"God has given to women the privilege and responsibility of being the manager of their home."
I don't know about you, but I find it difficult to keep an orderly home with a busy schedule, homeschooling, and some little people who seem to undo everything I get done.
My sister-in-law forwarded the following devotionals from Nancy Campbell. They were a blessing and challenge to me, so I'll share them here just in case you, as a wife/mother, could use some encouragement too.
If you have any tips and ideas you'd like to share on having a clean, organized & joyful home, feel free to pass them on!
ORDER IN THE HOME
"According to all that I show you, that is, the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all its furnishings, just so you shall make it" (Exodus 25:9, 40; Hebrews 8:5).
God has given to women the privilege and responsibility of being the manager of their home. We have as an important a task as the manager of any business. Just as a business can't run well without order, nor can a home. I don't know about you, but I can't run my home efficiently without some order. Here are a few of my thoughts.
O ORGANIZATION
One of my favorite sayings is, "Things don't just happen; you have to make them happen." We cannot make our home run efficiently unless we organize. This will be different in every home. Some women are high-powered organizers; others are laid back. Whatever our personality, we must have a certain amount of organization. The blatant fact is that if you just let life happen, chaos eventuates! You must plan your meals, make sure supper is ready in time for your husband coming home each evening, organize your cleaning and laundry, and of course, train your children to do their specific tasks. To organize a home does not mean that you are a slave in the home. You are the organizer, making it happen by getting everyone involved. (1 Timothy 5:14).
R ROUTINE
A routine keeps order in the home. In our home I expect everyone to be up in time for breakfast. We have our Family Devotions at 8.00 am. Anyone who has not finished their breakfast before this time misses out on breakfast. It is over. We can't keep meals going all day. We have to clean up and get on with the day. We have lunch at a certain time and supper at a certain time. I am aghast when I hear of mothers allowing their children, and especially their teens, to sleep in and get up whenever they want. This is poor training and does not prepare them for life. It does not prepare them for a career and how to get to work on time and does not prepare daughters for running a home. Children should learn to get up at a certain time. The day is for work and adventure, the night is for sleeping! (Proverbs 6:6-11; 13:4; 24:3-34; 26:14).
Of course, children need their sleep, but if they cannot get up in the morning they are obviously going to bed too late the night before. I am still old fashioned enough to believe in the old adage, "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."
However, in saying this, I don't believe in legality and rigidity either, and allow everyone to sleep in in the weekends. I don't enjoy sleeping in myself, but am happy to give everyone else that privilege. And also there are different seasons in life and things change when a new little baby comes into the home.
D DISCIPLINE
Order can only happen with discipline, firstly in our own lives and then teaching it to our children. We also must try to get to bed at a reasonable hour so we can get up early and be ready to face the day-to prepare breakfast, put in a load of laundry, organize schooling and each child to their various tasks.
One of my best disciplines in regard to cleaning is my weekly Preparation Day. Every Friday we clean the whole house from top to bottom. Cleaning once a week keeps the home in good shape. (Luke 23:54).
E ENCOURAGEMENT
Keeping a home running smoothly is easier said than done! Children lag behind. They disobey and complain. But they'll get tired of you nagging. Inspire and encourage your children instead. When you train your young children you may need to use some "carrots" to get them motivated. You will have your different ideas that work in your family. However, you may want to print up a schedule on the fridge. Each child who is up on time each morning gets a star. Each child who does their appointed task without complaining gets a star. The one who gets the most stars at the end of the week gets a prize-something worthwhile. This gives them incentive and encouragement to do what is right and to get into the habit of doing it.
R RESISTANCE
Resisting what? I'm talking about resisting the resistance that comes from your children and teens. They may want to keep sleeping. They will naturally be lazy. They will muddle around instead of doing their chores. Don't give in! Keep up your plan. Keep the order until it is a habit in the home. Training doesn't happen in a day. It takes time, but it will become a habit if you are consistent and don't give in! (Isaiah 28:9-10).
However, in the midst of keeping order, we must also have freedom; freedom to change our plans if something special is happening; to halt our schedule if someone needs help or arrives at our home and needs encouragement, or freedom to do something unexpected and different, just for the spice of life. Keeping a basic sense of order in the home gives freedom to do fun things. If your home is out of order, you will not have a springboard on which to jump off and do something different.
Love from NANCY CAMPBELL
PRAYER:
"I thank you, dear Father, that you are a God of order. Please teach me how to keep order in my home just as you have order in your heavenly home. Amen."
AFFIRMATION:
The beauty of my home is order!
ORDER IN THE HOME
Part 2
"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might" (Ecclesiastes 9:10).
