I didn't finish everything on my list yesterday but I made great headway. I'm always pleased when I have a full agenda at the start of the day because I know I'll get a lot done and not wander around between jobs thinking about what to do next. A full list gives me direction as well as the tasks on it.


I made four patchwork arm rests for the lounge and will finish the final two today. I made two aprons for the fund-raising kiosk in bright colours that I hope will attract a lot of people over to us. I really liked working on these projects because they used fabric from my stash that has been sitting there for some time. I will make the lemon butter and Anzac biscuits later this morning.


One thing that wasn't on the list yesterday but was done nonetheless, was making biscuits for Alice. She's been biting and scratching her skin lately so Hanno took her to the vet a couple of days ago. She had a skin allergy, probably due to the commercial biscuits we had been feeding her. We wanted to get some biscuits with Omega oils in them, but even though the ones we bought were supposed to be a healthy option, they contained colourings that made Alice come out in the worst rash. The vet gave her an injection of cortisone and told us to stop giving her those biscuits. I used to make dog biscuits in the past so I set about making another batch, much to Alice's approval.

The recipe is similar to the previous biscuits. It can be made in the bread machine or by hand - it should be kneaded for about 5 minutes.

Mix the above ingredients together and add more water to give a good dough consistency. Knead by hand or add to the bread maker. When the dough is soft and smooth, roll it out with a rolling pin and cut to the desired shapes.

I told you all a couple of weeks ago that my son Kerry had travelled to New York with the intention of working in Canada for a year or so, before going to Cuba and Brazil. Well, he arrived in Toronto (he has lived there before and has friends there) but he couldn't get motivated to look for a job. He was missing his girlfriend, Sunny, too much. Eventually he decided he couldn't go on without her and after a few phone calls to her and me, he decided to come home. He's on his way back now but is zig-zagging through the USA before getting on the flight home. He's been to Montreal, which he loved, then back to NYC, to Phoenix, he's in San Francisco right now and tomorrow he goes to Las Vegas where he'll meet with Sharon's daughter (Sharon who helps me here and at the co-op) and her boyfriend. They have kindly offered good old fashioned hospitality to him so he'll stay with them while he's there. Then it's on to New Orleans, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and back to NYC for the flight home via LA. He'll be back home on August 20. It will be good to see him again, I've missed him.

I'll draw the winning names for the Envirsax bags later this morning. Good luck if you entered.

Just a few quick answers here: Rebekka, that bucket would be idea for ginger beer. My knitted blanket is coming along slowly, I think I have about half my squares now. How is yours going?

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. If you have to work this weekend, I hope you have ample time to relax. Welcome to all the new readers who came here this week and a warm hug to all the long time readers. I thank you for your warm and generous comments during what has been a tough week for me. They mean more than you know. Reading snippets about your lives helps me build up an idea of you in my head. See you again next week. :- )

Thank you all so much for your supportive and loving comments yesterday. They made a huge difference to my day. I phoned my friend late yesterday and we talked for a while (me squeaking and her talking) and even though she must wait until the 21st for her operation, everything else is working out well and she has organised as much as she can. I still can't go to see her but I'll be there as soon as I can. Today is day three of no voice for me but it's slowly returning - I've gone from silence to a squeak to a harsh whisper. Progress!!

And yes, I have made a list. :- ) Today will be a quiet one at home with the gate closed. I am doing some cooking for our Centre's fund-raising kiosk next week - Anzac biscuits and scones to be frozen until the big day, and a few jars of lemon butter. We have the church ladies and the ladies from the Hospital Auxiliary making cakes for us so we should have a nice stock of items for sale. My volunteers at the Centre have been baking and sewing too and our freezers are full.


I'll also be starting on my second Burke's Backyard magazine article. The editor sent me a pdf file of my first article after the pages were set yesterday. It looks good! I even have a photo byline, which I didn't expect. That first article will be in next month's edition which celebrates Spring.


