Do your housekeeping responsibilities overwhelm you? Are you longing for a more simple way to keep house? Here are 3 things that transformed me into a more productive Christian housewife!

Getting things done around the house can be quite a chore. There is a lot to do and a lot to be mindful of when it comes to being a housewife. Throw a few children into the mix and productivity gets even more tricky.

If you are feeling constantly overwhelmed with homemaking, I want to encourage you that we aren’t meant to live in survival mode even as mothers of small children who are constantly needy. As christians, we are called to an abundant life. Christ came that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly and through his divine power we are given all things that pertain to life and godliness. We are called to flourish, not merely survive through every day. But how does this calling as christians and our responsibility to be productive meet and form our reality?

One of the lies homemakers believe is that being more productive is always about getting into a better routine. We tell ourselves we just need a better routine when in reality maybe all we need is to shift our perspective on how we go about doing our responsibilities. Oftentimes, it’s not the tasks or the order that we do them in that needs to change. Perhaps we simply need to do more of acknowledging Christ in all our ways whether it’s housekeeping, parenting, or any of our other responsibilities. We will always have laundry to do, dishes to wash, chaos to order, floors to sleep, beds to make, and hungry bellies to feed. 

How we choose to go about it can make all the difference and help us be more productive housewives. Here are 3 thoughts that have transformed my housekeeping. These are the things I go to every day that set a strong foundation for me to be a more productive Christian housewife.

Surrender

Do you ever wonder if trying to keep routines when they simply aren’t working is actually our feeble attempt to be in control? Perhaps we were meant to surrender to someone greater who is more capable of directing things, who sees it all, and knows it all. 

Maybe we were meant to trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not unto our own understanding even when it means letting go of something we have worked hard to get into place. Routines aren’t bad. They are actually very helpful tools, but I have begun to wonder if we take them too far and we cross over the line into wanting to control everything.

We aren’t designed to be in control of everything. We aren’t capable of doing that well especially in seasons where there is much chaos (aka mothering small children). No matter how hard we try to keep it all together and do everything in the perfect order just like we planned, we still live in a fallen world and we have to accept that.

When we are raising small children who have sin bound in their hearts who love mischief and are extremely curious, our days can’t be ordered perfectly with a routine. It just doesn’t work. No routine will take into account the unexpected messes or snuggle parties on the couch or teething fevers that require cuddles all day long. Such things disrupt well laid out plans. If we rely too much on our structure, we won’t be very productive at all and it’s then so much easier to be irritable and unloving. Thoughtless words tend to fly in these moments when we feel interrupted again or simply wish we could just get our housework done. We struggle to see our children as blessings and have a hard time serving them because we feel bound to our routines.

Not to mention, when we then spiral into these unhealthy thought patterns, it’s that much harder to do our responsibilities because we now have to stop and figure out how to drag ourselves out of the hole we crawled into. And it all started with our desire to be in control…

It seems almost paradoxical to stop carrying out the structure and simply surrender, but there is great freedom in it. We don’t know what each day will hold and we cannot bind it to our will. I’m learning that if I want to be more Christ-like in my homemaking then I must set aside my plans for each day and accept what actually is in store cheerfully and contentedly even if that means pivoting during every task multiple times. 

If you surrender the control of your day and go about doing the necessary as it comes up, you may just find that you are a much more cheerful homemaker that actually gets stuff done. I still think it’s helpful to make a loose plan at some point in order to order your thoughts and get a few things out of your head, but it is always extremely unhelpful for me when I try to rigidly stick to it. It’s not going to pan out like I want it to. Daily planning is not so that I have a plan to stick to, but rather a way to organize my thoughts out on paper. 

Along with surrendering routines, I have found it very helpful to periodically stop and briefly pray in order to re-surrender my spirit. While it’s apparent to surrender when moments of reconciliation with our loved ones are necessary, it’s also a good preventative measure. It makes sense to surrender once we have done wrong, but I often wonder if we surrender often before things happen, who knows how much unhelpful mindsets and nasty spirits we can avoid?! It is good to temper our spirit beforehand so that we can be used in a greater way by Christ in those chaotic moments when we must teach our children to temper their own.

God knows all things, and if it is your desire to cultivate a Christ-centered home, then he must rule and reign even over our housekeeping.

Meditate

To meditate means to contemplate something or reflect on something. I like to think of it as rehashing or thinking of something over and over again. What is it that you rehash or bring to your mind repeatedly as you go about your day? 

I used to struggle with my thought life because I didn’t understand the foundational principle that we direct our emotions. We are not subject to our emotions, but rulers over them. God designed us with the principle of mind over matter. Our minds control our emotions and not the other way around. When our emotions get away from us, we feel like we are at their mercy which causes all sorts of confusion. But we do not have to be subject to them and spiral down into unhealthy places. Our minds are in control of our emotions and meditating is one way that we can pull ourselves out of spiraling.

