‍ 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.

Routine is loyalty and faithfulness made sight, given firm, given tangible expression, and action.

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.

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.