There is also some work to be done on a set of patchwork arm rests I'm making for our new lounge. We didn't buy the entire suite but we're using an older sofa that was in our bedroom and has now been moved out to the lounge room. I'll take some photos of the room in the next day or so. We gave our old leather suite to Shane and Sarndra who are setting themselves up in their first apartment.


If I have the time, I'd like to do some work in my greenhouse. It needs an end of winter tidy up along with some serious reorganising. And of course, there are floors to be swept, a bed to make, bread to bake, and meals to cook. I am ever thankful for productive days such as this one. I get the comfortable feeling of being detached from mainstream life while working consciously towards a life of abundance and contentment. I believe nothing is free, everything is paid for by some form of action, and today I'll be working with that in mind. Today will be a good one for me, I hope yours is too. If you have the time, tell me what your plans are for today.

As you all realise, what I write about each day here on my blog is just a small fraction of what actually happens here. I know this post is not going to be optimistic, instructive or supportive but I want to write about real life and this is as real as it gets.

One of my best friends has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She was told about a week ago but yesterday, she had a consultation with the surgeon who will operate on her; yesterday made it painfully "real" to me. I can't stop thinking about it now. When her children were told they rushed up here to be with her. Both her son and daughter went with her to the consultation yesterday. She is surrounded by people who love her, she is optimistic that the treatment will work and she will go into the surgery hopeful of a bright future. I just wish I could see her. She lives only a short distance from us but I've still got the flu, I haven't been able to talk for two days now, and I can't go near her until I'm fully recovered.


Significant and life changing moments like these always make me stop in my tracks and think about my own life. Am I being the best I can be? Am I doing what I should be doing? How can I change to make my life more meaningful? What am I not doing that I should be doing? I think I fall short when I answer those questions truthfully. I know I could be doing a lot more than I do. While I don't intend to change how I live, I do intend to make some personal changes and I intend to say yes to more of the many opportunities that come my way instead of saying no all the time.


Time is all we are given. How we use that time is our choice but maybe it is also a test of the kind of person we are. I hope to use my time more efficiently in the future. I don't want to waste time - that is unforgivable. I want to be the best version of Rhonda that I can be, I want to continue on my quest for a simple life and I am determined to be more organised than I have been in the past. Oh, I will still luxuriate on the front veranda with cups of tea, that is not a waste of time, it's an investment, and I will continue to take things slowly but I'm going to have a list each day and I'm going to follow it. No doubt there there will be a few other changes in the wind as I move through the coming months with my friend.

Life has a way of shaking us up and making us focus on the important things. This will, no doubt, be much tougher on my friend than it is on us, but we intend to be there to help her though it in any way we can. She has been a fine friend to Hanno and I so now we can return some of the goodness she sent our way. Send your prayers and best wishes out to her please, she is a good woman.

While I don't want to make DTE a question and answer blog, I do want to address a question Donetta posed last week. In part, she wrote:

But on a daily basis, Hanno likes working outside and does most of the gardening. However, I set up the gardens with one of our sons when we first came to live here 12 years ago, and carried on gardening over the years until Hanno took over when he retired about three years ago. Now, he does the day to day tending of the gardens, while I sow seeds, tend seedlings and look after the worm farm. I harvest and still plant a few things, but Hanno likes everything tidy and in straight lines and I'm not a straight line gardener, so I usually leave it to him.


I do most of the inside work - the baking, cooking, cleaning etc but now that I'm writing my book and a monthly column for a magazine, writing is a large part of my daily work now, so Hanno helps with the laundry and some cleaning. Now that we're here by ourselves now, that is minimal. When we clean something it tends to stay clean - unlike when our boys lived at home; we do laundry about once a week.

We each work on our little projects - Hanno's are usually outside and mine inside. Hanno worked on making a new lid for the worm farm today while I recovered from a bout of the flu, the first I've had in years. When I work inside I'll do a project like the oil lamps, make soap, sew, knit or mend; at the moment I'm knitting a jumper for Hanno. When Hanno is outside his projects are things like mowing the lawn, making compost, tending the chooks, house and car maintenance.


