Being an organized homemaker is not about achieving a particular visual effect, but about bringing about flourishing of many persons.
I am not a good housekeeper or homemaker.
No one will ever confuse my home with Martha Stewart’s or Joanna Gaine’s—not only because my throw pillows are from IKEA and looking a little sad because when they’re not walls of a fort they’re used to sit on, prop up books, and, yes, to throw.
No one will ever mix up my home and FlyLady’s or Clean Mama’s because my sink is rarely shiny; often it is downright dirty–because there are pretty much always dirty dishes in it. After all, most of us are home most of the time, and most of the time someone will be eating.
It’s a little awkward having a blog about homemaking and organizing. Most homemaking and organizing blogs and magazines are about the secrets and systems to achieving that look and feel you’ve always wanted. They are full of bright, minimalist photos bursting with promise.
You won’t find many photos of my house on my blog because right now we’re in a temporary rental that’s was very lived in before we even got here. Our previous house was great for our family, but it didn’t have good lighting for photos and would never have been picked for home glam shots. My decorating style is “library chic” –because books everywhere is a style, right?
I don’t write about homemaking or organizing because I have it figured it, because I have all the secrets I can now impart to others, or even because my home is beautiful and organized.
In fact, when people ask if I’m organized, I feel like saying, “It’s complicated.” I do love giving things home and having a smart place for the things we actually need. What I really have been writing about for over fifteen years now is “What does it mean to be organized?”
I believe that what the publishing and media industry has told us is organization and homemaking is a lie, and it’s part of what leaves us dissatisfied with our homes and our work. Feminism and secularism have removed the heart of the home, and now the industries that have sprung up around us gloss over that removal with well-placed candles, houseplants, and linen hand towels.
Feminism denies that real work and real meaning happens in the home, so all the home is good for now is as a means of self-expression.
Gut check: If your home is about expressing yourself, the other people living in the home will always feel like they are getting in the way and ruining your mojo. Every mom knows that feeling and has been tempted by that lie.
Real organization is not an aesthetic or a style. Real organization means the stuff serves the mission. Therefore, you need a mission before you can be organized. Organization itself cannot be a purpose or end goal. It will never satisfy because it is only a tool. Your life and home can never be properly ordered if keeping the stuff ordered the way you like it is your highest aim.
As G.K. Chesterton expressed it, “The business done in the home is nothing less than the shaping of the bodies and souls of humanity.”
That business cannot happen when the home is in shambles or chaos. But it also is likely not happening when the house serves primarily as a trophy to our taste or an expression of our own selves, such that the bodies and souls of humanity that enter must only be adoring admirers or minions to the state of the house. In fact, that does shape people, but not in a healthy or God-honoring way.
Homemaking is a tending sort of job. It is like gardening, not like factory work. There are many opinions and helps out there for doing well, but all of it must be mixed with an engaged and attentive and adaptable gardener. You can’t pretend to be a mere employee farm hand, simply doing what your told from your favorite book or YouTube channel. You have to watch this year’s weather, this year’s crop, this year’s weeds. Achieving success one year is no guarantee for success next year — and likewise with failure.
There is no such thing as weeding so well that there will not be more weeds next week.
A gardener is a caretaker and also a dominion-taker, a leader. A gardener can’t wait to be told what to do. He has to observe and decide and adjust and persevere.
So it is with homemaking as well. Organizing is a lot like pulling the weeds of entropy in our home. It’s not some kind of magic mulch that negates the effects of the Fall. It’s just what we’re here to do, day in and day out, because ongoing life requires ongoing maintenance. If people are to flourish, someone must be administering the right amounts of food, clothing, truth, goodness, and beauty.
Such a job takes tremendous personal involvement in the entire process. All our life long we will be continuing to mature and increase in skill in capacity in that process. It’s worth our time, energy, and attention.
Pulling weeds might not be glamorous. Folding laundry and making another pot of pasta might not feel glamorous. Yet the gardener, after a day of working in his plot, sits back and surveys his land and is satisfied in the overall effect and ongoing productivity. So it can be for us as well.
Surveying our land, our home, our domain, and seeing that we are accomplishing the flourishing of people, we can sigh in contentment and go to bed ready to continue that same good work the next day.
The work is not at all pointless. The real work is not at all undone by the children’s grubby little hands and abundant overactive hobbies. The real work is not achieving a visual effect.
Rather, “the business done in the home is nothing less than the shaping of the bodies and souls of humanity.” Keeping up with all four causes of such shaping— material, formal, efficient, and final— is our immensely satisfying role that requires us not only to pour ourselves out but also stand up straight and tall and proud. It is no small thing, no menial work, and no mere self-expression.
We have a calling to take dominion, to lead. We have a commission to live out the gospel in an attractively efficacious manner. The bigger mission is not measured by a snapshot of the current state of the stuff.
Keep on keeping on. Do not grow weary of doing good. Every dish cleaned, every shirt folded, every floor mopped, every smile bestowed, every chore dropped to have a timely conversation— each is a small step taking us toward our end. Count each step. Don’t evaluate how you’re doing by a desperate glance at how much work there is to do *again*, but rather by how many people are growing and thriving under your care and maintenance. Cheerfully put your hand to that plow each day, whether or not someone walking in at a particular moment in time would judge you a good housekeeper or not.
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