Being Productive at Home

Home. A place to raise our children, love our husbands, and provide a warm and safe environment for them. Many women, once they come home full-time, aren't sure what to do at home all day and find life at home to be very boring.

All of life is about attitude. We can choose to be content where we are planted and make the most of it or we can grumble and complain always thinking of being somewhere else. God wants you at home caring for your family. If you aren't sure what to do at home, Rhonda from Down To Earth gives many suggestions that I am going to share with you ~

When I left work many years ago, there was no emphasis on simple life. I didn't know what simple life was then, I just wanted to survive. My focus was in putting food on the table every day and saving money by changing the way I shopped for food. It didn't take me long to realize that the best use of the time I now had at home was to self-produce a lot of the things I used to pay for. If I could do that I'd have a very good chance of not only saving money, but supplying healthier food for my family. So I was like a woman on a mission. I taught myself how to make bread, soap, laundry liquid, cleaners, jams, sauces, preserves, pasta and pickles. When I went shopping, I examined everything before I bought it. If there were too many chemicals and additives in it, I made it myself. Along the way, I discovered there were quite a few things we didn't need at all. Doing all that saved a lot of money and I skilled myself to supply my family and home with much of what we needed. While all that was going on, I was smiling more, slowing down and learning to appreciate this calm and quiet safe haven I was living in. I had taken control of my home, turned it from a passive to an active dwelling and changed myself in the process. Doing the housework changed me and my life.

As I worked towards making my home more productive, I turned my self from a fairly sad, overworked, self-employed woman in to a happy, energetic and fulfilled homemaker who brought real life back to my home. I felt powerful doing it too. I learned many basic skills, worked hard to improve every day, and every night, I went to bed tired. And after a good night's sleep, I jumped out of bed early the next morning, eager to do it all again. When Hanno retired and joined me, we divided up the house and yard work and both settle into blissful contentment. Mind you, not everything went well. When I made a mistake {and there were many}, particularly when I was trying to learn something new, it made me stop and examine what I was doing, work out where I went wrong and then think about how to make it right. That kind of analytical thinking helped a lot and those lessons were the most valuable because I never forgot them. Mistakes might be annoying but never waste the opportunity to learn from them.

If you're at a crossroads and not sure how to change your life, start with something that you're currently concerned about. If you're worried about money, start with a budget and re-think how to do your grocery shopping. Paying off debt is key to this way of life. If you want to eat healthier food, start by learning how to cook and bake from scratch. If you want to grow food, start learning how by finding a community garden or a neighbor or friend to teach you. Doing these things for yourself will bring you back to your home and all the goodness that flows from that. I promise you that once you take that first step, life will open up and it will be quite obvious what your next step should be. Just follow that path. It will be long and windy, there will be hills and quiet strolls in the park, but it will always be an interesting journey. A journey with no end.

She looks well to the ways of her household, 

and eats not the bread of idleness.

Proverbs 31:27

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