Ladies,

As you step into your role as a homemaking wife, you might have wonderful images and ideas of homemaking in your mind that drive you in your home pursuits. Those are good inspirations and valid! But let’s take a look at the bones of daily homemaking and what to focus on doing and why.

Much like an outside job, our homemaking role is meant to serve someone else.

That does not mean we have no joy in our job or do not take pleasure in our job at home. In fact, by focusing my efforts on serving my family, I have clear daily goals, a solid objective and a way to see progress and success in my work each day because of it. I know what to be focused on during different parts of the day to deliver timely results that people do need by certain times of the day.

Many women have never been taught that the point of homemaking is to bless their husband (and children if you have them).

So as a new homemaking wife, ask yourself “What do I need to do today to bless my husband?”

Let’s look at his tangible daily needs and much like a hotel, do those things as primary:

1. He needs clean laundry that is put away.
2. He needs a dry and sanitary bath towel to take a shower.
3. He needs nourishing meals every day, mainly, a dinner to come home to.
4. He needs a home that appears orderly and does not create stress but relieves it.
5. He needs a happy and kind wife.

Now focus on addressing these daily needs.

The early years of homemaking are about establishing your systems for these needs.

You are not just doing his laundry; you are learning how to do laundry best. For instance, you are learning what products to use and why. Have you ever researched what laundry detergents clean the best in tests? Is there a scent that you both enjoy? Do you know when to use fabric softener and when not to use it? Do you know why or why not to use dryer sheets? Do you know what products do best in your washing machine and why? Have you learned how to properly fold clothes? Do you have a place to hang dry certain items and to iron? Do you own a hamper? Do you know the best place for it so that people actually put the dirty clothes in it? Then figure out if you want to do loads on specific “laundry days”, or do you want to do a load a day? The point is to put your hand to the job of laundry in your home. A good place to start is by creating a laundry room or laundry closet that is organized and pretty to be working in. Then focus on keeping the laundry clean and put away so that your husband always has what he needs. While doing this, you are also learning to care for your own garments better.

Notice the priorities of a hotel for guests & copy it

A hotel maid goes in everyday to a room and tidies, throws away trash, wipes down surfaces, makes the bed, and takes away used towels to wash and replaces them with clean fluffy towels.

Bath towels & hand towels need to be washed every few days.

They hang damp after use and sometimes are barely dry in time for the next use. They can harbor bacteria quickly because of being damp and that can make your bathroom smell gunky. Keep bath towels and hand towels sanitized every few days with a good washing and place them back on the hook or the towel bar fluffy again. As a new homemaking wife, this topic also requires you to assess the towel situation in general. Do you own enough bath towels for when some do not get washed in time or when you need extra? Do you have towels for guests? Do you have rag towels for dirty jobs around the house as well? Do you know how to fold a bath towel? Do you store your bath towels in the best place? Should you store some extras in the bathroom as well, say on a countertop, a shelf, or a rack as well as in a linen closet? What color bath towel did you decide on and why? Does this color hide stains the best and clean up the best? Think through the bath towel topic and research other women’s opinions on this topic to get insight on it.

Make him dinner

There are a lot of men who love to cook and they are good at it. But sometimes men take over cooking because no one was ever doing it for them. For decades women have been in the workforce too busy or too insulted to think that dinner was their job. Grow in the skill of cooking and providing meals. Things that seem difficult now as a new wife will not seem difficult as you keep getting better at cooking. You might be shocked at the daily-ness of this work. To feed someone dinner every day means you stop whatever you are doing an hour or two before dinner and get to work. It means you have a plan for it, and you spend a significant effort on making it happen. No one ever tells women that dinner making is a big job. It is treated like something so small we will just figure it out. This job is so big that we need help. We flock to the internet for help. We long for takeout and leftovers because it’s exhausting. This is a job to be done for your family’s most basic sustenance, for their health, and for their joy. It is a worthy cause to make your husband dinner.

Bless Your Family with Dinner at the Table

This is a daily meal to sit down together at a table and look each other in the eyes. It is a time to be present with each other only, not technology. It is a time to admire the food on your plates. It is a time to light a candle and enjoy the atmosphere of the evening. It is a time to pray together and acknowledge and thank God for the food He provided. It is a time to have conversation and share about your day, ask questions, and discuss ideas. This is a time that children learn table etiquette and how to have polite conversation over a meal, which is a life long skill to have for a variety of situations from business meetings, to engaging with their future in-laws. This is where we learn how to use our napkin, how to chew with our mouths closed, how to ask to pass something across the table, how to add seasonings and condiments to our plate, how to thank the cook, etc. The art of dinner time cannot be overstated for our well being in enjoying a meal together, but the skill of dinner time cannot be overstated for practicing cooking, manners, and clean up.

Practice the After Dinner Clean Up

Every dinner requires after dinner clean up and this takes an immense amount of fortitude. Especially when cooking is still a hurdle, cleaning the kitchen after cooking seems daunting. You will probably just want to go lounge afterward. But this is a job to focus on learning and becoming skilled in. It is pivotal to the hygiene of your household but also for your own sake to wake up the next morning to a kitchen that is reset and feels fresh with possibility, not overwhelm. Wash the dishes, wipe down the countertops, take out the trash, and lastly, clean the floor of those crumbs and spills.

A Well-Kept Home is a Means of Offering Peace

We cannot give peace to people on the inside. Only The Lord Jesus gives us peace. But we can offer peaceful surroundings, peaceful behavior and peaceful words in the home, which is all a fruit from spiritual peace. An orderly and clean home is an offering of peace to your husband. By keeping things organized, tidy and clean, you are bringing peace. You are presenting peace to him to enjoy after a day of stresses. By making things orderly, pretty and comfortable, you are giving him a place of rest mentally and emotionally. But there is no use in keeping a good home if you as a wife are not offering the same in your behavior and words.

Give him a happy wife

We bring peace to our home by order and beauty in the house. We also bring peace to our home by our disposition as a wife. Keep yourself up for your husband the way you did when you were dating him. Greet your husband after work with the same affection you had in your early romance. Give him affection and praise his efforts for that day. Make it a point to dote on him. Offer to take his coat and shoes. Offer him a drink. Try to recognize what he needs. Does he need some quiet before conversation? Men typically appreciate a bit of breathing room when they arrive home. A happy greeting and then letting him settle in may be best before launching into conversation. These serving-focused habits in our words and behavior need to be trained so that when we are down or frustrated, we learn to not barrage him with our own emotional state the second he enters the home. Behaving in a frazzled, frustrated, or self-focused way only gives him more work to do when he gets home from work. Bless your husband by being a pleasant woman to come home to, give him a happy wife.

Be a Husband Focused Helpmate

The new homemaking wife can only excel in her job when she is clear what the job entails. Our job is to serve our husband under the Lord Jesus. This is not a just one aspect to our homemaking; this is the point of it. We are to work in our home to serve and to bless our husband. When this is the foremost goal, we understand that his daily needs are priority. Prioritize these basics as a new homemaking wife and soon you will have them mastered.