefit enormously. If they create more problems and stress for her, they will suffer from personal confusion and stress themselves.

Additonal comments: It is also a good idea to prepare the family to get along on their own, so that the woman, in a sense, works herself out of a job, or at least part of it. That way, when she is older, she is not still doing the same things, especially those things that require more hard labor.

She ought to, as she gets older, have trained the family well enough that she can put up her feet and read something, or do some needlework, while other members prepare dinner or do the washing up afterwards.

Unfortunately, the trend of our time is all too much the opposite. Instead of becoming more independent and taking care of themselves (not to be confused with the Biblical concept of inter-dependent), the husband and children retreat more into baby hood. This is partly the woman's fault if she spoils them.

There is nothing wrong with waiting on your husband or children if you want to, and if it gives you joy, but they should not demand it and they should know you are a human being with only two legs and two hands and do what they can to eliminate the burden of jobs in the home, especially if they are creating a lot of the mess.

When I was a teenager we were invited after church to visit a preacher's family. They had four daughters, all teenaged. When we got there we were rather taken aback at their attitude. Their mother asked them to help, and to wash some dishes that had been left, but they would not do it. She ended up serving us all by herself. Their kitchen was always piled high with dirty dishes and yet they had four able bodied girls.

I would have understood it more if the family had busy boys who were working or were not too adept at dish washing, or house keeping, but with four able-bodied girls, I felt ashamed for the mother and for them. They were not cooperating with their mother in preparing the meal and not helping at all with the washing up. I never understood it and was at the time quite apalled. I was only 16 at the time and would never have talked back to my mother the way they did theirs.

Little did I know that this was going to become a trend amongs modern families. It was like sliding downhill with no way to go back. Over time, more and more families operated this way.

The mother of this girl eventually got sick and died. I think the family should be prepared to take over the house if the mother does get sick.

I'm sure most women get headaches and have down days, and it seems to me they could recover more easily if the house was kept up and if they didn't have to wake up from illness to face a mountain of laundry, dishes, clutter, and unnecessary work--work that was caused because people didn't put away anything or becaue of the trash people left around.

I cannot help wondering if some of this downhill slide in homemaking has something to do with the great amount of institutional living that goes on. Whereas school children once had to help sweep the floors and clean the chalk board, now they merely study while janitors take care of it.

When home, they may think that it is the woman's "job" to do all this--including sweeping out the garage and growing a garden for food...and then heap more burdens on her by their careless habits. Jesus chastised the Jewish leaders for the burdens they put on people, saying that they would not lift a finger to ease their burdens, but put more burdens on them.

The woman at home is such a precious and unique thing in our society it would seem that men and children and the relatives would do what they could to make her temperament good by cleaning up after themselves and doing what extra they can, also. She can be a better companion to them, and she can be an encourager, if she isn't worn out. I remember my mother was always a listener and an encourager, but she made us kids do all the work!