Last Updated on December 26, 2020 by HodgePodgeDays
Years ago, women were the homemakers. That’s what we did. We didn’t work, we didn’t make the money, we took care of the home, we raised the children, and we took pride in it. Then, we had to work. Men were off to war and women were called in to help out in the economy. But sooner rather than later, when the men were home, the majority of women slipped right back into their homemaking roles. And then things changed.
Women wanted to work. Women wanted to be equal. And rather than relying on the man to solely bring home the bacon, women worked too. Whether this was for the want of working, or the financial need of working, we did it. And we were able to form our own career paths out in the working work. Yet, in some households, the responsibility of keeping the home still falls on the woman.
While some households will share the workload, a lot of women have the task of managing the house and working. Or managing the house and working and raising the children and having a life – and it’s tough. Whether you are solely in charge of looking after the home or not, it can be hard to manage it all. But it’s important for you to realise that it doesn’t have to be impossible.
If you are someone that wants to be able to take pride in her home, that loves to create a sanctuary, and enjoys living somewhere gorgeous, clean, and the perfect place for entertaining, whether you work or not, you can have it all and still love to create a beautiful home. And here are a few tips to help you.
Know What You Want Out Of Life
To start with, you absolutely need to know what you want out of life. Don’t dream. Don’t pretend. Don’t say that you want what everyone else wants or say that you want something because it’s what you feel like you should have. Instead, you need to be honest with yourself and work out what you really want. When you’re able to know exactly what you want, you’ll want to think about how you can then make this happen too.
Make Your Priorities
When you’re starting this process, you absolutely need to think about how what you want to make a priority in your life. Because everything cannot be a priority. You have to decide what matters the most to you – and yes, this can be tough. But when you do it, you’ll find that you’re less stressed and it’s much easier for you to make decisions in life. You’ll find happiness very quickly too.
Visualise What You Want
The next thing that you need to do here, is think about visualisation. When there’s something that you want to do in life, or something that you want to achieve, visualising it and seeing or feeling it can then help you to bring it to you. So spend some time visualising what you want out of life, and what you see your home life looking like. Doing this can make you see what steps you need to take, in order to make this happen.
Create A Cleaning Schedule
Now, when it comes to managing your home, one of the best things that you can do for yourself is to come up with a cleaning schedule. Sometimes, it’s hard to make sure that all of the jobs get done when you’re trying to do them sporadically. But when you sit down and work out what you need to get done each week or month, then you need to allocate time for it. And feel free to invest in this for a better life too. Whether you want to get a new vacuum cleaner or create your own cleaning products, do it. Because you want to live in a gorgeous place, so take pride in looking after it.
Hire Some Help
If you know that you’re struggling a little bit to stay on top of all of the cleaning, or you really don’t want to spend all of your time looking after the house when you want to be with your family, then why not hire some help? It’s okay to want to hire a cleaner if you know that you just need a bit of help. Remember, you don’t have to do it all – you can still ensure it all gets done, without physically having to do it yourself.
Give Everyone A Role
But don’t always feel as if you have to do everything yourself or that you have to hire help if you really are struggling. You live in this house with other people, so even if you do enjoy taking care of it, you’re going to want to think about getting your kids to do chores as well. Maybe they don’t just have to do their own basics, like making their beds or doing the dishes. Maybe you can pay them an allowance to do things like mow the lawn or collecting leaves, so that they are contributing to the household in many ways.
Work Your Own Way
Then, when it comes to work, you’re going to want to realise that you can work in your own way. You do not have to climb the corporate career ladder because it’s what your friends do. You don’t have to have a comfortable job if it makes you miserable. If you would prefer to work from home, go freelance, start your own business, or even write a book instead, do it. Because this is your life, and you should work in your own way.
Focus On Homemade
When you’re busy, it’s easy to want to go for quick and easy resources in life that help you to live a little easier. One of those things can often be junk food or premade food – yet this isn’t really the best for you. Instead, when you want to be able to live well, you really do need to make sure that you’re cooking as many meals from scratch as possible. For this, you’ll want to think about trying out different recipes and looking to make as many lovely and cool things from scratch as you can.
It’s also a lot of fun to cook, to try new things, and to know that your entire family is eating well and enjoying healthy, nourishing, homemade meals every day!
Decorate Regularly
From here, you’ll want to think about making sure that your home looks the part too. One of the biggest parts of being house proud is the way your home looks. And while it doesn’t matter how it looks or what kind of interior design taste you have, but you may want to ensure that you are decorating regularly, so that your home looks the part. For this, you’ll want to decorate often to ensure that your home looks its best, and that you’re not letting it get old and run down!
Align Your Finances
And the very final point here, involves your finances. Because when you have these big, grandiose visions for your life, you know that you need to be able to finance them. While not every single goal that you have will be expensive, nor do you have to be rich to be happy, but you may find that it’s going to help you to create the life you want when you are able to align your finances to your goals.
For this, you need to make sure that you know your goals and what you want out of life, and then you ensure that you’re budget and your attitude to money matches your intentions. Because then, you’ll fully be able to live and enjoy the life you want.
In conclusion, you can have it all. You can create the life that you’ve always wanted, find a balance between all of the responsibilities that you have, and enjoy yourself in the process. It’s easy to believe that it has to be hard to ‘have it all’ or that women just simply have to choose. But we don’t. You can easily design your dream life, if you want to. But you really do have to make that happen for yourself.
When you know that you want ‘it all’ you really do have to be willing to work for it. It’s never going to just land in your lap. And if you know that your everyday life is quite chaotic today, it may stay that way for a while unless you decide to change it!
When you let go of the shoulds and musts and the pressure and expectations, you’ll find that living life on your terms is definitely much easier. And more enjoyable! So step back, think about what your dream life really looks like, and work to make that happen. Remember, a happy home and a balanced lifestyle makes for a very happy, fulfilled, and grateful woman indeed!
This is a contributed post.