The Heart of a Homemaker | Keepers at Home

The phrase "Keepers at home" literally means "guardian or overseer of the household." Last week we looked at how we as women are the guardians of our homes. Today we are going to look at how we can be effective overseers of our households.

1 Corinthians 14:40 says, "Let all things be done decently and in order."

I don't know if it is because I have a natural bent towards organization and planning ahead or if it is because that was something instilled in me by my parents, but having order to my life and home are, in some ways, a necessity to me.

As a teacher, my classroom had a schedule that we followed, and we had the smoothest days. But when I became a stay-at-home-mom and would talk about having a schedule for my home, all I would hear was, "You can kiss your schedule good-bye!" or "Honey, it's not your schedule anymore- it's your baby's schedule!"

I didn't understand how it was praised and lauded and deemed responsible for me to have 23 students in a classroom on a schedule, but to think I could be at home and have one child on a schedule was ridiculous!

But, I did it anyway.

Yes, 1 Corinthians 14 is talking about how God's house was to be in order and the services were to have order in them, but all I could think was, "If God wants there to be order in His house, then I need to have order in my house, too."

Having order in our homes is not impossible. It does take time and it does take discipline, but it is very doable.

Let's take a quick look at what a home and family needs for everything to be run with order.

A Laundry Schedule- Look at your family, the amount of laundry you accumulate in a day/week and then decide if one to two loads per day will do the trick for you or one whole day of nothing but laundry is what it will take for your laundry to be maintained. For our home, one load per day is what keeps our drawers happy.

A Meal Plan- What do you plan on eating this week? Have a plan?

Look at your calendar for the rest of the week. Decide which meals you will be home for.

Now look in your pantry. What do you have on hand and what could be easily turned into a meal? Are you missing an ingredient or two or five? Write them down on your grocery list.

On your calendar write down which meals you will have on which days. Now when you go to the grocery store, you know exactly what to pick up and you will not have to panic 30 minutes before diner time because you're not sure what to serve your family.

Lately, I have been only planning a week at a time, but I triple one recipe per week and put the extras in the freezer to serve on days that I know I will not have time to cook.

A Cleaning Schedule- There are many ways to keep a house clean. I personally prefer to clean one room per day. It takes maybe 15-20 minutes and the whole house is left looking clean throughout the week.

If something in your cleaning schedule isn't working for you, change it. Find what works for you. If you have older children, employ them in helping you clean the house.

Keep a Calendar- Someone has to keep track of the appointments, engagements, practices, games, meets, and anything else that can creep up to require some of your time. Have a central place where all of this is put.

I keep a planner. It has all of the dates, times, events, birthdays, blog postings, our meal plan, field trips, dates that Brian works out of town, and anything else that comes up written down. This keeps me on task and (mostly) on time. The planner I have purchased for 2014 has my "days" broken up into morning, day, and evening which works perfectly for us (see this post).

As the overseer of our households, it is important that we keep things running decently and in order. With God's help, you've got this!