Don’t be discouraged if you feel like you’re failing to live up to all of the teachings of FW or if it’s taking you quite some time to fully live them. This is common, even expected. Living all of FW is an evolution, it takes time. Once you’re living it all, there’s always refining each of the qualities, which occurs over the years. FW is a lifestyle. Don’t be discouraged, because even if you fall or falter at times, you’re on the right path. You know what to do, and you know you can do it, so make amends (if needed) and start again, and keep on moving ahead – progress is progress – on this beautiful, wonderful path to Celestial Love and deep Inner Happiness ♥.
I’m Home! Now What Do I Do?
May 21, 2012 4 Comments
Welcome home! Congratulations on becoming a homemaker! The rewards of this role are of inestimable worth! Below a few things are shared that can help make your transition smooth and have you on your way to sailing into homemaking bliss:
1. Don’t Believe Homemaker Stereotypes - Don’t believe that all homemakers are like June Cleaver or Peg Bundy. Not all homemakers are excellent, not all homemakers are nurturing mothers, and not all homemakers are lazy, spendthrifts, and ill-kept in appearance. You are you, and the homemaker you become is completely up to you. No stereotypes, no molds – break the mold and become the homemaking woman you are created to be!
2. Give Homemaking a Real Chance - Perhaps you’re giving homemaking a try, but really think that you will get bored or not like it much. Most women who are bored with homemaking fail to really give it the effort it deserves, and if they do, they may fail to explore creativity in homemaking and enrich their lives by volunteer work a few hours a week or month. Go the extra mile in homemaking and gain the skills required to homemake well, and find joy in creating for your family home. This is an amazing world full of possibility and happiness, now that you’re here, embrace it and give it all you’ve got!
3. Realize Your Worth in this Role – There is no way to underestimate the value and worth of a devoted homemaker, click here to read a past post that delves into this a bit more, if you’d like, and click here to read “The New Women’s Movement: We’re Coming Home” that explains some of the multitude of things that such a homemaker does and their worth.
4. Don’t Believe that You’ll be Poor - A family can be very well-off financially and rich in many ways, regardless of its size, on the husband’s income alone. There may be an adjustment phase at the beginning of your being a homemaker in which times are tight financially, but this can be worked-out as you go through it. There is no need to worry that you’ll always have to buy nothing but thrift store items and that your children will have to wear hand-me-downs from others, that you’ll never be able to afford to get your hair done, never have a family vacation, and have to eat cheap, inferior quality foods, all because you don’t provide any income. You are in a position to be an extraordinarily wise investor, and in so doing, can contribute more to your family’s economy than many women who work outside or inside of the home for money. Click here and here for two past posts containing information on this subject, if you’d like.
5. You don’t need to Bring in an Income – You’re a homemaker; this is a more than full-time job. You have a lot of things to do as a homemaker in addition to fulfilling your role as devoted wife and mother. Your family’s health, safety, welfare, and happiness depends in very large part upon how you do your job as a devoted wife, mother, and homemaker. Your business, your profession, is making your house a home, which takes a lot of time, thought, and work. In addition, if you are raising children, especially homeschooling them, you have a full plate. You can learn to make it on your husband’s income alone, and make it very well. Learn to live on your husband’s income, to invest it as only you can, and make your house a home and you’ll be extraordinarily rich in far more than money.
6. Enjoy Yourself – Being a devoted wife, mother, and homemaker does require work, but it can be, and is for many women, the most enjoyable, rewarding work on earth. Enjoy what you’re doing and be creative, let yourself go into creating your family’s one-of-a-kind home and life. You are free to create a masterpiece home and family, free to take materials or ideas and make them into unique things for your family. The possibilities of the outstanding life you can create for your family are endless. Explore this, enjoy this!
7. Educate Yourself – Now that you are a homemaker, you have time to become an extraordinarily well-read woman. There is a lot to know about decorating, family health, homemaking, and such that can keep you busy learning, and there’s also a wealth of knowledge to be found on probably anything a woman is curious about or would like to know more about. You have the time to schedule time to learn, to broaden your mind, to really become an outstanding wife, mother, and homemaker as well as a very liberally educated woman. You needn’t take college courses to do this, just read and self-study. A well-read homemaker can be extraordinarily interesting to speak with and such a delightful woman to know.