I have to tell you, none of it seems like hard labour, although in the past I would have seen it as such. Now there is a gentle flow to most days. We rise when we feel like it, we work at whatever task or project we choose for that day along with the normal daily chores. At 10 am each day, tea is taken on the front veranda and we take the time to relax and talk about what we're doing and what we have planned. If we don't want to work, we don't. But we both know that if we want to live this way for a long time, there is work to be done, so we get to and do it. Not every day is a diamond but generally the work we do is enjoyable, gratifying and enriching - not only in what it gives our home but also in what it gives us.

How do you divide up the work to be done at your home?

It's cold outside, just right for a warming winter casserole. Ever since I read the wonderful Nourishing Traditions book, we've gone back to eating a bit of meat. That meat is always local, grass fed and free range - never grain fed or feed lot cattle. If that was the only meat we could buy, we wouldn't eat meat. We choose to eat meat on the bone and let the long slow cooking melt the ligaments, giving us a good helping of nourishing natural gelatine, enzymes and minerals. Gelatine is good for our joints and when you start to age, you need all the help you can get. We also eat the marrow from the bones, it's highly nutritious and delicious.

This recipe uses local grass fed, free-range shin beef and will serve us at least two, maybe three meals - depending on how big the bone is.

INGREDIENTS

• About 1kg or 2 pounds of shin beef
• ½ cup plain/all purpose flour
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons paprika
• olive oil
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 1 large carrot, sliced
• 3 sticks celery, chopped
• water

Mix the flour, salt, pepper and paprika together and coat the meat with it. Place some oil in a fry pan and brown the meat. Take your time doing this as it will be the part of the cooking that makes the most difference to the final meal. Slowly browning the meat allows the sugars to caramelise, which will give you good flavour and a nice brown colour in the meal. Remember, we're not adding any soups, sauces or other additives to provide flavour and appeal - browning the meat naturally and long slow cooking will do that.


When you're happy with the meat, transfer it to an oven-proof casserole dish. I use a cast iron pot with a lid.


Add the vegetables to the fry pan and slightly brown them as well. When you've developed a bit of colour, transfer them to the pot on top of the meat.

Pour over enough water to just cover the meat. Stir the meat and vegetables to mix well. Put the lid on, put it in the oven for 15 minutes on 200C/390F and turn the heat down to 150C/300F.

What you're hoping for is meat that will fall from the bone when it's cooked. Test the meat with a fork when two hours is up, you might need to leave it in for another 15 minutes - depending on the tenderness of the beef when you started.

This meal could also be cooked in a slow cooker to be ready when you come home from work.

Serve with herb dumplings or boiled potato, along with red cabbage, green beans or chard/silverbeet.


HERB DUMPLINGS

• 2 cups of self raising flour OR 2 cups of plain flour with 2 teaspoons of baking powder added.
• salt and pepper
• Rub into the flour about two tablespoons of softish butter. Rub the butter in with your finger tips, just like you would when making scones (or biscuits in the US), until it resembles breadcrumbs.
• Chopped parsley or chives
• Add enough water to make a firm dough.

Forms small balls and drop them into the casserole. They will take about 15 minutes to cook so if you're going to add them, do so 20 minutes before the end of your casserole cooking time.

Welcome to all the new readers that have arrived over the past couple of weeks. It never fails to amaze me that new people keep coming. I hope you have a lovely weekend with your family and friends. I have a giveaway next week, so I'll see you then. :- )

I want to thank everyone who commented yesterday on the washing powder post. Sharing our our experiences gives us all more knowledge and ways to tackle problems. So thank you for being involved in this community as well as for your information and knowledge.

This post is an answer to another question posed last week. This one is from JoAnna who wrote: I know you've mentioned this before, but I sure would like ideas/help/encouragement for getting others on board. It's like society has certain expectations and it really makes it hard to explain to others (especially my children) that it doesn't have to be "normal" to be in debt up to your eyeballs and anxious all the time.

I think it's pretty unusual for both partners to want to change to a simpler life at the same time. Generally one person feels the need to change and then sets off on a mission to convince others in the family. I know you have teenage girls JoAnna, they will be very difficult to get on board.

