Being a Happy Homemaker in a House You Don’t Love

Two and a half years ago we moved sold our house of twelve years, the one I thought we’d be in for at least another ten, if not twenty or thirty years. We moved across state lines, from Washington to Idaho, like many did post-2020.

We purchased land before we moved, had house plans in development, and moved into a small but decent duplex rental. This duplex is half the size of the house we sold, but the house we’re building will be three times the size of this duplex – so we have to live minimally for a season, with much packed in storage for some undisclosed future date.

Living in a rental house

In this small college town, a three-bedroom two-bath rental in good condition is not common, so we are very blessed to have been able to land here. When we signed our first lease, we thought we’d be in for maybe a year, but we hoped less. However, when our blueprints were done, the supply chain mess was at its peak. Lumber was astronomical and labor was both scarce and expensive.

So here we are now, two-years-and-counting in this make-do rental. I could make a long laundry list of the things \<strike>I’d\</strike> my husband would be fixing and improving if it were our property, but it is not our property.

Instead, I will say in the house’s favor: it has a smart layout that makes good use of the space, it has great closets, it has a generous backyard with an empty lot behind it, and there are definitely many worse rentals in town. I’m very grateful to have been given this spot to land temporarily between family homes.

I had a friend in a similar situation ask about how I managed my attitude and homemaking in a less-than-ideal home. Specifically, in a home that is much smaller and lower quality than what we moved from and also than what we plan to move to.

Cultivating gratitude and cheerfulness

It’s a good question because it is something that takes work. Gratitude, attitude management, and homemaking are priority good works we are called to as women, so they are worth the energy and effort – even when (especially when) they are hard.

In a world where we see idealized photos of white-and-beige kitchens wherever we turn, how do we then step into our 30-year-old, not-updated, cramped kitchen and remain content? It’s a question worth asking – and answering.

I am truly grateful for this time in temporary housing at a phase of life where it’s easy to feel like we’re entitled only to upgrades. We’re past the season where we rough it to gain equity, aren’t we?

Is there really a season where we judge how we’re doing by how nice our house is?

I love talking about both homemaking and education because both are lifelong pursuits. It’s good to not get to a point where there’s no challenge.

No status symbols or achievements

The error I made as a young mom was to think that I could put in time and effort upfront and then coast, having attained my goal within a year or two and thus earning a lifetime of “simple living” made easy. After some years in that frustrating error, I get to spend the rest of my life repenting of that thinking and walking in truth: If you’re not being challenged to grow, you are dead.

Living cheerfully in an unappealing yet completely serviceable spot is my current challenge, which I embrace gratefully. After all, it’s really not that big of a deal in the scheme of things.

After all, 3 or 4 or even 5 years is not as long as time as I thought it was when I was 20. It’s a blink. Of course, I would have made different packing choices if I had known we’d be here for more than a year, but I didn’t know. So here we are, and it’s just stuff. Because it’s a blink, though, I should share what I’ve learned before I forget this season.

Homemaking is hospitality

First, homemaking is about hospitality. Hospitality, in turn, is about being welcoming, serving people’s human needs. Hospitality is not about decor, flower arrangements, or color schemes. We squeeze our big table into the dining room and put people around it. It’s not the most comfortable and it’s not impressive, but hospitality is about making connections, not showing off.

If we waited until our life and home are optimal to have people over, or even to enjoy family conversation around the table, it would never happen. Optimal is not at all necessary. Whatever you have, wherever you are, there are likely opportunities to share it graciously and cheerfully – that’s hospitality.

Don’t let Instagram photos create unreasonable expectations for what place settings must be, for what a menu must be, or what your space must be. In a world where family meals are rare at all, inviting people in to sit around a table (or in the living room) and eat everyday food together is potent culture-making – no tablecloth required.

Homemaking is household management

Second, homemaking is not about making your home a trophy. If you google homemaking you don’t usually get household management advice. You get decorating advice. It appears we all imagine that homes actually run themselves and all we have to do as homemakers is make them smell like sourdough bread and linen curtains.

But making a home is mostly executive work, not crafting. Domestic arts are great, and it’s wonderful that many are rediscovering lost techniques and crafts, but they don’t define homemaking. By the state of blogs, YouTube, and Instagram these days, you’d think you’re not a homemaker at all if you aren’t also a homesteader producing all your own foods.

The Proverbs 31 woman gives us a well-rounded picture of a homemaker. She’s not a drudge – she’s a lady and an executive, managing servants and property. She’s productive in what she sets her hand to, and also her family has more than what she herself can make. Her family is part of the community, and she is cheerfully active.

We are told nothing of her home’s aesthetic, although she does care about beauty and quality. Her efforts all work toward maximally stewarding time and property. She’s not spending all her time and money making and being mere decor.

So although a season will come where I will be called to decorate, I am currently in a season where I am called to live with bare white walls, cramped furniture arrangements, and not much counter space. It’s not my property, so my job isn’t to improve it but rather to use it wisely and well while we are here.

Fill a home with people, fill a table with food, and fill a space with smiles and laughter, and no one minds the fact that the floor is stained vinyl, the kitchen is not worth looking at, or there are no curtains.

Wherever you go, there you are

Third, every home takes work. I remember as a kid, looking longingly at a particular rose pattern bedspread, thinking that it was because my bedroom wasn’t pretty that I couldn’t keep it clean. If my room was pretty, I thought, then I’d naturally keep it clean so that it would stay pretty.

My parents painted the bedroom, added a rose wallpaper border (Remember those?? Hello, my over-40 friends), and gave me a new bedspread and sheet set with matching roses.

I was over the moon. I also, it turns out, was the same person with the same habits and my pretty bedroom did not at all stay clean.

I have reminded myself of that personal cautionary tale many times throughout my life. There have been many times where I thought some version of “If only x, then I would y.” If only our kitchen was remodeled, then I’d keep it organized. If only we redid the flooring, I’d keep it mopped. If only….and then I catch myself and say, “What are you? Seven years old? Stop living in a daydream world.”

Good work now

Same here. It is so tempting to look around and think, “Well, this house can’t be organized or tidy or clean. Why bother. It will never look great, so why keep it up at all? I’ll just wait until we move into our custom home to be a totally different kind of person than I’m behaving like now.” No. Now is trial run for then. Now is practice time. Whatever I’m practicing now is what I’ll be more of then. My skills and abilities and habits are from myself, not from my surroundings and circumstances.

There’s nothing I can do to make this rental look like an Instagram home, but I don’t need to. There’s much I can do to make it useful for hospitality, for education, for conversation and reading, for family dinners, for personal hygiene – for all the things homes are supposed to facilitate.

With so many homemaking videos with soft music and new, neutral-toned homes, I thought I should make at least some vlog-style homemaking videos in our current unimpressive but very functional rental. Stay tuned.

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