Setting the Feel of the Home
Homemaker Chic coined the phrase The Aroma of the Home to help point us towards keeping our hearts in the right posture, because the state of our hearts fills our homes with health or sickness. How we guard and garden ourselves has tangible and intangible effects on our homes which affect our people, churches, and communities.
One of the tools we can apply, amongst many, to do this 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?
Figuring this out can help us on days we feel flustered, overwhelmed, or like we’re floundering a bit. It can help us prioritize the steps in our days, decorating choices, commitments, and more. It helps us stay on track and aligned instead of going off the rails or running around with fake burdens or like chickens without any heads.
As we think about what this would look like, let’s set some limits:
Husbands
Some of us have husbands who are all in on this type of thing. They’re team-oriented or hands-on in their management style. If your man is this way, you will want to discuss the aroma of the home, the vibe, the big picture with him.
Some of us have husbands who are more spontaneous and their fragrance for the home is less tangible. These men may feel caged by an aroma set in stone. In this case, I recommend two things: first, study your man to see what he makes a priority. If you watch, you can figure it out. Second, make your own aroma for the sake of your home management but keep it in a secondary position. Make sure your goal isn’t the opposite of his unspoken goal. Different homes work differently. It’s not necessarily a lack of submission if you have a written down, thought-through feel for the home and he has more arbitrary ideas, if you don’t make it a lack of submission.
Big Changes
Sometimes a family will choose to take on a massive project like homeschooling their children, accepting the call to the diaconate or pastorate, or taking on the care of an elderly family member. These are the types of things we engage in for large chunks of our lives. Our chosen fragrance, if we want to have peace in our homes, should reflect these big things. This doesn’t apply to short-term projects or smaller goals that we have for days, weeks, or a few years. We’re talking about the theme of our homes, what everything fits under and work towards.
Our chosen aroma should hold both the ultimate produce and the general mood. How do we want our homes to feel? High energy? Chaotic, crafty, sunny, warm, bright, quiet, calm? What are our family’s needs? Do we have people who struggle with overstimulation? Do they need energy?
How are we going to get to our ultimate production? What tools are we going to use to produce this fragrance?
What do we love? Beaches? Mountains? Fog? Sunshine?
All these things play into our chosen aroma.
I’m going to use myself as an example. This is my chosen fragrance for my home:
I keep it on my phone so that I can see it regularly to help me calm down and produce what I want to produce in my home, to shape and blend the fragrance I want to distill from my hearth.
Me and my hubby are both introverts and I struggle with chronic health issues, plus we’re both thinkers. The house may be quiet, but our brains are loud. I desperately want home to be a quiet refuge. It does not need to be loud and busy for us as much as I adore loud and busy homes.
I coined the terms Cheering Strength and Merry Durability back in this article and they have become the backbone, the posture of my homemaking. When I feel raw, dull, or overwhelmed, I hold onto these things. My husband is a pastor, so our home points to the church. What I do affects my husband, which affects his ability to lead our church, which is terrifying! But I try to see our home and my job as gatekeeping the pastor for the sake of the church.
Side Note: I think every believer and every homemaker is a gatekeeper for the church. Your husband may not hold office, but we’re a body. How you manage your home directly impacts the health of the church, so please don’t think this is only a pastor/deacon wife thing. You can be a church member and have the same aroma goals as me. We had it unspoken in our home for years before my husband was called. So please, ladies, take your church membership into account when you are thinking about the aroma of your home.
I have guard and garden both mentioned in my home-perfume blend because that’s what I do in my heart and with my hands. Both a shield wall and flowers.
Practical Things:
· Study decorating books and hygge to help you get a sense of the importance of the things you bring into your home.
· Decide on a predominant color theme that expresses the feel you want.
· Curate folders on Pinterest that help you think about the feel you want, or go cut pictures out of magazines.
· Music, candles, diffusers, and flowers all set the aroma of the home. Take them into account and use them as tools.
· Conversation, entertainment, recreation, hobbies, and stories all mix to create your home’s fragrance. Use them and gatekeep them.
· Church attendance will impact your attitude more directly than anything else. Be there.
· Attitude is what we grow within ourselves. What kind of homemaker do you want to be? Start working towards that in your own heart!
· Food not only directly impacts the smells of the home, but they set the intangible fragrance as well. Look to this and make sure it’s in a good spot.
Maids: You may not have a full home to manage, but you probably have space and chores. Make a personal choice of who you want to be and what you want to do and what you want to use your space for. What do you want the fragrance of this space to be? Keep in mind that what you do now will probably change. That’s a good thing. What you do now may start with a personal choice but as you learn it will grow to include others. This is also good. Start practicing. Start even noticing what the aroma of your home is and how your attitude affects it.
Matrons: Make sure you take into account the big things in your life, or you will end up discontent and working against your husband, people, and church. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot before you start. If you are homeschooling a whole passel of children maybe don’t set the aroma of your home to be a museum of antique Chinese vases. On the other hand, if that is a vibe you love, consider how you might kindly and safely bring that into your home, maybe with Oriental music, stories of the Far East, and pictures of vases. If you desire to make your home a retreat from the world, but your husband is a news junky, you will have your work cut out for you if you insist on your way. Consider your people, your husband, and your actual life when you start trying to make the intangible tangible. Don’t be too specific or you’ll trap yourself. Make your fragrance of choice roomy so you can nestle other things under it.
Crones: Don’t lose this or you are in danger of losing focus and motivation as your children grow up and your energy lessens. Your aromas may change, but even in diminishing health, you can tend a rich, warm hearth if you keep that goal before you. Don’t let long familiarity breed dullness, discontent, or a wandering heart.
A big part of this group is being purposed and intentional about our work of keeping the home. Having an overarching goal, theme, vibe, aroma that we’re always aiming for helps us to make the intangible tangible. It helps us be proactive and prudent.
Take some time while pulling weeds, doing the dishes, cooking dinner, or even as a school project to think about the fragrance of your home.