8. Become Yourself – You have the time to really get to know yourself because you’re your own boss, on your own time, and “running your own show” (as the old saying goes). You have time to polish-up areas of yourself that need it, time to see things that need changing about yourself and change them, and time to really think about – and create – the life – your life – that you want. There is no more “what others require of you” like there was at the workplace, it’s what you require of you now. Your mind and body aren’t working to do a job for someone else for pay, you’re doing a job for you and your family, and you’re free to think about whatever you’d like, not what the boss requires or paying job outside or from the home requires.
9. Build Your Marriage – A happy, healthy marriage is the foundation of the home, so work to make yours the best it can be: one of Celestial Love, mutual dignity and respect, and deep adoration. To do this, get a copy of the 2007 (the latest) edition of Fascinating Womanhood by Mrs. Helen Andelin, read it, and apply its teachings. There are online courses and live study groups to go with this book, and participating in one of these is highly recommended. No matter how clean and materially comfy a home is, if one’s marriage isn’t happy, the home isn’t.
10. Learn the Skills Necessary to Do Your Job – To be a successful homemaker one needs skill in how to do the job. There’s sometimes more to many homemaking jobs than meets the eye. Become an expert and do your job as such. The book Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson is an outstanding, modern, how-to book for all facets of homemaking, from washing dishes to piano care to caring for books properly to setting the table and everything else! Get a copy of this book and refer to it for any homemaking job you need to learn how to do, would like to know more about, or would like to learn to do correctly.
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Again, welcome home to the world of homemaking! This world – your world - is completely unique and one-of-a-kind; no one else in the world can make your family’s home what you can. So much of your family’s life (and remember, you are a part of your family) revolves around the home you create, give them what they (and you) deserve, which is your very best! Excelsior!
FW~A (Near) Daily Encouragement: Change from Within
May 3, 2012 Leave a Comment
Have you ever heard or read the saying that the only way to really change things is to change them from within? This is the same on a personal level as it is a national level. If you are concerned about our nation’s present condition, please know that you, in your role as wife, mother, and homemaker, are an essential part of the cure for its ills. As a matter of fact, you and your husband are the main two “medicines” necessary to cure it. We must repair our nation home by home, family by family, to completely cure its ills – there’s no other way. So let’s do it! Let us every one grab hold of our jobs as wives, mothers, and homemakers with all of our might and get busy doing these jobs in excellence. Let’s do our job right, with love, in immeasurable quantities! We’re created to do just that!
FW~A (Near) Daily Encouragement: Our Children and the Future
May 2, 2012 Leave a Comment
Our children will carry a large part of their childhoods with them for the rest of their lives. What we, as mothers, do today, how we raise our children minute-by-minute, day-by-day, will absolutely have a large affect on them for the rest of their lives. While we are raising our children, we must keep in mind that we are affecting their futures. We must also keep in mind that we are affecting our futures, too.
How we raise our children will carry over into how they treat us for the rest of their lives, and the older one gets, the more this comes to light. There’s nothing more heartbreaking for a mother than to have her grown children dishonour her, yet how many of us raise our children with less than the most admirable of honour that the role deserves? We must look at our job as one of the highest honoured positions on earth – so highly honoured that it is one of The Ten Commandments. Let us give our children no reason to dishonour us, let us excel in our roles by living up to the potential God has placed in every one of us to live up to, to do His will for us on earth.
We are sewing the seeds of the future: our children’s, ours, and our society’s, in raising our children. Let each and every one of us reading this make up our minds to absolutely excel in our tremendous role of inestimable worth as mothers and give our children – and ourselves – everything we need to thrive today, tomorrow, and in the years to come, and may it be God’s will to give us these days and assist us in fulfilling them as He created us to.
FW~A (Near) Daily Encouragement: “Spend Time with Them”
April 17, 2012 Leave a Comment
“A good relationship cannot be cultivated if parents are always on the run and talk only to adults. Sit in the living room and talk to your children as a group. Work together. Plan projects together. Plan vacations which include them. Also, spend time with the children individually. Have serious talks with each child, face to face. Sit on the child’s bed or go to a private place. Take them places where you can be alone together. Parents tend to spend time with their children only when they need instruction or correction. An ignored child will not feel close to his parents.” ~ Mrs. Helen Andelin, quoted with permission from page ninety-one of her book All About Raising Children.
