See!...They didn't have it all together back then either!

Hello ladies. Let me ask you a question.

When you think of women of the “old days” how do you picture them? How do you picture their homes?

Do you think they have it all together? That only today’s “modern” women seem to not be able to balance their daily lives?

I struggled with this thinking for a long time. We look at our grandmothers…their homes always seemed cleaned (I wonder what their house looked like when they were in their twenties and thirties with small kids?! Must be easy to keep a clean home when the kids are grown!) Or what about a lot of the resources we have about women from back then? I remember reading a really old book from the early 1900s that was a home economics book that was taught to girls in school and I just thought how in the world do these women do all of that?

Then I came across an awesome book called “The New Housekeeping Efficiency Studies in Home Management.” This book was written in 1912 and is one of my favorite old reads.

So if you thought they always had it all together…read this excerpt

“A moderate income, two babies, and constant demands on my time, was the situation that faced me several years ago. I liked housework, and was especially fond of cooking; but the deadening point about the whole situation was that I never seemed to finish my work, never seemed to **get anywhere,** and that I almost never had any leisure time to myself.

“I wanted to read a bit, or write out some ideas I had been thinking about, or take a half hour for personal grooming. If I devoted my day to cooking, I was appalled later at the confusion and dirt I had neglected. If I specialized on cleaning, our meals were hurried and ill-prepared. If I tried to do justice to both cleaning and preparing of meals, I quite certainly neglected the babies and myself.”

Did you just read that??!!!! This woman had a hard time balancing all her tasks JUST LIKE US!!! And the fact that she wrote a book tells me that there was a NEED for it. That tells me that women back then struggled with the same problems JUST LIKE US!! Okay, yes, there was no facebook, no computer, no TV, no modern conveniences, nothing like that to steal our time. BUT (and that’s a really big BUT), every chore took forever; cooking was a lot more time consuming…so in the end our “time” was about the same. We just replaced all that time with other stuff. So we still have a hard time balancing it all.

Do you get it? WE’RE NORMAL!!! YOU’RE NORMAL!! Just because you may think that you don’t have it all together or you struggle with balancing all your daily tasks does not mean that there is something wrong with you! If a woman back then struggled with that, what makes you think that biblical women didn’t struggle with that? That was thousands of years ago…imagine what they did NOT have back then that even the 1900s women DID have.

So my message to you today is chill out…you’re fine! We’re all in this together, no one is keeping track of what you did or did not do…you shouldn’t do it to yourself. Yes, having a system or whatever you want to call it is great if it works for ya, but I think focusing our time on keeping a perfect house and having all our tasks perfectly attended to, is darn right unrealistic. So again…CHILL OUT! Lol!!

I hope this message encourages you and lifts you up today.

Lord, I lift up all my readers. Lord fill them with Your love today and show them that they are truly okay. We struggle so much with perfectionism Lord…help us realize that we will never be perfect…only You are perfect. Change our focus to be more mindful of You during our days, give us all peace amongst the chaos that is called homemaking. Help us to laugh at the normal stresses of being a mom (like how my son has fingerpainted and/or played with his poop every day for over a week straight now…God, can You help me with this please?!!!), wife and homemaker. Show each and every one of us what YOU want us to do with our lives…with our parenting, wifelihood (yes I made that up!), homemaking, and just being Your princess! Yes, Lord, we are still women…not just a mom or wife…but our own personal being. I pray You help us balance everything out, toss out what we don’t need and just help us know that we are normal…that we are okay…and that You love us no matter what! In Jesus name…Amen.

Linked to:
Call Me Blessed
Time Warp Wife
Far Above Rubies
Growing Home Blog
A Wise Woman Builds her Home
Woman Living Well
Deep Roots at Home
Raising Homemakers
Flubberbusters and God