Good Morning Dear Kitchen Saints,
I am up early this morning fixin' oatmeal and coffee.
I have been wanting to write about homemaking for days now, it seems. What is the spirit of homemaking to you ladies? For me, the spirit of homemaking is a spirit that inspires me to make a home.
We can be loaded with homemaking tools but, if we don't have the inspiration to make a home, then we feel, indeed, lost and forsaken and confused in our homes. Sure, there is always work to do. Dishes are always needing to be done or clothes to wash. Some things ya gotta do, with or without a shot of inspiration. But when you are doing all of your work with no inspiration, then you feel like steel rolling on steel and there is no cushion or comfort. You feel as though you have lost your fuel for housewifery.
One thing that would sure get me goin' when most of my children were home was the washer or dryer going out. I would just determine to make a nest of peace, no matter what. I mean MEN? -- oh, mercy. Ya can't live with 'em sometimes and ya can't live without 'em. All they see is if the house is out of order, if it is. So if ya have a houseful of children and the washer goes out, just wash the clothes in the bathtub after Husband has gone to work. Then pray about it and then tell Husband the clothes washer is broke.
Well, see, when our washer would go out with all the kids at home? This was a major problem. And we just lived on a wing and prayer at best. We didn't have the money to get stuff fixed. But to get up in the morning as a wife and start complainin' about it just before Jim went to work in the morning would have been very foolish on my part. Because, ya know, ya can't squeeze blood out of a turnip. He didn't have the $$ to get the thing fixed. And he had to keep going to work to keep some food on the table. So I would just pray over all of this and God would help me.
One year I had about five different washers. Everyone gave me theirs that was ready to go out. Well, I did at least 3 loads of clothes a day. So if a washer was ready to go out, anyway, I would take it the last mile in about 5 days. I had this one washer someone gave me that made so much noise when it washed that we had to go outside until the wash was done. It was like a slug hammer was beating a bag of bolts to death, only much louder. Well, thankfully, that thing died pretty quick.
Well, then I have told you the story about how I got the wringer washer and used that almost every day for a year. I kept it and, if my automatic went out, I was never again without a washer. Now days, since I don't have a lot of wash to do, I can keep a washer going and a dryer. Wow, I am cookin' on all four burners now.
But a woman needs to maintain a peaceful home, no matter what goes out. And when you have a houseful of children, stuff gets used up or broken quicker. And, ya know, Jim was doing his best and working at what he could. So for me to complain to him about stuff he had no control over would have discouraged him to the place he couldn't have done "anything." But a wife and mother should know how to just be quiet and make a home. Just pray and trust in God and do whatever it takes.
If a man goes out and works all day, that is a lot. I hate it when I see a discouraged man come home tired and weary and his wife expects him to do housework or take care of the children. He should be able to rest awhile when he gets home from work. A wife and mother should have charge over her home. She shouldn't be running at her husband with a bunch of gripes right when he comes in the door. I see so many women who don't even have a hot meal ready for her husband when he gets home from work. When you know that your husband is due home in the evening, you should prepare the children. If they have friends over, it is time for all the friends to leave and go home. Then Mother should have the children pick up their toys and get cleaned up for Daddy.
And, ya know, times are hard in our country. I fellowship a lot with our kids so I know whats goin' on.
When Jim and I got married, we had rented a nice little house. And with rent and utilities, our bills were about 100 bucks a month. Jim made like about 100 bucks a week -- he got minimum wage. Our groceries were about 25 bucks a week. Now compare that to now, and the minimum wage. Over the past 40 years, minimum wage went up from about 2 bucks an hour to about $ 5.35. So it went up about 3 times the amount. But rent has gone up about 6 or 7 times the amount. And, of course, groceries have gone up that much, too.
The working conditions for the common worker are horrible. I blame ERA for that, the equal rights deal. It used to be that an employer could pay a kid a buck or so to help out in a grocery store. Now the employer has to pay the kid as much a college graduate for the same job. It used to be, in the old days, that if a man had a lot of kids to feed, the boss would always pay him more than the other employees. Folks used to be all for the family and the bread winner. So it used to be easier in the old days to make a buck.
Rent is outrageous in our country. You are working all month to pay your rent. No one used to have to do that, even making minimum wage. So I think, realistically speaking, a mother at home will have to do some major rockin' and rollin' to keep the family going. We have to trust in the Lord?
In the old days, when I took my son in for a check up as a baby, it cost me 4 bucks and this included all of his shots. A specialist cost 10 bucks and we thought that was outrageous. But gone are these days. And now our family can't even afford to go to a doctor unless we are dyin'. And when I went to the hospital for my "gallbladder take out," we didn't have the insurance. So they ask us to sell our house to pay the bill? Oh yeah? And then what? We would be seriously out on the street right now if we didn't have the wisdom of God.
But, ya know, ya can't scream ouch every time the devil kicks ya. And you have to maintain a peace in your home and do whatever it takes to keep the home place going.
Jim and I are the examples to our grown kids. Every time we walk by them, they want to borrow 20 bucks. They pay us back the following week when they get paid. But Jim and I know how it is. And thank God we stay enough afloat to loan them 20 bucks here and there. And this summer we all plan to have a garden here at our house together. And Jim and I will be able to pass on what we know about gardening to our kids. And I have herbs growing all over the yard and I can teach them about herbs and how to grow them and use them. If all of my kids were rich, I wouldn't have the opportunity to teach them the knowledge they need.
We all need to go back to the land. It's time to do this. We have all lived richly compared to the rest of the world. And we are still trying to live well and the $ ain't there to do it. The world's seasons have changed and we need to change with it.
In my day, as a young woman, you didn't see folks living on the street. In the 70's is when a lot of that started. I can't imagine such a thing as that. If Mary and Brandon didn't have family that loved them, they would be on the street. Even though he has a good job, his sickness kept him from being able to work. Mary is gaining speed but couldn't, at this point, hold a job.
Well, duty calls -- I gotta get going. Brandon is going in for some tests at the state hospital in a few hours. So please pray that the doctors there will have wisdom to help him.
