The Single Homemaker, Part 3: Cooking and Schedules
There were two other areas I really struggled with during my 10 days of “single” homemaking: food and schedules.
Food: Nourishing and nutritional eating was probably the hardest part of being on my own. I had a plan, a good plan for feeding myself while my husband was gone, a good mix of treats and healthy food, but the minute he walked out the door, I lost all motivation to cook. Cooking meant dishes, and suddenly it all seemed so pointless. Why cook eggs, steaks, and bacon? That would create three pans! Who wants to wash three pans? Who wants to cook some sort of roast beast when I could just eat this granola bar instead?
This isn’t something I struggle with when my husband is home. I don’t give meal planning, cooking, prep, and clean up any disparaging thoughts. It never feels like too much. He’s worked hard all day and would like a hot meal when he gets home. I’d like to serve him a hot meal. Dishes, pans, and planning are just part of that hot meal at the end of the day. It’s what happens every day at the end of the day. And I enjoy it. I have my rhythm down; it signals to my body and mind that the day is almost done, and it’s moving me towards some time together. Cooking dinner is a good part of my normal day.
When it was only me, I started eating junk and snack food for meals. I chose not to cook steak but to eat a bowl of corn chips. “It’s fine,” I told myself.
No, it isn’t. Not as a long-term plan. It’s fine when you’re on a 10-day vacation. It’s not fine for long term health.
You can’t expect to maintain your health, serve others, or be able to suddenly feed a husband and children, if so blessed, if you aren’t eating healthy and practicing on yourself. You’re creating an uphill, educational and habit battle for yourself if and when you get married and have kids. If you remain single, you’re creating a scenario where your health will go from bad to worse, and a stranger will probably have to take care of you sooner rather than later. You need to take seriously caring for yourself now, practicing for the future, and being as strong into old age as you can be, so you can be as independent as long as possible.
My advice is to learn to batch-cook things like soups and stir-fries and rice bowls. Learn to hard-boil eggs and roast a chicken (super easy). Make bone broth regularly. Freeze these into meal-sized portions and snack-sized portions. Do the same with baking. Bake a batch of cookies and freeze them. Bake a pie and freeze the slices individually. Anything you can make at home is going to be healthier than processed, pre-made, or fast food. Frozen vegetables and baked goods thaw very quickly. Watch your eating habits and help yourself maintain better discipline. If you love fries, get some frozen ones made without sugar and fried with tallow. Find healthy ways to encourage yourself. Limit the amount of snack food, junk food, microwaveable meals, and candy in the house. Try not to keep junk food on hand; you will choose it over healthy food every day. We all need “on-the-go” foods. They’re better to have around than just go, go, going without eating. Read the labels and make sure you’re not just feeding yourself a bunch of sugar disguised as a protein bar. Ask yourself how you will feed your children. Study nutrition. Start by feeding yourself well. If the Lord brings you a husband and kids, you’ll need these skills. If he doesn’t, others can profit from your skills. Learning to cook nourishing meals from scratch is a great gift for your family, church, and broader community.
Don’t listen to the siren call that tells you that since you’re alone it doesn’t matter.
Schedules, Rhythm, Routine: I’m a routine-loving person, so this wasn’t an area I struggled with as much as others might, but I could see and sense the temptation to just stay up, not plan for what days things should happen on so they would get done, not maintain consistent sleep routines, and to be slipshod about my housekeeping. I did face the temptation to remove the days’ benchmarks of rest, recreation, and work, which meant I was perpetually overdoing it or underdoing it. I was pushing beyond my abilities or I was lazy and indulgent. Write late instead of finishing the day at a normal time? Watch movies late into the night? Skip cleaning the bathroom and doing the laundry? Who even needs to do dishes?
The only thing that really kept me on the rails was my chickens living by the sun—I need to let them out early in the mornings and lock up behind them in the evenings—and my own chronic fatigue issues. Otherwise, those ten days would have been a much bigger disaster with my husband coming home to a strung-out wife. As single ladies, you don’t want to live a strung-out life. You may not have a husband coming home, but that doesn’t make it wise to live without schedules, rhythms, and routines. You need consistency now, not sometime in the possible future. You need to sleep, work, rest, recreate in a rhythm that works for your physical and mental abilities now, not sometime down the road.
Side Note: It is good for singles of all ages to have things in their lives that get them going. This may be a job outside your home or pets or memberships or classes. This may be saying yes to all social functions at your church or regularly hosting one yourself. It’s good for us to have rails that help us get up, get dressed, and get going in a rhythmic way.
Being a single homemaker is a challenging phase of life, just like all the other phases. Each has their blessings and their struggles; each has their different work requirements and play requirements. It’s important for you single ladies not to overly idealize life as a wife and mother, but it is equally important that those of us with full homes don’t idealize the life of the single ladies. We’re a community of women passionate about the domestic arts. Each of us is a unique person in a unique situation. Let’s build one another up, not look over fences and envy what our sister has. Ladies with people you tend within your four walls, there are some ways we have it easier than our single sisters. We have built-in rails that make our self-discipline more natural. The dependence of our families on our labors is a massive motivation to get going each day and to stay at the work. Single homemakers aren’t so blessed. Make sure you keep them in mind, watch out for them, encourage and help them. And a little matchmaking is never a bad idea.
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Thank you for the wonderful editing, Sarah!
