homemade pumpkin cookies || clean dishes || sifted flour || dirty laundry || clean & folded || firewood ready for splitting & seasoning || shirt to mend || cabinet organized || kindling for next fall
I have been thinking a lot about chores and what it means to home-make. To make a home really means to keep it well, to pay attention and do the little things on a daily basis so that they don’t become big things. I have never really understood that saying that people put up in their homes, “A clean house is a sign of a misspent life.” I mean, I guess I get it to an extent: don’t waste all your time cleaning up or you’ll miss out on the good stuff. But really, I still can’t get on board with that quote.
To me, a clean house, organized drawers, things put away in their places (including toys), and an overall tidiness brings me such peace. I try to do housework with a cheerful attitude and see the importance in each task, no matter how basic. But of course, there are those jobs I can’t stand, like dusting or cleaning toilets.
My favorite jobs are cooking, baking, dishes (though Andrew does them every day), laundry, and any outdoor work. Gathering free logs during the summer for Andrew to split, stacking them in our garage, and watching the pile slowly grow as the wood dries over the hot summer is so satisfying. Weeding the garden is a chore I wholeheartedly enjoy, though I understand not many people do. And of course, planting and watering and watching those plants grow seemingly overnight into vegetables I can carry a mere feet to my kitchen sink?! There’s nothing better!
What does homemaking mean to you?
Fact: Though there was a little conflict, the above two cousins found time to cuddle on a sunshine-warmed trampoline mid-party. Also, despite months of Andrew and I asking Oliver to let us cut his hair, he was adamantly against it. Until Casey left, and he said to me out of the blue on Monday afternoon that he would like short hair just like Casey. Also, he said “Uncle Billy will be so proud!!!”
Fact: There truly is nothing more fun than mud. And the mud kitchen became a mud house inhabited by mud zombies. Who later got hosed off by Uncle Billy… who enjoyed the hosing a little too much. 
