How to Bring Beauty & Goodness to Your Home by Dignity & Dress

Ladies,

You have heard it from me and others, but it still needs to be said. How many women go to a job interview, get hired, then show up to the job in their lounge clothes or pajamas? How would that reflect on her to other colleagues, bosses, clients, and how she is representing the company as a whole? That is just unacceptable behavior because it is communicating disrespect toward the work, toward those around her, and communicating that it’s not important enough to dress for the job.

Here is Your Cooking, Cleaning, & Homemaking “Hack” for Success

Wake up and fix up. Your day of work at home is full of hard work. It is such hard work that people who have spent all day working outside of their home bemoan having to do more work like cooking once they get home. They will often opt for takeout, which costs hundreds of dollars more per month, even thousands if feeding a family, in contrast to cooking from scratch.

Working in Your Nice Clothes to Save Money?

The nice clothing that you wear for your workday at home are your “work clothes”. When you fix up for your day of work at home, there is a precedence that you are setting to do your work. It is not a perfect science or math that I can prove to you that works, but women’s testimonies are consistent that when they treat their work at home as a full-time job, they tend to be more on top of things. They feel refreshed, they feel more awake, they feel official, they feel the work has more importance, they feel an air of respect about what they are doing, and their children respond more positively to their leadership. Dressing nicely every day makes you ready for running errands or answering the door. When we simply wear our nice clothes to work at home, the home feels prioritized and special and can lead you to working better, which means, you do things that save you money. Like sitting down to actually meal plan, making a detailed grocery list, cooking and baking from scratch instead of buying pre-made. Working better will often result in saving money somewhere. Silly as it sounds, being ready for the day can help you to do this.

When You Slop Around Your Work Can Get Sloppy

Fashion has been catering to workforce women for decades as though she is the only one who wants to look her best, but we are finally seeing that tide change. Women are rediscovering the joys of their home and family and that this does not mean a worse version of themselves, but a place where they also get to wear their nice outfits. Think about this also, the person creating order and neatness in the home should start with themselves to be neat and orderly.

The Blessing & Work of the Home

It is a blessing to work at home full-time, but it is also hard work. It is hard work to live on a slimmer income so that the woman can work at home exclusively. It is hard work to cook from scratch to save money on eating. It is hard work to be your own maid instead of hiring help. It is hard work to be the laundress, the grocery service, the meal planner, the caretaker of people. Many people think of women at home merely being “privileged” to do so, but women at home have sacrificed, planned, and worked hard to save their family money by doing things herself. This work, let alone, the societal disrespect for women at home could lead you to downgrade yourself. Women in the workforce do not use the difficulty of their job as an excuse for looking badly, they still show up nice. It is a blessing to be home, so we should exude this too.

Treat Your Family, the Job, and Yourself with Dignity

It is commonplace for women to run errands beyond dressed down but disheveled. It is tempting to blend in with the culture and not want to look different. But we are either conveying dignity or we are not.

The excellent wife of scripture is said to be dignified. In an allegorical sense, she is “clothed in dignity.” This extends far beyond how she dresses, this is her manner of behavior, the way she does not fret about the future, her confidence in God and her wisdom in how she cares diligently with foresight for her family.

Allegory

AL’LEGORY, noun [Gr. other, to speak, a forum, an oration.]

A figurative sentence or discourse, in which the principal subject is described by another subject resembling it in its properties and circumstances. The principal subject is thus kept out of view, and we are left to collect the intentions of the writer or speaker, by the resemblance of the secondary to the primary subject. allegory is in words that hieroglyphics are in painting. We have a fine example of an allegory in the eightieth Psalm, in which God’s chosen people are represented by a vineyard. The distinction in scripture between a parable and an allegory is said to be that a parable is a supposed history, and an allegory a figurative description of real facts. An allegory is called a continued metaphor. – Websters Dictionary 1828

Now in a literal sense, how do we have dignity? We do the things that are dignified, that is defined by the 1828 Websters Dictionary as:

True honor; nobleness or elevation of mind, consisting in a high sense of propriety, truth and justice, with an abhorrence of mean and sinful actions

Clearly dignity has to do with our inward moral character, but inward character can reveal itself in outward ways and we see how the work of the Proverbs 31 woman is about tangibly meeting needs and making life good for her family out of her inward principles:

The work of the wife consists of doing outward things from inward character.

The Proverbs 31 wife is appropriately assessing seasonal needs for clothing and clothing them in “scarlet” which is also translated as “double thickness”. She has foresight and concern so that her family is dressed well. She also dresses in “fine linen” and “purple”, which are both characteristics of very high-quality clothing of the time and it would not be cheap to attain those goods. We see that this woman did not shy away from looking her best. She had inward dignity, a concern for the well-being of her household, and that shows outwardly in the result of her attention to all that she did. We also see how she adorned her house in bed coverings, which would have been necessary, but based on how nicely she dresses, I wonder if she also made her home very beautiful.

Dressing Well is just One Thing

Our goodness does not come from dressing well. It is just a way that we can convey good things, like the order and beauty we are working to have in our home. I suppose we are always reaching for that harmony no matter how fleeting the results in what we achieve. But the heart that desires things to be good, is one that can pursue goodness by doing what God told us to do. So do not give up on seeking to do good things for your home and family. Be a vector of God’s goodness to them. Cheer them by making things good, show them what is good by doing what the Proverbs 31 excellent wife of scripture did, and be filled with the fruits of the Spirit.