Homemaking Resources

Looking for an activities for your daughter this summer? Laurie at Future Christian Homemakers is giving free downloads of her Future Christian Homemaker's handbook. It includes detailed instructions on teaching girls homemaking skills, mostly cooking, but a few thoughts on cleaning and sewing as well. I know of one mom who is organizing her menus this summer around the skills and recipes she wants her daughter to learn. It was written for use with girls ages 8-15 but could be adapted for younger girls. You may be able to learn something yourself! Do you know the difference between baking powder and baking soda? Me, neither! And you could certainly use it with sons as well! I'm certainly glad that my husband is able to find his way around the kitchen! You can read the handbook online or print off the pages. Did I mention it was free?!

Do any of you have suggestions on a good children's cookbook? I remember loving the one the one we had when I was a girl and would like to get one sometime for my daughter.

If you are looking for a homemaking course for yourself, try reading Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson. I recently received this book through Paperback Swap and am thoroughly enjoying it! This huge book (over 800 pages! No, I've not finished reading it!) is not a book on decorating or organization but on "the art and science of keeping house." Obviously she doesn't leave a stone unturned in the subject and more amazingly, she has succeeded in making the subject interesting! I appreciate her goal of instilling meaning into housekeeping. Her desire is not just to tell the what and hows of doing housework or to describe how to get the drudgery of housework done faster but to give training so that we can enjoy making a comfortable home.

Here is a few quotes from the introduction.

"Our homes are the center of our lives, and we should allow time and resources to make the most of them that we can, and to care for them in a way that consolidates and elaborates their meaning for each of us. At a minimum, we should avoid thinking that time spent on our homes is wasted time, or that our goal should always be to reduce the time and effort we spend on them."

"Because it is true that whoever loves the end also loves the means, all of us who really do enjoy living in a well-kept home can come to enjoy the rituals of its care. The act of taking care of our homes brings comfort and consolation both in the enjoyment of the fruits of our labor and in the increasingly rare freedom to engage in worthwhile, unalienated, honorable work."

Mrs. Mendelson is a New York City lawyer and does not write from a Christian perspective or from maybe even our rural outlook but she has written a book that I can recommend to any homemaker!