Ladies, attitude is everything as homemakers. We can make poverty an adventure, water into broth, cold nights cozy, husbands into courageous warriors, and children into men and women. We do this. Us. The homemakers. But we can’t do this if we’re not thankful.

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.

There are times in life when those of us who have chosen to keep life simple have that simple life turned upside down, when we don’t feel like we’re living a quiet life, working with our own hands, minding our own business, when those of us with a simple life wake up and find ourselves in the middle of an active life we didn’t sign up for.

Home should be flexible enough and long-term enough in its mentality that it is able to tend to the sick, even if the sick is you. That means pausing and doing this thing then back to other things. When someone gets sick, even if that is you, the home should be able to pause to allow you or others to recover.

I get to be here for the long haul, not just the weekend. I get to pour myself out without frantic adrenaline, dog-eat-dog, stay relevant, exhausting passion. I get to pour slowly, learn, test, and take my time as an eternal being, not a one-shot life.

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.

You active, driven social women have a great gift, one that many of us envy. We’d all love to manage our homes, tangibly love our husbands, homeschool our kids, manage a business, and serve our church while having a robust social life. If you have even half of that, be thankful. Use that gift as long as you are given it within the appropriate bounds of rest, recreation, thoughtful awareness of others, and appropriate priorities.

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.

Being feminine requires great courage and wisdom and love. Stay in the fight, sisters. We must not allow the world to tell us motherhood is only changing diapers and thus boring, unimportant, and something we can do without. Motherhood is who and what we are down to our very bones. We must not allow the world to take true femininity away from us.

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.

We still want to fill our homes with coziness, but we long to throw off winter, to feel bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. We want to stretch and laugh with delight. We don’t want heavy any more. What are some things we can do to stay cozy but take advantage of spring’s budding out?

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.