In the last article, we acknowledged the struggles faced by the single homemaker due to the lack of motivation found in self-service. Tending feels so pointless. The single homemaker must regularly remind herself that she is of value (Imago Dei) and that this is her practice ground. The better she can tend herself (not spoil but actually nourish and nurture), the better she can tend those who live outside her home and hopefully, someday, those who live in her home.

The question we’ll be contemplating today: Are Beauty, Coziness, and Order important in your home?

Absolutely!

Beauty, coziness, and order are just as important for you as they are for husbands, children, friends, and extended family. Every human being needs these three things to feel at home and to function well.

Beauty:

God didn’t create us to live without beauty. Don’t believe me? Take some time to walk through the park and through your neighborhood. In the park, you’ll see all the ways God made the world beautiful. Nothing God made is strictly utilitarian. Nothing. Now walk through your neighborhood or drive around your apartment complex. Which homes catch your eye or light up the space around them? The ones that someone has taken time to make beautiful! Did you notice the dead ones? I think every neighborhood has a couple of dead houses. Apartment complexes usually have even more dead units. These are the spaces people live in, but there is no beauty, no signs of life. Beauty announces life! A soul lives here! Beauty touches others. When you take time to make your home, porch, and front door beautiful, you’re blessing your neighbors. The walkers, the runners, the moms pushing strollers, the people who live on either side of you, and anyone who comes to visit can have their lives enhanced by the beauty you produce.

None of this needs to have a professional air. We’re all familiar now with the poison of perfect Pinterest or Instagram-worthy homemaking. They can provide inspiration, but they’re horrible standards. When beauty becomes ultra-professional, it dies in the home. There is something about home that requires imperfection and a certain cheesiness. There is an attraction to homes decorated with a hodge-podge of generational things, thrifted things, and crafted things. There is a beauty to scruffiness and wear-and-tear. Nature itself bears witness that a professionally-tended garden is beautiful, but so is a backyard flowerbed and untouched wilderness. Each has its beauty and place. I’m suggesting that part of the charm of home is the amateur beauty practiced within and around its four walls. (There is an aspect to the word amateur that means someone who loves something. One can be a very proficient amateur.) Another part of the charm is the layering. Beautifying should take time. This wreath, this rug, this plant, layer, layer, layer, month after month, season after season, year after year.

Cozy:

But what about the inside? If we’re working to create a beautiful outside, do we do the same inside? Of course. You, single homemaker, coming home from a long day of work, need the nourishment of beauty just as much as the homemaker at home all day. Your home should be your nest, the soft place you land to relax and refresh. Look around your space. Are there harsh and ugly things? Things that are stiff and formal? Not brick and wood, which are opposite textures to velvet and linen, but things with maybe too firm a line, things that are too cold, office and industrial things. Replace them with soft beauty that communicates to your nervous system that it is time to rest, create, and nourish. Is your space empty? Not a calming emptiness where the visual volume has been turned down, but empty in a way that feels bleak, like a dystopian sci-fi where there’s a room and a mattress. Don’t do that to yourself. It’s unhealthy. It’s uninspiring. Find or create art you love for your walls. Find or create throws and pillows for your couch. Find or create cozy duvets and bed toppers. Mix and match textures and colors in a way that welcomes you in after work. Bring in books and plants. Your home should be a sigh of relief, not an even emptier cubicle than the one you just left. There is no celestial award handed out at death for who was the most miserable the longest. Coziness and comfort aren’t a waste, and as long as you stay away from excessive spoiling, they’re also not going to diminish your grit and sturdiness. Coziness is part of our wholesome and fortifying homemaking. And just in case you think this isn’t something God intended, look at nature again. Many females of many different species line their nests with fur and feathers so that their young stay warm and safe—cozy. Squirrels line their nests with stuffing, leaves, and anything from my back porch that they can destroy and take up into the trees. Almost all mammals and many bugs make dens or huddle together. They get cozy. My chicken, Astrid, gets cozy in my lap anytime I sit in the backyard. She shifts around, turns in circles, pecks my clothes until everything is just right, and then she takes a nap. Coziness is part of being a created creature.

Order:

Turning chaos into cosmos is just as important for the single homemaker as it is for the rest of us. Human beings have different spectrums of acceptable chaos. What may be an inspiring amount of chaos for you can be a debilitating amount of chaos for me. God made us unique, and so we all have a bit of a unique take on our ability to handle chaos. Regardless of that level, we still need order.

As a single woman, you’re not trying to corral Legos, toys, dress-up clothes, and the detritus dragged into the house and throughout the house by a screaming horde of children. This doesn’t let you off the hook when it comes to creating an orderly space, nor does the fact that you are the only one typically seeing the chaos. We’ve all seen and heard the horror stories of the old lady who died in her pile of trash and junk. Don’t be that lady. Beauty and coziness grow out of the loam of order. It is difficult for a space to be cozy when it is turbulent. It is difficult for a space to be beautiful when it is muddled and messy. You may be tempted to think of your apartment as a temporary dwelling or your singleness as a temporary state, using the temporary status as an excuse to just throw silverware in a drawer, live out of boxes, leave clothes on the floor, toss things in the pantry, never make the bed, and just shut all the doors. (We’ve all been there, done that. It’s an easy temptation to slip into.)

This isn’t good for your soul. This is not nourishing yourself. This doesn’t communicate that a sturdy, steady, soft woman lives here and would like to welcome you in. It communicates slovenly laziness. It communicates a lack of value and an inability to tend. If you hope to get married, is this the home you want to present to a potential husband as a showcase for your management skills? If you want to have children, is this the environment you want to provide for them? Right now, you are only responsible for yourself. It’s easy to think that this is when it doesn’t matter, because it’s only you; but this is when it does matter! If you can’t manage yourself and your stuff, how will you manage a family and a family’s stuff?

Order is good for our mental health. Chaos is not. Order allows us to maintain the things we have, keeps us from buying things we already own, calms the mind, makes things easier to find, makes it easier to be helped, creates an environment others can come safely into, and makes it easier to clean, tend, and rest. Does this mean it has to be perfect? No. It won’t be perfect because you live here. But it’s not wasteful to put in the effort to maintain order in your home, even if it is just you. That “just you” attitude will wear you down and make you depressed in the end.

The struggle you face, single homemakers, is buying in. You have to buy in that beauty, coziness, and order are important. They’re not some far-off thing you’ll do when God blesses you with a family. They’re something you need to do right now. Nourish yourself so you can nourish others! Build a home now so that you can welcome people in permanently or just for the evening. This space that you own or rent is yours to play with, and by playing with it, you can learn how to help the homemakers around you. If you have practiced creating beauty, you can join the conversation about how to decorate. If you have practiced making a space cozy, you can help others make their space cozy. If you have created order, you can help others be organized. Doing these things in your home for yourself will help you be a sturdier woman. Beauty, coziness, and order are a calm, albeit finite, refuge from the Lord. Don’t neglect them just because it’s only you.

The Single Homemaker, Part 2: The Need for Beauty, Cozy, and Order

The Single Homemaker, Part 1: The Struggle