Practical Thoughts for a Young Homemaker: Your Kitchen
Dear New Matron,
We’ve talked about taking your time to learn about this craft of homemaking and we’ve talked about attitude—the effect that it has and the battle it is. Now, cozy up to the table, pour a fresh mug of coffee or a glass of wine…or maybe a shot of whiskey, and let’s talk about our best friend, hardest working handmaid, and greatest supporter in our labors: the kitchen.
My oh my, how this sun-kissed room gets cursed, belittled, and abused. How often do we leave her covered in dirty dishes, avoid her with take-out, or neglect her for other shinier rooms? Why? Why do we so often reject her love? Where is the homemaker without her kitchen? Where else does the homemaker spend a large portion of her day? Where does her love often become the most tangible? Where is her profitability often first seen?
The kitchen!
This is where we cook all our lovely foods, from freezer meals to cookies to sourdough. This is where, for those so inclined, herbs dry, tinctures cure, and kombucha ferments. Many of our tools utilized for serving our families and friends are in this room—refrigerators, spices, coffee, tea, cups, platters, and silverware. Much of our care, from tending scrapes and small burns to watering and trimming plants, happens in the kitchen. Much of family life circles through the kitchen.
And the conversations! Oh, the conversations that happen in a beloved kitchen. From early in the morning as we wait for the coffee, to late at night as we do the final clean-up, the kitchen seems to hold special magic that encourages laughter, comradery, and open hearts. Because it is often where we are, it is often where everyone congregates. If that isn’t a form of honor and praise, I don’t know what is.
A warm kitchen can’t be matched when it comes to mentally, emotionally, and physically tending to our families and friends.
Take time, new HearthKeeper, to befriend your kitchen. Make her beautiful. Make her a place you enjoy being. Invest in her as a worthy helper. Don’t forget her when it comes to flowers, candles, lamps, art, and more. The more love you pour into your kitchen, the more love will pour into your home. Make it a point, when you are setting up your home, to pour some extra TLC into your kitchen. Take time to study your flow. Move and adjust things until your movements become a well-scripted dance. Add suncatchers, plants, curtains, quotes, and more to make her beautiful. If you have room, add sitting places for your visitors. Shaye Elliott of Homemaker Chic has a whole couch in her kitchen because so many people gather there naturally. When you buy a new tool—from tea towels to mixers—don’t simply look for functional items. Look for ones that delight you too. If you can, decant. Nothing makes a kitchen cozier than matching containers instead of garish plastic packaging.
This is a scene from a side writing project that I play with whenever I have the time:
Of all the places in the world to find magic, the kitchen was the best. A large cast iron stove heated the whole room while it boiled water, cooked bread, roasted fowl and beast alike, and baked any manner of cookies, cakes, and pies. Open shelves showed off their useful glass canisters of spices, grains, sugars, and other sundry ingredients. Plates, bowls, cups, mugs, tools, Dutch ovens, and casserole dishes sat in straight rows ready and waiting. Copper and cast iron gleamed on their hooks. Herbs, cured meat, and tangles of onion and garlic hung from high rafters. Large countertops, a big sink, a bigger window, Mama’s favorite sidhe cat, and bright green houseplants sang welcoming songs with open hands and promised feeding. The smells. Oh, the smells. Yeasty rising breads, thick soups and sauces, sweet and light-as-air confections, savory, melt-in-your-mouth meats, bitter and black coffee. All the smells wound together soaking into the walls and shelves and floor until generations of cooking Durables carried with them the lingering scent of that kitchen. In the middle of it all, Mama reigned with a wooden spoon, a never-ceasing cheerful whistle—often cycling back and forth between We Need a Little Christmas and Good Christian Men Rejoice. She checked on the eternal broth always simmering on the back burner for generations untold. It whistled back at her, happy and filled with flavor.
The kitchen comes up time and time again in my writing. I have a deep love for this room and the gifts she helps me give my people and home.
This is our kingdom, ladies. We may share the cooking with our hubbies or even our children, but we should know and grasp the power of a treasured kitchen. From her we make tea to soothe anxiety, pour wine to calm and help conversations flow, and coffee to brighten. Here we clean away dirt and stains and grubbiness. Here we make memories and link people together. All this and more overflows from our kitchens. The kitchen is our biggest and brightest tool as domestic artists. It is our biggest help as the helpers. It is our most faithful co-laborer in our service to others.
Love,
A Matron who is quickly becoming a Crone
Suggested Reading:
