When I first came home and stepped away from “my career” I said yes to all the things and was never really focused on my home. As I said at the start, one of the blessings of my chronic health issues was being forced to be home and focus on home. I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to just go-go-go all the time. I want to find the balance between housekeeping and hospitality. I want to have slow, quiet days and weeks. I want to be careful with my health. Housekeeping and Hospitality must be held in tension to stay in the golden mean.

But we are the HearthKeepers and we take the reign of darkness and cold and turn her into our handmaid of coziness and warmth. We are not afraid of the darkness and cold for we see how to use them and how to defeat them. We’ve done it over and over, going back down the line of other HearthKeepers behind us and training HearthKeepers coming up after us.

Christmas isn’t about the stuff. (Repeat this with me every day! Christmas isn’t about the stuff!) Christmas is about the gift of being home together as a family, whether that is a blood family, a found family, your church, or your community. Christmas is a broad holiday. It shelters war stories, ghost stories, trees, troubles, and magic. It shelters good Christian men rejoicing! Don’t make it about the stuff.

Hospitality is a worthy engagement of our time and skill. It is a worthy endeavor of the homemaker. What are we, ladies, if we’re not being hospitable? Isn’t tending to the physical and emotional needs of others the whole point of all we do? Then it should be within our reach to include others in that worthy work.

We are the base upon which the fires that shelter, clothe, and nurture our people are built. We are the ones who produce belonging and bring in as many as we can hold (be that one other person or one hundred). We HearthKeepers are the hearths of the home. A home can’t be homeful without a homemaker. Start by taking a deep breath and looking at the glory of who we are and what we are doing.

Physical intimacy and physical affection appropriately handled are vital to our homes, ladies. Home can’t be a place of cheering strength or merry durability if it is cold and devoid of physical touch.

When we invest in our gifts and use them to produce goods, we get a return. Money in an IRA is going to get you more of a return than money hidden in your mattress. Gifts used will yield a higher return than our gifts unacknowledged, untrained, and set aside. What does a return look like? Calmer homes, happy husbands, trained children, healthy churches, and stable communities.

Our homes are chronically frantic because we are attempting to rid ourselves of false guilt.

Another big part of leaving room in our lives is getting better at what we do, learning new things, and preparing for coming trouble

One of the tools we can apply to do our work is to sit down and decide what we would like the vibe, the fragrance, of our home to be. What is the ultimate production we wish to set our hearts and hands and minds to producing? What is the ultimate fruit we are seeking to produce? What is our endgame? What are we pointing and working towards

New Matrons are going to be tempted by discouragement because everything feels so unfamiliar and overwhelming while Mature Matrons will be tempted to boredom and stagnation because everything has become too routine and comfortable. We can help each other out of these troubles if we work together and engage each other in the grand work of homemaking. This

Meal planning is an important skill to learn as a homemaker. Start somewhere and patiently playtest until you find a system that works for you. Not meal planning leaves you open to waste and excessive spending, frustration and anxiety, and blind to what is happening in your home.

Productivity is abundance, and abundance can be found in many places. Maybe the first place we should start is by seeking to love abundantly and to have an abundance of good attitudes.

Complaining will rot our souls, ruin our homes, and destroy our relationships with our husbands, our children, and our churches.

When you get to know people, you start to learn about needs. This is where you plug in and become part of the knitting circle yourself.

It will take a lot of thought and prudence to decide whether to accept or reject promotions, to set boundaries, and to communicate with your boss. Keep in mind that your goal is to be home and make room for your husband to provide and for you to produce.

All the media and modern myths you imbibe act as if feminism is an accepted truth filled with good, as the above quote says. It’s the modern philosophy we aren’t supposed to question. You will have to do the hard hard work of digging it out of your own heart, because believe me, it’s there.

When it is all said and done, our homes and how we use them—be it one room in our parent’s house or a full home with extra nooks and crannies to spare—are what makes our homes home. They should reflect the people who live here, their needs, comforts, and personalities.

Sometimes just getting a little something new for your bathroom can inspire you to take it more seriously. Try to make it a place that brings a smile to your face. If you notice you’re avoiding a room or the responsibilities attached to that room, it might be because you feel defeated.

One of the things we should garden in our homes is delight for the Lord’s Day. The Lord’s Day is our one true holiday. It’s a celebration!