I did not plan to write a sequel to this devotion. However, I received many replies to this subject, plus many questions regarding "how" to actually keep the home in order. One lady asked, "Can you please tell me what should be done daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally, yearly?" Another asked, "Could you include a list of what is accomplished when you clean the house from "top to bottom?" The answers to these questions would require a book, but I will share a few further thoughts with you.
MOMS WITH YOUNGER CHILDREN-DO THE BASICS
Firstly, it is important to remember that we have seasons in our lives. This is part of the ebb and flow of life. You may be in the season of little toddlers and babies. Maybe you have a newborn. When you are in this season, it is not easy to keep to the standard that you would like to normally keep in youir home. When you are in this season, the most important thing to remember is to do the basics. Make sure you provide three nutritious meals each day. Ask the Lord to give you ideas on how to do this as you care for your little ones at the same time. You may like to use the crock pot, putting in meat and veggies that can cook all day. That way, you will get through the fussy time with your baby (which is usually in the early evening, right at the time you are seeking to prepare supper) and you'll be sure to have an evening meal ready for your husband.
Keep up with laundry and make sure dishes are done. Don't worry if your house gets strewn with toys and so on throughout the day. But don't leave it like that. Have a "One, Two, Three, Let's Go" clean up before your husband arrives home. Even little children can be excited about putting everything away (or even throwing it out of sight into a cupboard) before daddy comes home.
Don't try and do a lot of extra things. I can remember when I was raising my little ones-three under 17 months at one time, and four under four years a little later. I longed to change the world and fulfill all the visions I dreamed of as I sat and nursed my baby. But I realized that these visions were for another time. I was doing the greatest work that I could do as I nursed my baby, cared for my children and kept the house in a basic standard of cleanliness. If you can nourish and train your little ones and keep the home in a basic order, you are DOING A GREAT JOB! You don't have to add one more thing to your list of what to do or the day.
When you sit down to nurse the baby, that's when it is easy to look around and notice dirty windows and marks on the walls. Turn a blind eye to them. Your windows will still be dirty in the years to come, but you won't have these precious little ones at this age. They are more important that sparkling windows and flawless walls!
However, start training your little ones when they are young. Train them to only eat at the table or at least in the kitchen or dining room only. I do not allow anyone in our home, young children (or even teens or adults, because they are an example to the younger ones) to eat in any other room in the house apart from the kitchen or dining area. This saves loads of cleaning. If you allow children to eat in the lounge, in their bedrooms or wherever they like, you create a lot more cleaning for yourself. It is slovenly, a bad habit for them to get into and a inefficient waste of your valuable cleaning time.
Don't bring any sugar or any foods with sugar or artificial colors into your home! Sugar is a poison and will make your children more hyper-active! This doesn't help the order of the home. This means, of course, that you must always read labels carefully as nearly every packaged and canned food you purchase has sugar and artificial colors in the ingredients. Train yourself to feed your children correctly.
Train your children to help with household chores, even if they can't do them to your standard. Young children can set the table, help cut vegetables, do dishes and sweep the floor etc. And they love to do it. By the time your young daughters are teens, they should know how to run the home.
I would also encourage you to cut corners-not corners of cleanliness, but unnecessary tasks. I remember when I first started homemaking nearly 50 years ago; I kept to the traditions of that time. Every week, without fail, I changed the bed sheets. We used to take the bottom sheet off the bed and put it in the laundry, put the top sheet on the bottom and a new sheet on the top! That was the norm back in those days. But now we have fitted sheets and it doesn't work that way. Plus, I don't believe that we need to change sheets every week. I have digressed from that tradition. If children bath or shower, you can keep sheets on the beds for two or three weeks at a time. That saves a lot of laundry, especially if you have a number of children.
What about ironing? I also started out ironing about twice a week. I even ironed pillow cases (I had friends who ironed their tea towels!). Help! How did I do that with four children under four and then six young children? I certainly don't do that now, even though my children have grown. I have better things to do. I try to purchase clothes that don't need ironing. I iron only what is absolutely necessary. I try to hang up clothes from the dryer immediately so they don't crumple. I will even throw a dress in the dryer to unwrinkle if it needs an iron!
Remember, you are responsible to keep your home clean and in order, but not to do unnecessary tasks. Make the use of this time to spend more time with your children, reading to them, teaching them and doing creative things with them. That will have far more impact than unnecessary household tasks.
MOMS WITH OLDER CHILDREN-YOU ARE ENTERING THE QUEEN STAGE
If you have trained your children when they are young, they will now know how to clean and run the home. In fact, everyone in the home should feel their responsibility to keep it clean and tidy. You are now entering the reward time of consistently and faithfully training your children.
