Home Management as a Job

I have been thinking today as I go about my daily tasks and to-do list, that managing a home is a job. But it really is so much more. If I have a "job" that I find to demanding I can quit. But I cannot quit motherhood or homemaking. It is my calling. Over the years I have read many books for the homemaker that offer guidance to managing your home. Several suggest that to be successful, you need to manage your household as if it were your "job".

What they mean is you need to get up at a certain time, get dressed, and have an agenda to follow. I agree that you shouldn't treat being a homemaker as a full-time vacation, it is not and your family would fall apart from neglect. But on the other hand you can't really run it as a "job" either. I have a rough schedule that we naturally fall into (actually two, if life interferes with one we just naturally go to the other), but life does interrupt it repeatedly. There are sibling squabbles, babies to toilet train or change, special moments that you just have to stop and be WITH your children. These things you really can't schedule. This is not my "job", this is my life.

If you tend towards wanting to 'do it right' then reading these books can be a real discouragement when you are trying to schedule every aspect of life, and find it doesn't work out the way you planned. I tend to be one that wants to follow the boxes on my planner. But when life hasn't gone the way I planned I tend to get discouraged and do nothing. I bought MOTH and gleaned a lot of good stuff from it, but I have learned that for me I cannot put times to every task, it just doesn't work. This does not make me an under achiever or failure, it just makes me who I am. I AM trying to become better scheduled and organized, but I feel it is so very important to let go of the guilt that comes with trying to run my family professionally. I am still working on this area, and will always be because of who I am, but I just don't want to live in guilt anymore.

After saying all of that, I do think we should:

Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:12

But it is a calling, not a job. And it is filled with love and joy, heartbreak and bittersweet moments. Not many "jobs" can offer that.