Creating Our Families Own Worlds: Indoor/Outdoor Safety Links (Weekly Assignment Included)
March 27, 2012 Leave a Comment
Important Note: I am providing links to information from well-respected resources, but information can and does change. Use all of the information you take in from the links with discretion and good sense, and if you have a question, consult your family healthcare provider or a qualified professional that can give you accurate, up-to-date information. I also ask that you use discretion in speaking to your husband about the assignment, if need be. You’re his wife, you know how to best communicate with him. Lastly, if you do the assignment, you do so by your own choice and are personally responsible for any outcome arising from it. Excelsior!
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In part two of Creating Our Families Own Worlds (click here to read it, if you’d like) a section about making our houses, yards, and gardens safe for not only children, but adults, as well, was written. Below are links to some very important pieces of safety information that is important for every mother to know.
This information is important because you don’t want to take any chances on your child, or your husband or yourself, or anyone else having a preventable accident at your home. Accidents are, at the very least a bit painful, and at the most, fatal. Debilitating or fatal home accidents that would have been prevented with a bit of caution cause life-long pain, regret, and remorse. They are worth avoiding at all costs. You, nor anyone in your family, nor anyone that visits your home, deserve this pain and trauma for the rest of your lives. We can easily, by devoted thought and study, heart and hand work, prevent many tragedies and accidents in our homes and have homes of safety, goodness, and outstanding health.
Here are the links:
From the University of Michigan’s Health System
Playground and Outdoor Play Safety
Childproofing and Safety at Home
Children and Safety General Information
From the Minnesota Department of Health
Home Safety Checklist Reference Guide - Though this is a twenty-five page guide for home visitors, it is a very valuable, worth-reading guide for all mothers to read, print if possible, and have on hand. This reference guide includes a home safety checklist and the “why’s” of home safety! It’s a fantastic, helpful resource!
From the University of Nebraska’s Cooperative Extension
Toxicity of Common Houseplants - This list includes commonly found plants used in yards as ornamentals, too. If you have a plant or are considering planting one that isn’t on this list, it’s a good idea look up its toxicity online or call your local cooperative extension for this information. Remember, a ounce of caution is worth a pound of cure!
From the U.S. Department of Health and Social Services
Household Products Database - This is an amazing, detailed base of information to look over concerning household products and their toxicity levels and information.
This Week’s Assignment:
For You - Get a sheet of paper and a pencil or pen and write the day’s date and the question “How safe do I feel our home is at this time?” Write an honest answer, but it doesn’t need to be elaborate or long. Save this paper but write nothing else on it. Next, each day this week schedule about a half-hour of study time to read the information found at the links above. Use the Household Products Database to look up questionably toxic products in and around your home. Use the home safety check list in the resource guide to go through your home this week. Work to make your home a safe, family friendly place by the end of the week.
At the end of the week, get your paper back out, write the day’s date under what you had written at the beginning of the week. Write the same question and your new answer. This assignment may need to last longer than one week to get your home safe. Keep working on it and writing until you can honestly answer that your home feels truly safe, then be wholesomely proud of yourself and let yourself enjoy the peace of mind, sense of loving, devoted nurture, and wholesome fun and enjoyment that can be found in such a home. Also really take a few minutes to contemplate the fact that you are being a loving, responsible mother and woman throughout the time it takes you to complete this assignment – that is really something to be wholesomely proud of.
Involve Dad – Ask him to read the Home Safety Checklist Reference Guide with you this week and discuss it. Ask for his input and his help in making your home – your family’s unique world – the safest it can be. If your husband is of the ‘Americans have lived for hundreds of years without this stuff’ mindset, gently reply that Americans haven’t lived for hundreds of years with today’s furniture, chemical cleaners, cars, and household items. The safety information shared in the guide is there because 1.) Accidents that the guide mentions have happened 2.) Enough studies have been done to prove that the safety measures mentioned work to prevent these accidents very often.
You, like so many women who involve their husbands in things like this, may be very, very pleasantly surprised at his eagerness to participate, his unique input, and the bonds it builds when you work together. If your husband is uninterested, be of a *suit yourself mindset and study it yourself; don’t get upset or angry about it, it’s his choice. It is highly likely that as you really devote yourself to your family’s care and well-being, he will be impressed and intrigued, therefore more inclined to join you. At the least, you will gain respect in his eyes as well as a measure of self-respect.