However, I mentioned in my last devotion, that each Friday we do a full clean in our home. I include everyone in the home in this task. I have a list of each task that needs to be accomplished in each room and someone is appointed to each task or tasks. This is the day, when apart from vacuuming and dusting, we give the bathrooms and toilets a full clean, clean the marks off the carpet, walls and doors and clean the windows and mirrors, etc. I also try to clean out a fridge or one of the cupboards. I don't clean all cupboards in one day, but try to do one or two a week on each Preparation Day.
If you would like to read more about cleaning on The Preparation Day, go to:
One reader wrote in answer to last week's devotional, "I found it hard to do all my household duties in one day so I prayed about it and began to do one job a day which worked really well for me. By Friday, when I did the last job, which was changing the linen on the beds, it was not too big a task. Come Saturday all the tasks were completed which gave me a better weekend."
The best encourager is the Word of God. May you be blessed as you read the following Scriptures:
The blessings of diligence and hard work:
Genesis 2:15; Exodus 23:12; Psalm 110:3; Proverbs 20:13; 27:23; 28:19; 31:13, 27; Ecclesiastes 5:2; 1 Corinthians 10:31; Galatians 6:9-10; Colossians 3:17, 23 and Luke 16:10.
The destruction of slackness:
Proverbs 6:6-11; 10:4; 13:4; 14:23; 18:9; 19:15, 20:4; 23:21; 24:30-34; 26:14-15 and Ecclesiastes 10:18.
Love from NANCY CAMPBELL
PRAYER:
""Father, you are a God of order. Please teach me how to keep order in my home. Amen."
AFFIRMATION:
My first priority is my home, not activities outside my home!
ORDER IN THE HOME
Part 3
"Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power" (Psalm 110:3).
Here I am sending you Part 3 when I only intended to send one devotion on this subject. However, since sending out Part 2 last week I received a wonderful testimony from SHELSEA WEEMS, r_sweems@msn.com, and I have decided to pass it on to you, knowing that it will be an encouragement and blessing. There is nothing like a testimony to confirm truth, especially when Shelsea found the answers through adversity.
"I "had" to create order in our home several years ago. It was because I fell very ill. I had a new baby, a three year old and I was ill with Celiac Disease although unaware of it. It created disorder in my nervous system and brain. I passed out, was tired, cranky, and very hungry. I had infections, hair loss, skin bleeding and was very thin. I could not remember anything. I'd forget where I was going when I'd drive! My doctor told me I was going to go on I.V. nutrition once to twice a week in the hospital. I had nothing to offer my husband but a tired, haggard wife that fell asleep when I sat down.
The Lord put a burden for property on my husband. God also put a burden in my heart for more children. My husband said we could not do either. Even though this was happening, I knew God had a plan. God did not make me incapable. Even though I was ill, God created me to be my husband's helpmeet, the mother of my children, the women of Proverbs 31 and Titus 2.
I prayed that the Lord would help me to know what to do. Immediately, God put a thought in my mind. I felt I should organize each day of the week with several tasks. Sometimes I would have to rest four to six times in between a task. It took two to three days to vacuum the house, but I DID GET IT DONE.
Every day I completed one to two chores, all meals and straightened up the home before my husband returned from work. I did only two loads of laundry a day, each to be put up immediately and I chose to shop only two to four times a month.
I had to say No to outside activities in order to preserve peace and order in the home and Invited friends to my home instead.
Even in my condition, I organized the house! The Lord is faithful. We even listed and sold our home while I was still ill. The buyers said it was the cleanest house they'd seen! They did not even know we had a dog!
Three years later I am better. I still have to limit myself and be scheduled. But, now we have a five acre farm, two children (currently), farm animals, and a lovely home. God is good! He increased my ability and our family's surroundings. I even bucked hay bales with my husband last night.
I guess what I'm getting at is that sometimes our bodies change and our situations change, but God's design does not! We have to learn to change ourselves and our way of doing things, even with our limitations. But, we cannot change God's design because of our limitations."
2 Corinthians 12:9 says, "And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my
infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me."
All we have to do to get order in the home is to be WILLING, willing to listen to the Lord and His Word and obey it. Not just think about, but do it, as Shelsea sought to do, even in her weakness.
Love from NANCY CAMPBELL
PRAYER:
"Dear Father, please help me to be a willing worker. Help me to not only be a hearer, but a doer of your Word. Amen."
AFFIRMATION:
I can't sit here and dream all day; I've got things to do!
