Keepers at Home Questions 2

Photo-art by Anna-Mari West, allposters.com

Question 3: 

I am very young, and if I were to plan to be a homemaker, what am I supposd to do all day at home?

Answer: 

if you have had any early training at all, you know that taking care of yourself from morning until evening is very time-consuming. Your personal care in the morning, cleaning up after yourself (wiping the sink after use, cleaning the mirror, tidying the remainder of the bathroom), preparing breakfast, cleaning up the cooking area, takes a lot of time.

  Catalogue your activities all day long at home and you will see how time consuming it is to look after one person. Add a skill or hobby like sewing, knitting,  or cooking, and your work is doubled, for you must now clean and organize your equipment.  Kitchens have to be kept clean, drawers and shelves organized and dusted.  If you take online courses in cake decorating, painting, pastry making, or sewing, your time goes very fast, both with your lessons and the samples you make from those lessons.

Now add to this mix your parents, a few friends, and other associates, and your social life will begin to take time in your home.  You may be serving afternoon tea or dinner to a few people, and you will be preparing and cleaning up afterward.  

Correspondence and paperwork may also enter the list of home obligations.  Special celebrations and bill-paying are not things that will be done daily, but they are time-consuming even if paid online. Every day there will be a monthly task that will take up your time.  

Being a homemaker allows you to adjust your time so that you may have leisure moments where you enlighten yourself with things like reading, studying or developing your talents.  In the workplace, your employer expects every moment except scheduled break times to be devoted to that business, but at home you can allow yourself to go with the season or the opportunity.  Is it a nice day, weatherwise? That is when you use your instincts and say, "Now is the time to do something outside."  Is it a special season? That is when you say, "It is time to have an afternoon tea with my loved ones." People of sense will use the times and seasons for whatever things are best done in that situation.

Now add a husband to your time, and you are fixing to be very busy indeed, especially if he is engrossed providing the living and you are home.  At first, you may think there is nothing to do all day, but you can easly fill up the time by becoming a do-it-yourself-er.  Instead of paying for someone or some service to do things for you (for a fee) try to think of ways you can diminish the need or the cost, or do it/make it yourself, including food preparation. 

If you will for one full day write down everything you do to take care of yourself, you will see what you are supposed to be doing all day long when you have other people in the home. Most women in the US and Canada have for generations tended to their own homes and families, and I would say most women here do not hire servants, unless they are very rich and have a lot of social obligations.  If you are in a country where household servants are the norm, you may still wonder what you are supposed to be doing at home all day.  You can always take a cue from the Proverbs 31 woman who arose early to give tasks to her servants. 

Just managing the work assigned to other people will make you very busy. I am sure during the time that Titus 2 was written, there were people who also had maids and field help, but the scriptures still told Christian women to be busy at home.  The reasons for this are manifold:  It gives you a chance to think and plan and learn to do things in the home without the pressure of a boss or a deadline or losing a sale.  Being home helps you avoid the common petty chatter and social pressure of the rest of the world, and to use an unfortunate phrase, helps you find yourself, --because as you pay attention to your tasks at home, you discover things you really enjoy and then you find your weaknesses that you need to overcome.  It also helps you mind your own business and concentrate on the tasks at hand. 

If you are a homemaker at heart and you go to work for someone else, your heart will be divided, as you will be expected to be one kind of person at the workplace and another at home.  Jesus said that no one can serve two masters, for he will either hate the one and love the other.  Women naturally are helpers and will put their whole heart into whatever work they do, but they have only so much energy and time, and when they work, their employer gets the best of them--the best part of the day, the most alert part of their minds, and their loyalty.  

Once back home, the woman is exhausted and loses interest in homemaking.  With her heart divided, she will not do the work of home with the gusto and interest it deserves.  She needs to look at homemaking as a sacred calling, and not just a job, and her place there as an appointment of God. She can be easily replaced in the workplace, and anyone can be trained for that job, but each home is unique and the wife is taylor-made for her own home and family.  She cannot ever really be effectively replaced.

In the home, one task  may be a joy, while another, a drudge. Being able to cope with both is a maturing process, which will come the instant you have a baby.  Women find themselves willingly doing things they may never have considered doing , as their minds are changed by the birth of a baby.  The instinct to protect and nurture sets in quickly and it is no longer a situation of taking care of yourself, but of guarding someone who is totally helpless and dependent upon you.  

There is so much to do at home, that most people have an ongoing list of household tasks, repairs and improvements. If you are alone at home while your husband is away at work, there is still plenty to do.