The whole reason I started this blog, this group, read homemaking books all the time, and look for tenders in stories, is to train myself to value homemaking.

It’s been a long, hard year, but it has been good. It’s been a character-building year. But for the first time in my life, I feel like the Matron of my home. I feel in control and aware of my home's needs and growth and struggles. I’m so thankful to have reached this point. I’m so thankful for this constant conversation between homemakers that is challenging me to go at my work lovingly and intentionally. I’m so thankful to be a HearthKeeper.

Orderly, wild, intimate. Umbrellas bring these three aesthetics to mind. They’re much like home, like a little piece of home you carry with you when the weather is wetter than normal. A bit of order, a pinch of chaos, and a nestling in close. Homemaking is about our heart-ability to manage the order, chaos, and intimacy of our hearths, to tend our hearths. Its breadth of options is often overwhelming. We want to truncate it or limit it so that we can check off all the boxes and know we did a good job. But the real limits of homemaking are beyond our sight because homemaking is an attitude before it’s an action.