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.

Our homes enjoy couches, lighting, house plants, and good food, but they need a center of merry durability. We HearthKeepers provided that. That is our vast work.

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.

The other amazing thing about these three responsibilities is that they’re shallow enough for a toddler to wade at the edge of and deep enough to inspire artists, architects, engineers, scientists, and billion-dollar companies. What? You don’t see that? What are fashion, home design, restaurants, and the research of chemicals but the outward expressions of cooking, cleaning, and laundry?

Atmosphere - an intangible yet important element of the home to cultivate. Your home has an atmosphere. It just does. With or without you noticing, all homes have a feel, a spirit, a soul.

When you start to dig deeper than simply cooking, cleaning, and laundry, homemaking has some beautiful, wonderful, intangible elements that we need to observe, harness, and tend. This is part of being a good homemaker.

Each stage interweaves with the ones around it. Maids should never be tackling marriage and babies on their own. Matrons should not refuse to share their skills and experiences with others. The link between Maids and Crones has been broken between the generations, we need to repair it. Crones must teach and train and encourage. All of us are tempted to believe the lies of our hearts and the culture. All of us, young, middle, and old must stand together, shoulder to shoulder, shield to shield, garden to garden, and hold the line on church, husbands, homes, and children.

I love our group because I try to include both the practical and the attitude sides so that we’re encouraged to love what we do. I write because writing is how I process. I would not be where I’m at in my homemaking today without the writing. It focuses my thoughts, forces me to be purposed, and has helped me see areas I still need to grow. It also gives me space to think through things and then ask all of you what you think about them. This gives me some checks and balances, helps me see struggles, and be realistic.

Winter can be harsh and hard, as many of us Texans learned early in 2021. But part of being a Proverbs 31 woman is being prepared, cheerfully prepared. Take the long dark cold of winter and make her your handmaid for planning, nesting, tending, and loving your family.

There have been several times in my life where I’ve had to give things up that were important to me for Christ’s sake — not because they were wrong, but because they weren’t best. Each time the Lord has blessed me beyond measure. Letting go of this world and trusting Him has always proven His faithfulness, but never how I expected. I expected to go at the hard work of contentment. Who in the world is going to publish someone unknown and not even looking to be published?

Systems are one of the greatest tools in our tool chest of tending. They’re how we keep this thing called home grinding along. They’re how we keep things from getting missed or lost or forgotten. Everyone, even the more fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants homemakers have systems. The goal is to see them, test their legitimacy, tweak slowly, and be better keepers and tenders because of labor. Let’s roll up our sleeves, tie back our hair, and get to work!

We’re the tenders, the warmers, the magic makers, taking our husband’s hard-earned income and turning it into scrumptious pies, painted cookies, hot punch, roast beast, garlands of greenery, strings of bright lights, stuffed stockings, and trees inside. (I love having a tree inside!) This is everyday, ordinary, deep, hobbit magic. And we are the practitioners of this art.