This is my post on Convincing your Partner, it's about how I wanted to change but Hanno didn't, and how we got around that.

You have to start with yourself. With any change you need to lead by example. There is not much hope in convincing someone else to change how they live if they don't see evidence of it working well. I'm guessing you've been convinced towards change by reading blogs and books, see if you can get your husband and daughters to do the same. There are blogs written by men, Gavin's is a good example, and young girls, Mia writes an excellent blog full of her hopes and beautiful photos. Please add links to other simple life blogs written by men and teenagers if you know of any, and share your own story if you've been in this situation.


But the focus of your effort should be on yourself and how you work in your own home. One of the things that convinced Hanno that we should change was seeing how much money I saved by cooking from scratch, growing vegetables, stockpiling and shopping in a different way. You could probably start making your own cleaners, that would cost less and save on the number of harmful chemicals you have in your home. Who can resist hot homebaked bread? Whip up some bread for them, top it with your own jam or a tomato from the garden and enjoy it with some cool homemade lemon cordial. And when you sit down to this lunch of kings, talk about the reasoning behind it.

It won't happen overnight but in small bits - slowly, your actions will show them what the change you have in mind looks like. If you can show that by changing a few things YOU are less stressed, more relaxed, happier AND save money and produce delicious food in the process, that will at least start them thinking that maybe change is not such a bad idea after all.


Remember, teenagers are in a time of their life when one of their main motivations is to conform to what their friends are doing - it's how they prove to themselves that they're "normal" and acceptable. You will have to be strong and not give in to their requests for more pocket money and clothes. Tell them they will have to work for what they want, just like everyone else does.

But if you can change yourself, if you become more relaxed and provide a warm and secure home, if you show how the changes you've made have made you happier and more content, if you save money and start paying off debt, if you stop buying harmful chemicals and explain to your family the benefits of that, if you grow or cook delicious food and save money while doing it, if you stop shopping, if you provide a loving home that is welcoming, if you do more with less, if you focus more on a beautiful life than a life full of "I want", if you are satisfied with what you have and show it everyday in your attitude towards your family and friends, then you will be well on your way to convincing even the hardest heart that changing in small ways will produce a meaningful and satisfying life full of many rewards.

Good luck. : - )

Just a quick post today because I'm going to work and I have a few things to do before I go. It will be a big day there as I'm presenting another Frugal Home workshop.

Anonymous asked this question last week: I made some liquid laundry soap from Fel-Naptha soap, borax and washing soda... and my whites are so dingy I can't stand it! When I used the same ingredients but just grated the soap and left it dry, I didn't notice my whites getting dingy.

When I was at work yesterday one of the volunteers said the same thing and that she gave up using it because her clothes and linens slowly went grey. I'm not absolutely sure why this happens but I guess the water in different areas must play some part.

I always use the powder now. It's easier to make up and store. I have a front loader and I've never had a problem with the powder dissolving.

If your clothes are greying or if you have stained clothes, when you make up your mix, add one part oxy bleach like Napisan, Oxiclean. Clorox Oxi Magic or any of the generics. I use the Aldi generic, it's very good and much cheaper than a brand name oxy.

So to make up this mix in powdered form use:
2 parts grated soap or flakes
1 part borax
1 part washing soda
1 part oxy bleach

Mix it together and use two tablespoons (about ¼ cup) in each washing machine load.

I hope that helps. If you've been using another variation of this, or something completely different, please share your secret.

I cleaned out my work room on Saturday, a job that had been waiting for me since the wedding. With Tricia and I rummaging in the fabric stash for quilt fabric and thread, and the various other activities associated with the wedding, looking for ribbons and pins, it was quite evident it needed some order restored. I spend quite some time in my work room now that I'm writing the book every day. My laptop is in there, along with the sewing machine and my knitting supplies so at times it's the centre of a lot of activity. But it's quiet and away from the general pace of our home so it suits me well as a work room.


