What do you want your home life to convey to others? Do you want a warm and inviting, cozy and comfortable, or clean and sterile home? The way you care for your home can say a lot about you and who you are. Why do you keep home? Why do you stay at home? What is your motivation?



My home is not the cleanest there is. Nor is the most organized that it can be. It is definitely lived in. I have a loving family that lives here. Fully lives here. I'm not the kind of mom that has the kids in a million activities that are outside the home. I am not spending a lot of my time in the vehicle driving from one place to another. We truly spend our time here at home. The kids might be outside playing with the neighborhood kids or they are playing inside with each other. Or they are relaxing watching a movie or a favorite cartoon. The point is, we love being home.



I love to get ready for the different seasons in our home. There are pumpkins here and there. Little fall leaves grace shelves. Fall scents fill our home with our Scentsy wax warmer. Since I've gotten our warmer, I have been in total love with it!



I have been rereading some of my favorite homemaking books also. Right now I am reading Home Comforts The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson. I would like to leave you with some of the wisdom that pours from this book.

Making a home attractive helps you feel at home, but not nearly so much as most of us seem to think, if you gauge by the amounts of money we spend on home furnishings. And going in for the nostalgic pastimes- canning, potting, sewing, making Christmas wreaths, painting china, decorating cookies- will not work either. I count myself among those who find these things fun to do, but I know from experience that you cannot make a home by imitating the household chores and crafts of a past era. Ironically, people are led into the error of playing house instead of keeping house by genuine desire for a home and its comforts. Nostalgia means, literally, "home-sickness".
What really does work to increase the feeling of having a home and its comforts is housekeeping. Housekeeping creates cleanliness, order, regularity, beauty, the conditions for health and safety, and a good place to do and feel all the things you wish and need to do and feel in your home. Whether you live alone or with a spouse, parents, and ten children, it is your housekeeping that makes your home alive, that turns it into a small society in its own right, a vital place with its own ways and rhythms, the place where you can be more yourself than you can be anywhere else.

You can enjoy keeping house. No one is too superior or intelligent to care for hearth and home.

Each of its regular routines brings satisfaction when it is completed. You get satisfaction not only from the sense of order, cleanliness, freshness, peace and plenty restored, but from the knowledge that you yourself and those you care about are going to enjoy these benefits.