Setting goals and managing projects in the home requires us to leave behind concepts of corporate management and masculine expectations. We are women managing homes. This ultimately means that we must take into account the big picture of tending when we set out goals and plans.

Our culture is in love with the idea of the “found” family. Do you know why that is? We told homemakers their job was worthless and they should go do something more important. Women did that and now we have the loneliest and most lost generation of people.

I want everyone to get as much out of this group as possible. I want every woman here to be engaged with tending to her people be they husband, children, family, extended family, church family, or friends.

God has gifted many women with drive and energy. You are the doers! The goers! Yet even you face times of transition, health struggles, or lulls that might make you feel like you’ve lost your value.

Cultivating a simple and quiet life has taken a lot of mental and emotional work. Some of it has been by choice and some of it is due to God’s providence. But the delight of calm living has enthralled me. The simple life lends itself to observation and thought. It allows you to open your eyes and heart to little things.

Our hearths will be better tended if we take a break now and then before burnout.

To be effective managers we need to be aware of ourselves. We need to see what we’re good at and use that, and we need to see where we’re weak and go to work.

As with every aspect of homemaking, finding the balance seems to require purpose and intentionality. It requires seeing why we do something, the boundaries of that action, and then being intentional about doing it on purpose. It requires bringing those subconscious habits out to the front of our minds so they can be examined, tested, and changed if need be, before returning them to basic muscle memory.

You have a kitchen journal. It may not be organized or even visible, but if you manage food in your home you have one. Now, you get to think about whether you need to organize it or not. You’re welcome.

Lofty goals and expectations are good for us. It’s important to be diligent and to stretch ourselves. But it’s also important to correctly judge the type of work we’re called to. Our domestic arts are very cyclical and continuous. They don’t stop because we’re in the business of tending souls through ordinary things like cooking, cleaning, and laundry.

Nuance is important because it keeps the strong from tyrannizing the weak. At the same time, the weak must not demand of the strong that they quit being strong. We have to hold both things at the same time.

Conversation is when we express our hopes and dreams, fears and struggles, tears and laughter to others for them to be examined, calmed, trained, or corrected. Conversation is the intimate sharing of our minds and thoughts. Conversation builds comradery, both in its silly, pointless sides and its deeper, more intense sides. Conversation builds friendships.

I’ve observed women who don’t go into widowhood, old age, or retirement with any response but to focus on themselves, as if their work is done now that they’re a widow, abandoning the next generation of women. I want to encourage women to re-forge the links between maid, matron, and crone, between grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter.

All these—Routine, Journaling, To-Do Lists—are suggestions for how to start being intentional in your home. It’s easy to both wing it or think it will just happen. It’s easy to disconnect in the repetitiveness. To manage your home well is to be prudent, diligent, purposed, and intentional.

As you begin to make a home, learn to educate yourself and specialize so you can dig deep into home management.

Atmosphere - an intangible yet important element of the home to cultivate. Your home has an atmosphere. It just does. With or without you noticing, all homes have a feel, a spirit, a soul.

Sons, nephews, grandsons, boys live in our homes. As much as the world is beating down on our daughters with lies about the subjugation of women, the oppression of homemaking, and that fulfillment can only be found in working a job outside your home, they’re also beating down on our men. Sometimes subtly and sometimes loudly.

Using the five senses to manage homemaking requires purposefulness and intentionality. We can’t have our head in the clouds, or be so frantic we’re rushing through life, or so discontent we just wish it all away. Noticing the five senses doesn’t require us to overturn our lives. We start small. It takes time to retrain mental habits. Start by just being thankful for temporary gifts filling this world. Once we start, worship fills our hearts. Thankfulness filling our hearts will go further in making home a delight than all the things money can buy.