I reorganised the desk top, moving the sewing machine to a better position, folded fabric and ribbons, sorted and stored cotton reels, paired up knitting needles and found two bodkins, lost for a month or so, that were poked into balls of wool. When I pulled them out of the wool, I remembered putting them in there for safe keeping. Ahem. I was sure I would remember that. :- )

But there was one tragedy - I have two baskets and one box full of wool and cotton, and one of the baskets had been attacked by wool moths! I initially saw tiny white casings, that I since discovered are their skins or shells that they grow out of quickly. Along with the tiny white bits were droppings. Ugh. And, of course, wool that had been eaten through so that although the entire ball was not eaten, they'd eaten through the strands leaving me with lots of strands instead of one continuous one. I threw three balls into the compost. It was only the pure wool they went for, they left the cotton alone.

These are clothes/wool moths. They're sort of greyish with dark spots on the wings, although I imagine each continent would have their own wool moth. They aren't pantry moths that eat grain. I don't use moth balls or naphthalene. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies naphthalene as possibly carcinogenic to humans and animals, but I'll take the simple way, they're killed by freezing. I have emptied my basket of wool and cotton and it's been sitting in the sun on the back veranda. I'll bag it up and put it in the freezer for a week and then store it all in air tight containers. I have learned a valuable lesson.

Everything you ever wanted to know about the wool moth.
And more, with photos.
How to store wool.

I invite you all to share any information you have on these moths, particularly the keen knitters who have stashes of wool in their homes just like I do. How are you storing your pure wool? What do you do with the woollen clothes you're wearing, do you store them in any special way when they're not in use?

A reader asked me to write more on dishcloths - she is having problems with the cloths she knitted because they're too thick and don't dry out properly. I had the same problem with some of my Lions cotton cloths. They're fine in summer, but in winter they don't dry out well. I also found some of the thick cloths aren't very good for cleaning delicate things like wine glasses or fine vases.

My dishcloths needed to evolve, I needed to make lighter cloths. So using no real pattern I made a few lighter cloths using 4 ply cotton or 2 ply cotton - the traditional crochet cotton. If you only have 8 ply cotton, you could try knitting with larger needles to give you a looser weave and a not so thick cloth. I'm really happy with the new cloths - I use a light one about 50 percent of the time. They're easier to work with, especially now it's colder, and I find it's much easier cleaning glasses with the lighter cloth.

If you're trying to stop buying disposable items at the supermarket, home knitted dish cloths will fill that spot where you used to buy sponges or cotton cloths from the shop. Eventually they get too grotty to use and most people throw them out. The idea behind the cotton dishcloth that you make yourself, is that it's stronger and therefore can be washed with the normal washing many times before it starts showing signs of age. I have cloths here I've used for three years and they're still going strong.


I usually have about 15 - 20 cloths in my wire basket waiting to be used at any one time. I can change them every day if I want to but usually change them every second day. They're highly absorbent and can be used for a variety of household chores like dusting, cleaning, and polishing. I use different cloths in the kitchen, the laundry and the bathroom. All are colour coded so I know where they go back to after they've been washed and hung in the sun to dry.


Knitting dishcloths is a good practical exercise if you are new to knitting. It will teach you your basic stitches and in the end, you have something you can use in the home. Do enough dishcloths and you'll slowly gain the confidence to tackle larger items. Keep in mind, you can practise any new stitches on your dishcloths before you try them on a jumper or scarf.

One of the best gifts to give either man or woman is a bar of home made soap and a knitted wash cloth. So if you haven't yet fallen for the old fashioned charms of the knitted cloth, think of those gifts and grab your needles.

Next in the series of readers questions is how to start living simply.

Well, the answer to this is to know why you want to simplify your life. Is it because you feel stressed all the time? Are you concerned about the chemicals in your life? Are you moving to another house and want to change the way you live along with everything else? Are you trying to save money? Or are you tired of living with debt and stress and long to return to a gentler way of life? There are probably as many reasons to simplify as there are people reading this post, so let me tell you where I started and maybe that will work for you too.


