How to Love Homemaking by Delegating & Hiring Help

Ladies,

“A woman’s work is never done.” as the old saying goes. Many days we can fall into bed with things still in the sink, people needing to be fed the minute we wake up and never-ending laundry and crumbs on the floor. We find as homemaking wives and mothers that it is not a badge of honor to wear yourself down until your disposition is anything but pleasant. But so often the workload does wear us down. No caretaker can go on endlessly at the same pace without serious burnout. There are countless paid jobs that do the work of the homemaking wife such as a maid, a nanny, a professional organizer, a home decorator, a personal chef, a grocery service, a laundry service, a lawn & garden service etc. and people in those jobs take personal days off, vacation, and weekends off! This is not as common for the homemaking wife unless she institutes some kind of relief valve by hiring paid help or paying for certain conveniences.

The Proverbs 31 Excellent Wife had Help

The Proverbs 31 wife depicted in the Holy Bible is a woman who rises in the morning to feed her female servants. This is a woman who had help! She delegated work and she was not thought of as less than a capable wife because she had other people doing work for her home. Far from it, this wife in scripture is called “a woman who surpasses them all”.

Machines are a type of servant and yet even they need us

In our modern day, we may have washing machines and dishwashers, but the wife is still putting in that labor and time to facilitate those processes. We do have help in machines, but they do not erase the human aspect of still laboring in that job, perhaps several times per day, every day. The washing machine does not sort my laundry, correctly dispense the stain treatment, detergent, or bleach per load. My dryer does not remove the delicate items that only need to tumble for 10 minutes, and it does not hang them up for me. My machines do not load themselves or unload themselves. My machines do not fold my laundry, iron my clothes, or put things away. Machines do not make decisions for you and remove the deliberation for how to do things well. My machines take maintenance that I do to keep them running well such as cleaning them and emptying filters.

Not even the maid does all this

Not even hired help can do all it takes to run a home well. The maid is merely a release valve for the homemaker, not a cure all! A maid can take certain deep cleaning tasks but that is it. This means the homemaking wife can keep her energy for all of the other things that the maid does not do day in and day out. The homemaking wife needs help because of the thousand little things that hired help never does.

The maid does not clean up after each meal

Whoever is present at mealtime is the one wiping the countertops, wiping the floor, wiping the dishes, wiping little faces. Wiping, wiping, wiping.

The maid does not make the bed each morning

This tidying task is the wife’s jurisdiction. In fact, only the wife can set her home right hour by hour as things degrade. If she does not, she must live in a giant mess waiting for that one day when the maid will make it nice for it to only stay nice for that one day. This is why the hotel maid goes into the room every day to put it right! This is why the wife has a never-ending job of her own home, because homes need tidying daily, even multiple times per day and no maid is there enough for that.

The maid does not light the candle or set out flowers

This is the art of homemaking that we need energy to do. Making things pretty, making things smell nice, this also takes time and work. But this work is unique to the homemaker. A maid can clean and tidy, but it is not her home to “make”. The wife “working at home” as the Bible says, is the only one who can make these more artful decisions. This is a part of our work and a part of our freedom in working at home. The creative freedom to make things lovely is just as vital to the wellness of a family as is clean things. If things were just clean and never coiffed beyond basic tasks, the home would be more like an institution that has limits on a personal element. Whereas a woman’s home is a reflection of her inner heart for beauty, and it is her canvas for designing beauty into the world around her. How she arranges things, her favorite colors, her pretty dishes, these things are not just for her to enjoy but to imprint loveliness on her family, to bless them with refinement and beauty and be blessed in return for their enjoyment of it.

A maid is valuable help, but the maid does not light the candle or set out flowers. The homemaker needs physical and mental space to do the more heartfelt aspects of the home and to do this, she must delegate the work that anyone can do to give her room to do this special kind of work in the home that only she can do.

There is a season for everything

As the Holy Bible says in Ecclesiastes there is a season for everything. Your homemaking will have different needs in different seasons in life. We all have different physical abilities to start with and those abilities can change with time and age. Use wisdom in your homemaking to determine what you need in this season of life to help you. Sometimes we need the maid or a landscaper to take care of the outdoor areas, or a grocery service to deliver groceries, etc. What relief valve do you need to put in place to help your home and family function best in this season of life? Homemaking should be the work you do daily but when it is not treated as the job it is, where workers in other jobs are afforded collaboration with others and rest from it, anyone would end up exhausted and resentful of the work. Treat this job as the job it is and that a worker needs help and rest. The Proverbs 31 wife had help which freed her up to do other things for her home and family. So even if she did not do it all herself, she was the manager of her home, “looking well to the ways of her household”.

Ways to afford to hire help

Not everyone in every season of life can afford to hire a maid, but there are maids that work for lower cost. But many times, women can find a cost to cut to hire a maid. Sell things you are not using to afford hiring a maid even if just for a few times with the amount you earn from the sale. Cut out streaming services, cable, or other non-essential apps that bill you monthly or yearly that you do not actually need. Take a serious look at how much you spend on little things like drinks or snacks when out and about. Consider how much gas you use to drive around town doing errands that more or less just get you out of the house. Many women “without any money” shop at Target, a place that tries to seem affordable but is actually quite expensive, that many women make their special outing but wreak havoc on their bank account. Many of our lifestyle habits can be altered so that we can better manage what money we do have that could actually bring us some relief from housework in certain seasons of life. If there is no room for affording a professional, you could ask a friend or a family member if they would be willing to work for less than you would pay a professional. Many teenagers are looking for jobs to earn money and they would be learning valuable home keeping skills if you paid them instead of paying a professional maid. Just be sure they know what cleaners to use on what surfaces and how to be safe around chemicals.

Delegating without Hiring

Your family must be trained to take responsibility for their part in keeping the household nice. Housework should never just fall to the wife or mother. But no matter what, we still end up doing most of the work and to a degree, that is ok. Before you hire help, be sure your family is learning to observe their own impact, that you have communicated expectations and household rules for cleaning up messes, putting laundry in hampers, etc. Sometimes help comes by us training our household to help better.

This is not about how you get the help it is about the fact that help is ok to get

Your household is yours to manage. How you get to where you want to be is a part of your journey. Reading the Holy Bible to learn wisdom and praying to God for wisdom is the way we get better at this.

The fact is, you can hire help for your home, and this is not only practical, but it is sometimes essential. Perhaps it is just essential to love homemaking by not doing it all. Housework is only a part of homemaking after all. But most importantly, the Holy Bible gives us the example for how to be an excellent wife, so we have a clear and wise guide in God’s Word that delegating and hiring help is a part of our job.

Happy Homemaking!

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CHRISTIAN LIVING – FASHION – HOME