Practical Thoughts for a Young Homemaker: Finding Your Hearth
Dear New Matron,
This is the last letter, this one. Not the last one where I said it would be the last letter, this one.
The other day when Sarah and I were recording a podcast episode, she said something that jiggled an idea loose that I wanted to explore a bit, which is exactly why you want a vibrant and diverse knitting circle of women. It helps feed creativity in our work to hear other thoughts and perspectives. Sometimes we get stagnant in our minds. Talking to other women can be like throwing open the windows in a stuffy room. (Picture Sophie from Howl’s Moving Castle.)
In this my final letter, *cough, cough* I want to talk about hearths for we are the group HearthKeepers. Let’s look at some definitions and some synonyms to help explain what we mean when we talk about a hearth. I typed “hearth” in One Look’s search bar and here’s what I got:
Hearth: The fireplace base for building fires. The place in the home where the fire is traditionally kept for home heating and for cooking; home or family life.
Hearthful: The amount a fireplace can hold; a synonym of homeful. It usually means a warm, welcoming atmosphere or mood. It is characterized by warmth, comfort, and a sense of belonging; cozy; homeful.
Homeful: possessing abundant comfort and shelter, having a place to live, as much as a home can hold.
Side Note: Homeful is a new one for me. I do so love finding a new word that speaks to me, and homeful, as much as a home can hold, is just such a word. I’m all giddy with the magic it holds. Hearthful too. Eeek! I love it!
Hearths. What a lovely image the word hearth brings to mind when we define it. An image of the center of the home, the base of the fireplace, where things are heated and cooked and the home is kept warm. It is the center of the home. A hearth is a rich and deep image steeped in a time when tending seemed so tactile. So much of what the homemakers of the past did for their homes centered around the hearth. This is where strangers were welcomed, homes were heated, invalids nestled, tea brewed, and bread baked. Life in the home was and is often found cycling around the hearth.
In our modern day and mostly urban living, and as young matrons quite possibly in small apartments or even bedrooms, we don’t often have an actual hearth, cast iron stove, or even a very functional fireplace. And many of us live in places where we don’t need a functioning fireplace.
What do we do and why is this important?
First, when you look at the definitions and synonyms, we should all realize that the true hearth of the home is us, the homemaker. 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.
Second, find a place to declare as your metaphorical hearth. This could be your desk, your command center, your kitchen, a spot on the kitchen counter, or the dining room table. Our kitchens are central to our homemaking, as we talked about before, but they aren’t always central to our houses. My kitchen is an off-to-the-side galley kitchen that can only hold one person at a time. It doesn’t work as my hearth because I can’t see much of the rest of my home from it. I tend to think of my dining room table as my hearth. It has been in our family for 5 generations, serving countless meals to countless friends and family. Our dining room is open to the living room on one side and the back porch on the other. The kitchen is in line of sight, while the bedrooms are close enough to be kept in mind. The dining room table is the center, the base, where I build my fires to create warmth and welcome.
Side Note: I highly recommend that somehow-someway, you bring in furniture with history. You may not know its history, but pieces that have born the weight of human souls tend to elevate and enhance the atmosphere of the home. Now, this may take some time. You may have to educate yourself, save up, or wait until a family member is ready to pass a piece on. That’s fine. I’m simply suggesting it as a goal. When I inherited my apothecary and two 5th-generation pieces, the entire atmosphere in my home changed for the better. I know that I’m using them as my mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother used them in their homes. Talk about daily inspiration. Talk about rooting. And even if it isn’t a piece your own mothers have touched and used, still knowing that a chair, bookcase, table, or desk has been used by countless others warms it in a way that pressed wood, box-store pieces simply can’t match. Also, the quality is typically so much better and more durable.
Third, this place you’re declaring as your hearth, is to support you, the actual hearth. It is here to help you with your work of warming and welcoming. Don’t make it a back room. How can you manage what you can’t see and feel and touch your house? How can you warm when you’re cut off? Think about where you do your to-do lists, where the family naturally gathers to talk, and where visitors sit. Think about where you naturally sit when you need to fill out paperwork, pay bills, or review the events of the week and the month and the season. Think about where you would like to do your work. What feels like the natural place from which to survey your realm? If you have a small apartment, this may be the bar/kitchen counter or the chair in the living room. If you are still living at home, your hearth may be your desk in your bedroom or again, the chair in the corner. I don’t think we can discount our computers and phones as important parts of our hearths too. Many of us do a large amount of management on our phones.
The point is that we HearthKeepers can’t be HearthKeepers without our hearths. And the job of the modern-day hearth is to support us in our work of warming and welcoming. Our hearths are a place to work. Calendars, notebooks, pit-lists, meal planning, recipe gathering, research, health notes, discussion topics, all these and more need to be ready and at hand so we may quickly and thoroughly tend our people. When you find your hearth, you’re finding a place from which you can tend. It is much easier to tend when things are gathered together than when you’re chasing them down from all corners of your house, apartment, or room.
So, young matron, survey your home and start playing with where you want your hearth to be. You may have to play with it a bit, test out different locations, watch the flow for a time, and see what works for you. Once it’s settled, make it special to you in some way. This can be pretty office supplies, containers, or just your favorite mug steaming with a fresh cup of tea and a wildflower picked from the vacant lot. Remember, you are the hearth of your home, but you aren’t going it alone. You need a physical hearth to work from.
Love,
A Matron who is quickly becoming a Crone
Thank you for reading today, ladies! If this article encouraged you, please share it with other homemakers. Here are all the ways you can join our knitting circle:
Email us at hearthkeepers@hotmail.com with any questions or subjects you’d like us to discuss. For now, ladies, tend your people, hang tough, and keep your powder dry.