When I stopped working for a living I had not thought about simplifying but I had grown up in the 1950s and remembered a life much simpler than the one I was living. Before I married, when I lived in isolated parts of Australia, I stockpiled, I gardened when I was younger and the first pets I ever bought for my sons were chooks. Those chooks taught them so much - about gentleness, attention to detail and the never-ending responsibility of providing food and water for pets. I have been 'green' most of my life but had never reflected that in my life consistently or with conviction.

I suppose I was ripe for the picking.

I wanted to live in a different way, I wanted to leave the stress of "normal" life behind me, I wanted to slow down, be quieter and more in touch with my family and my natural surroundings. And while I did all that I wanted to open myself up to whatever my life would hold at this point. Whatever was out there I wanted to "know it by experience" as Thoreau would say. I looked forward to collecting eggs and honey, to growing food fit for a king's table and living a meaningful life. I wanted to say goodbye to gossip, meaningless celebrities, greed and having everything at any price and hoped to discover a world where grace, respect and enrichment filled the sweet air I breathed. Boy, did I hit the mother lode when I started to slow down and live according to my values. It was all there; I found what I hoped for and much more.


I started by organising my money in more accountable ways, by making a budget and sticking to it and by cutting back a lot on what I was buying. I shopped in a different way - what used to be one chaotic weekly trip to the supermarket and a few other trips back to pick up things I'd forgotten, turned into a planned monthly shopping trip. We started planning our trips out and doing as much as we could each time we went out instead of making a lot of little trips for one or two things.

I started stockpiling, then my grocery shopping was even less frequent. This gave me a lot more time at home and that time was put into the vegetable garden. Over the first few years we produced vegetables only during the cooler months, having summer as our down time, but as we came to rely more on the garden produce, we continue planting year round.

To help our garden produce at its best, we have compost brewing all the time, we added a worm farm for castings and worm tea, and of course, we always have chickens in the backyard. We bought our first about 25 years ago when the boys were little and we still enjoy the clucking outside. The backyard wouldn't be the same without the chooks. At the moment, we're building up our fruit production. We had lemons, bananas, loquats, oranges, pecans and passionfruit since we arrived here, in the past few years we've added pink grapefruit, mandarins (clementines), blueberries, red paw paw (papaya) and avocados.


I started preserving/canning and freezing to save various excesses in the garden and to be sure we had good home made sauces, relishes and jams. I have always cooked from scratch so no changes there but we did stop buying the occasional takeaway meal and I developed a set of fast food that I could make at home. I also tried my hand at cheese making, fermenting - sauerkraut and vinegar, and baking.


In an endeavour to cut costs and stop bringing chemicals into our home I started making homemade cleaners and vegetable oil soap. This is one of the few areas Hanno isn't quite fully onboard with yet. I use the homemade soap to wash my hair but he's using a Neutragena shampoo at the moment and he still buys detergents ever so often, but he's promised to not do that in the future. He loves the homemade laundry powder and the other bicarb, lemon and vinegar concoctions I use, so we haven't gone too far off our course.

I love knitting and stitchery but the truth is I see them as part of my housework. I mend rather than throw out and I look after what we own so we use everything fully. I knit for the pure and simple reason that we need knitted dish cloths and face cloths and various woollies for winter wearing. I'm knitting a pair of fingerless mittens for Hanno now and will then knit him a pure wool jumper (sweater). Handiwork also provides gifts for giving throughout the year. Our gift for Shane and Sarndra at their wedding last month was a queen size wedding quilt. It was a gift I felt really good about giving them and they accepted with gratitude, I'm sure they'll treasure it for a long time. But there are also smaller gifts for birthdays and Christmas and more and more I'm finding people appreciate the time and effort that has gone into a hand made gift.

So as you can see, once we started living a more simple life, one thing lead to the next and it grew organically to what we have today. I think most plans will develop themselves once the first step has been taken; it's always that first step that's the most difficult. And make sure you remember that my life and what I've just described for you certainly isn't the only version of a simple life. You don't have to give up work or wait until your children leave home and you don't have to be living in the country. You can do this anywhere, at any time. Cut back on your spending, look at the way you feed yourself and change what you can for the better, teach your self how to bake, sew, knit and whatever you do, be pleased with what you achieve, don't dwell on what you haven't done. That will be waiting for you when you can manage it.

