Procrastination is when we put off good but hard or annoying or anxiety-laced things for easier things, often bringing harm to us and our homes. It is a lack of self-control, diligence, and courage.

If you have a hole where you expected a daughter, but you are single, childless, daughterless, or separated, open yourself to adopting any number of young women in your family, church, or community. Why? Because we have lost so much knowledge. We all need to set our hands to reforging our knowledge-chains. We may as well heal some trauma as we get the forge going.

Don’t make the mistake I did and think that the goal is to be bored. We desire to be productive, useful, and helpful. But being a homemaker, in our heart of hearts, is to love the “boring things” because they are so far from boring as to be almost indescribable.

Every success we experience is not guaranteed to stay a success. Every win fades. Holding on to our successes typically squeezes the life out of them and either brings stress into our homes or keeps us living unhappily in the past, stunted and dull.

Physical intimacy and physical affection appropriately handled are vital to our homes, ladies. Home can’t be a place of cheering strength or merry durability if it is cold and devoid of physical touch.

When we invest in our gifts and use them to produce goods, we get a return. Money in an IRA is going to get you more of a return than money hidden in your mattress. Gifts used will yield a higher return than our gifts unacknowledged, untrained, and set aside. What does a return look like? Calmer homes, happy husbands, trained children, healthy churches, and stable communities.

The idea of being the Menders has become a drumbeat in my mind as I’ve grown as a homemaker and slowly adjusted to the weight of my responsibilities.

Some of this I’m putting into words for the first time. I’ve never been able to see it this clearly even though I know it is always there and I’m always in a bloody battle with it. I don’t feel like I have any great insight into how to defeat a Martyr Complex because it has been such slow going in my own life. But I have a couple thoughts to help.

Every time a limitation arises, an opportunity for growth opens.

The situation we find ourselves in as homemakers requires humility, teachability, and intentionality.

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.

Our homes are chronically frantic because we are attempting to rid ourselves of false guilt.

Another big part of leaving room in our lives is getting better at what we do, learning new things, and preparing for coming trouble

I adore anything and everything that romanticizes and elevates the ordinary. Anything that draws back the veil on the mundane and routine so that we can catch a fleeting glimpse of the magic working behind the scenes. For just a moment, we catch sight of the intangible

We have a responsibility to engage in the good the Lord has provided for us. Just like a good Mom wants her children to enjoy life, our Good Lord has gifted us with many beautiful things He wants us to enjoy. Are you enjoying them?

One of the tools we can apply to do our 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

For us homemakers, gardens allow us to create beauty and rest around our structures as well as in. They let us practice hospitality by creating curb appeal that welcomes people into our dwellings. Who doesn’t love entering a home surrounded by growing things?

One of the biggest blessings of the holidays is their ability to get us out of the rut of life. One of the other big blessings is their ability to help us appreciate the rut.

Leaving room isn’t doing nothing, it’s making the choice to engage in things that are productive but flexible instead of mostly things that are rigid and productive. This is one of the true baseline delights of homemaking.

The more you take the productivity of the home seriously, the more you see what the home can produce. This is the deep magic of homemaking. Production leads to deeper and greater production. But it can also be a siren song of busyness.