Instagram is not good for our homeschools. It’s not good for our homemaking, either, or our mental and emotional health as women. Instagram works as a comparison machine. An image from someone else’s life pops in front of our eyes and our minds are instant evaluators, analyzers. That’s what our mind does. When presented with…
In my part of the world, it’s still cold, gray February. Spring feels very far away. I know that when the sun comes out, I’ll want to overhaul the whole house and scrub it down…and I’ll be tempted to skip school in order to do so. Maybe it’s spring in your neck of the woods…
When I was a young mom and homemaker, I read blogs and books on keeping house better. I didn’t love housework, but I did want to do a good job. I wanted to be a good housewife, a good homemaker. I would try to do the cleaning routines promoted by bloggers. I copied lists and…
When I was young, to suggest that there was such a thing as women’s work was considered backward, oppressive, and dumb. Now the noise-makers of the culture have moved on to trying to say that you can’t even say what a woman is with certainty, much less women’s work. So can we abandon their skepticism…
We all have so much to do that it’s hard to stay focused. In addition to hefty to-do lists, there are the million-and-one things vying for our attention and trying to get in front of our face. Distraction builds on distraction. It can be a hard mode to shift out of. Ashley didn’t realize how…
Sometimes when you homeschool tweens – the turbulent early puberty years – you need to know you’re not the only one wondering what happened to your sweet child. Trust me, you’re not the only one. I remember one totally typical homeschool day when the 9-year-old came up the stairs to find me. As she entered…
Many moms struggle with perfectionism, often without even realizing that’s the problem keeping them stuck and sad. Bethany Barendregt tells us in this interview how to notice and get out of a perfectionist sinkhole. Bethany Barendregt is wife to Alex and mama to their five kids ages 6-14. She works from home as founder/creative director…
Is society falling apart around us? It’s easy to make the case that it is. The social decay downstream from the moral decay is evident. Perhaps it makes you want to hunker down and hide in your home. That might not be a bad tactic, because women are the backbone of society, and home is…
I bet I’m not the only one who has stood in the middle of the house, staring. Everywhere I looked, there was a task screaming for my attention. Every room needed to be decluttered, cleaned, and organized. It felt like there wasn’t a single thing that was the way it was supposed to be. The…
Many people struggle to get started, to stay on task, and to get things done without taking all day. But that struggle is amplified when you have ADHD. Moms with ADHD have an extra difficult time. There’s always an unending litany of things to do as moms, and we can’t even keep track of them…