So now to the important part - we've talked so far about the practical side of simplicity, but you also need to think about yourself and your life in a different way, and you need to slow down, stop multi-tasking and be kind to yourself. As soon as you make your first step, say to yourself that you're living simply, tell others, if they ask, that you can't go shopping with them because: "I decided to live more simply, I won't be going out shopping very much now. I'm saving to pay off my debts." Just hearing yourself say that will affirm your change. Build on it by thinking about your life and your changes every day. This way of living is as much about how you think about yourself and your life as it is about the practical things you do everyday. If you do many of the things I've described but still think of yourself as a shopper and long to get back to the mall, that is where you'll end up. You have to develop a simple mindset. Think about the values you want to live by. I want generosity, kindness, grace and respect in my life, and I consciously work on ways to live to those values. If you can, take time out for yourself every day. Think about ways you can reconnect with your family and how you can develop your simple life.

And then, just do it.

Day three of readers questions and this subject seems to be a favourite one here - homemaking. I really enjoy writing about this because I think we don't have enough homemaking role models and, as a job, it's often devalued by people around us.

And why is that? Why is homemaking as a career seen as such a dull and dead end thing to do? I think it has a lot to do with money. Homemakers aren't paid in hard cash, homemakers, my friends, are paid in love and the warm affection and appreciation of a close family. But it's not worth the time worrying about how we are viewed. Like most homemakers I just get on with the job and let the comments land where they may.


I know that my life is better now that I take care of my home and family as my main concern. It wasn't always the case. I used to dislike housework and paid for home help when I was working outside the home. That kept me at arm's length and I never really knew the significance of caring for a home until I gave up work and came home. I really returned to my home in its fullest sense. I stopped the nonsense of not wanting to do housework, and that was the making of me. I realise now that the day to day tasks of homemaking - the bed making, sweeping, cleaning, laundry, cooking and a hundred other things, created the person I have become. Those tasks slowed me down enough for me to focus on my work, to value it and to see that making a home comfortable, safe and warm remakes me and gives my family a gift like no other.

What else could help prepare our families for their day as much as a warm, clean bed, a good healthy breakfast and encouragement as they walk out the door? Where else but at home could we raise our children with a feeling of being loved, safe and wanted? Who else could stand as a strong role model for a child but a loving and confident homemaker who teaches by example the values of self confidence, hard work, honesty and common sense? And BTW, I think common sense is not so common and it is a skill to be taught like any other.


My children have left home now and are building good lives for themselves. Now my homemaking nourishes Hanno and I. I am grateful that I came home when I did and discovered the true feeling of living well in a place of my own making. Nothing else gives the satisfaction of knowing that the efforts of my day give me a place to land when times are tough. I know that we can regain our strength here, no matter how hard we have worked, and I know that whatever I put into my home is returned to me ten-fold.

There is a lot to be said about the art of homemaking. I could write here all morning about the tasks that build character and demonstrate love and care but what I want to encourage in you is the knowledge that no matter what you hear or read about being at home with your children, what you're doing is one of the most important things you'll ever do. Don't listen to the naysayers, don't judge yourself or your calling to be at home by what others may say about it. Keep reminding yourself that nurturing your family with the results of your daily homemaking tasks help make you and build character. Know, deep down to your core, that raising children to be decent, hardworking people who will go on to contribute to their country and build their own family is as important a job as any other.


I have just had two days at work, today I'll be here at home all day. Nothing makes me more content knowing I can potter around, doing this and that, getting through my daily tasks. Hanno will wake soon, we'll have breakfast together and then start our work. He will probably be outside while I work inside but we'll meet for morning tea on the front veranda later in the morning. Morning tea together, sitting in the sun, talking about our plans, is one of the rewards of this life for us. It's a simple thing but it symbolises the gentle nature of our lives now, rewards us for what we've already achieved and sets us up for what is to come. The rewards of being a homemaker are many - they may not involve cash but they're there for the taking, and they are renewed everyday simply by working in our homes.

All graphics from here.