Share a Link – After you complete this assignment, share whichever safety link above you’ve found most helpful with your family and friends via e-mail, Facebook, your blog, etc. or even print a copy of the reference guide for another woman who you think would enjoy learning from it.
*The phrase “suit yourself” means oh well, it’s your choice, that’s fine with me, do as you wish. It isn’t an angry or insincere mindset or phrase, it’s an accepting phrase.
Creating Our Families Own Unique Worlds: Part Two of Two (Discussion Post)
March 26, 2012 2 Comments
This post contains “how to” tips for creating a uniquely marvelous world for one’s family. It is the second of a two-part series; click here to read part one, if you’d like.
Have a Plan
Spend time with your husband thinking of the way you’d like for your home to be, then make a plan to make it happen. Key to successful planning is to make this plan realistic, knowing that things can change. Money situations can occur, (job losses or changes, the price of items planned for can increase, etc.) a situation necessitating a move may occur, one’s mind about an item can change, and as is the case for many families when making such plans… implementing them can take longer than expected.
Be Patient
It can take a lot of time, years even, to get one’s home the way one wants it. There’s a lot of work to be done initially, then built upon, perfected, and maintained.
First Things First
Your world’s – family’s – foundation is a loving marriage. You can’t build a lasting world on a damaged, cracked, or broken foundation. Before you get too far into planning, read Fascinating Womanhood and apply its teachings to have the foundation you need for total success.
The Mood of Your World
We have all likely been to grand homes that are marvelous to look upon, but feel cold and unloving, or that evoke cool or negative feelings. To be a happy home world, the mood must be happy. The mood of your home should be positive. Even in times of mourning and troubles, the home should reflect solid strength and comfort and that healing can be found there. While a multitude of things affect the mood of the home: lighting, furniture, its cleanliness, colours, and such, it is the homemaker has the most influence upon it. Fascinating Womanhood contains teachings on setting a wonderful mood in the home, perfectly conducive to creating an amazing family world.
The Spirit of Your Home
Make your home a place in which The Spirit of God can be found. A home with unwholesome things in it such as pornography, illegal items, immoral music and media, and immoral practices is a home that is unwelcoming to The Holy Spirit for any length of time. A home that is wholesome can radiate The Spirit of God and be a real light to the occupants as well as visitors and passersby. This sort of home is a light to a community and world. The more of the homes in America, the better, and the more blessed our nation will be.
Keep Your Children’s Ages and Safety in Mind
Keep your child’s world safe for them and other children who visit. This applies to home, yard, and play furnishings as well as products.
There are many poison plants and household/yard toxins that are best completely avoided while raising little ones. Even some vegetable plants like tomatoes and eggplants are poison if ingested. Take the time to learn about plants and home products that are non-toxic; this makes anyone’s home world even nicer and better.
Mothers and fathers who create safe worlds for their children are nurturing their children and their own peace of mind. Children who grow-up with Dads and Moms who sincerely work to ensure their safety and well-being are children who grow-up with a proper respect for and trust in authority; children earnestly respect and trust those worthy of it, those who have only the best for them in mind, heart, and action – their parents set the mold for this respect and trust. These children grow-up feeling safe in their homes and from the world, and in our family’s worlds, this safety is essential. As they grow older, there are different safety precautions to take as well as more things that were once unsafe that can be safely assumed. This is a good way to live: everyone safe, happy, and properly and age-appropriately cared for.
There are also safety issues to be thought of for all ages of family members and visitors. Keep the home in good repair to avoid accidents and learn about home safety for all ages and apply what you learn to your home. To make our big world a safer place, we must begin with our own worlds – our homes.
In Conclusion
Tomorrow, God willing, a post with links to safe and unsafe plants and products and home safety will be posted.
Discussion - It’s great to learn from each other, so please feel free to ask any questions you have and or share your thoughts on the following or anything else related to this post by commenting:
What have you done for your family that has made your own family world unique and feel good?
Have you anything to add to this post list that you have found helpful in creating your family’s world?
Is there any section of this post that you would like to elaborate further upon or any thoughts you’d like to add to it?
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