Musings on Being a Homemaker

For those of you who have known me a long time (and probably for a lot of you that haven't known me for that long), you've undoubtedly come to the realization that I'm pretty independent and stubborn. I've always planned on having a career and focused on myself and my goals. In Young Women's I'd always joke about not needing to know all the stuff that they talked about, and in some ways I believed it. I knew that being a mom was important and I knew that being a homemaker was important, but that was something to worry about later. When I was 16 I came to the realization that it didn't matter because I wouldn't ever get married. I know that seems extremely silly, but guys were never interested in me. I was always too sassy or too tomboyish or too whatever. I figured that my dating life at 16 would continue on and it wouldn't really matter.

Well, here I am, about a month into marriage. I tutor high school students, and since it's summer break I haven't been working. It's been really nice for getting ready for a wedding, and it's been nice for the first month of marriage. I get up every morning and I pull out my checklist of things to do around the house. Then I clean, I organize stuff, I pull stuff out of boxes and find a place for it, I decorate. Daron gets home and I make dinner, we go to bed, wake up the next morning and it starts all over again.

It's only been a month and I'm already amazed at how much there constantly is to do. I feel like every morning I get up and feel like the bathroom counter needs to be cleaned, the kitchen floor needs to be mopped again, I need to vacuum, why is that book not on the bookshelf, blah blah blah! So lately I've been thinking about all the things I was taught growing up and I've realized it's true that you never really get an appreciation for something until you have to do it on your own.

Also, let me get things straight: currently, I don't really think I qualify as a homemaker. Cleaning after Daron and myself, cooking for the two of us, that's not bad, especially when you consider I'm not working or going to school yet. I'm really thinking more about how things are going to be difficult when I do start working and going to school at the end of the month. And it's made me think about all the awesome women in my life who have already gone through what I'm starting to face.

There's my mom, who managed to raise four kids while working full-time, and still manages to take care of all of us even as we're growing up and moving away. Not to mention she's a teacher AND she does primary (so that's like having kids that never grow up- as soon as they get older and move out of her class, they get replaced by new ones!)
I think about Jamie, my sister-in-law, who's the awesome lady who's dealing with two kids, keeping up her home, always making beautiful crafts to decorate her home, and she even gardens to boot!

I've been thinking in particular about my sister Amanda, who's worked hard through school, had a career, and now stays at home with her son and daughter to take care of them. Everyone (including me) has talked about how similar the two of us are, and I think about how often Amanda tells me she's frustrated because her house isn't as clean as she wants it, or Sam made a mess of the room she just cleaned, and so on and so forth. I look around my apartment and how there's always so much for me to do, and then I think about how I visit Amanda's house and it's decorated so nice and it feels like such a home. And even when she complains about how it's not as clean as she likes, I go over there and I'm amazed at how clean it is still!

As I've been getting ready for school and work to start up again, I'm realizing that my house isn't going to always be spotless. There will be days when things aren't going to get done, or I'm going to be frazzled because I have to choose between dirty dishes and homework. These upcoming few months are going to be a new type of challenge for me. And that's going to be okay. It's going to be hard, but it'll work. All the women before me have made it work, and I'll always be able to ask them for advice and look to them for an example. Not to mention Daron's always fantastic with helping out. He does dishes most of the time, and I've been feeling under the weather today and he just jumps through hoops to do stuff for me so I can rest.

I guess the motto of my musings is this: the women in my life are awesome and they've done so much with their lives and they just need to keep up the good work!


P.S. My sister Caitlin says she likes it when blog posts have pictures, so this is a picture of the wonderful flowers Daron brought me the other day. They're so pretty and I love them!