Whether you realize it or not, you meditate all day long. You bring things back up to think over again and again. Maybe it’s “What’s for dinner?” or “I can’t seem to get the housework done.” Maybe you have a positive thought or you think about something that stuck out to you during the few moments of quiet time you got with the Lord that morning. Either way whether the thoughts are positive or negative, they are all meditations. They are all things we bring to mind and reflect on.

When thoughts come to us whether it’s about dinner or anything else under the sun good or bad, we decide whether we are going to accept it because it is good and helpful or if we are going to reject it because it isn’t a helpful thought because it is bad or simply because it isn’t time to be thinking about it like what’s for dinner. 

When our thought lives are a mess, we feel subject to every thought that comes our way good or bad. This is why we have good days and bad days and it feels like we can’t control which one we are going to have. Although we meditate whether we realize it or not, intentional moments of meditation on that which is good and beautiful and true can help orient our thoughts in the right direction and help us rise above the pull of our emotions. This helps us have good days consistently no matter our situation.

Scripture is my favorite thing to meditate on. As a busy mom of little children who doesn’t get very much quiet time, it is wonderful to take a verse or even just a part of one with me throughout the day. It’s easy to remember a phrase or just a word or two that speaks life into my soul. I like to have 3-5 times a day for 5 minutes where I stop what I am doing and step away from everything that is going on around me even if it’s just mentally and reflect on that verse or phrase from scripture. I repeat it over and over again in order to memorize it and let it sink deep within me and become a stronghold in my life. 

Sometimes I realize I haven’t meditated yet that day so I will step away in order to reorient my thoughts. Sometimes I step away because I realize that my spirit needs tempering so I step away and work on my verse in order to surrender my spirit back into Christ’s control. 

Sometimes I’m doing the dishes or some other random task and I realize my thoughts are spiraling down slippery slopes into negativity so I just start working on my verse for a few minutes and it brings my thoughts back to a better place.

Meditation helps me be a productive housewife because when my thoughts have gone awry it is almost impossible to do my work. I feel incapable of doing my work because I’m letting my emotions rule instead of my mind. Meditation helps me detach my thoughts from the task so that I can accomplish things and with a cheerful or at least decent attitude. It keeps me from being lazy because I just don’t feel like doing tasks.

Submit

I have put off asking my husband what he wants me to do to keep house because I legitimately was overwhelmed at the thought that he would have super high expectations and that they wouldn’t fit into how I wanted to keep house. 

When I finally did ask him out of curiosity more than anything, it hit me that it didn’t matter what he said. As a Christian wife, I am called to submit to my husband and keeping house according to his preferences is one way that I can practice that. 

I wrote down what he said and began reordering my priorities to his preferences and tried to stick to them as much as possible, letting them be my standard for my housekeeping. Heaven knows I had an unattainable standard for myself of getting literally everything done anyways. My standard was not attainable in any way and come to find out, what my husband asked of me was so much less overwhelming of a standard to strive for.

This doesn’t mean that I immediately was able to get everything done that I should, but it gave me a much better idea of what should be done on a weekly basis in order to keep our house in order and running a little more smoothly. 

Another thing is that it wasn’t that the things he mentioned weren’t part of my tasks, they just weren’t the priorities.  

At first, it did feel very overwhelming because I didn’t know exactly what he had in mind so I asked for more clarification. Believe it or not, I actually got to lower some of my expectations for certain tasks because it didn’t matter to him. 

Talk about freedom! In one sense submitting to my husband in some areas was actually freeing. It was good and I’m so grateful for that.

In other areas, I really did have to raise my standard of what I need to strive for and work a little more at it, but that’s okay. We need something that stretches us or else we will never grow. As housekeepers, we need to be stretched in order to grow our capacity and how well and cheerfully we can work.

It’s very easy to dread submission because the idea of it feels oppressive, but I fully believe that it is for our good. It is freeing to live according to someone else’s standard and also much simpler. It’s so easy to keep putting higher and higher expectations on ourselves or lower our standards because we just don’t feel like doing it. But when our husbands have set the bar and we choose to submit to it whether we have to lower our expectations or rise to meet it, there is less confusion. The bar is set and that’s what needs to be done. Plus, it gives us accountability.

Final Thoughts!

Choosing to become a more Christ-like homemaker doesn’t necessarily make things easier. Most of the time, it means re-ordering our priorities which takes work, but when we let go and take up Christ’s yoke upon us, we can actually be more productive. We’ll have more clarity and can actually do things better. We have to work either way so why not do it in the most life-giving wholesome way possible?!

It doesn’t necessarily lessen the amount of work we need to do. Sometimes it adds responsibilities, but choosing to center our hearts around Christ orders our minds which controls the rest of us and in the end enables us to be more productive than we were.

It used to a be harder struggle getting things done because I didn’t want to let go of my plan for the day. I didn’t realize how often I simply just needed to reorient my thoughts towards Christ and how much negativity was impacting my productivity simply because my thoughts weren’t in the right place. I didn’t realize how much of a burden I was creating out of my housework because I was too afraid to even ask my husband what his expectations were. I literally made more work for myself than was necessary.

These thoughts of surrendering, meditating, and submitting have seriously transformed the way I keep house and it is my hope that they also inspire and encourage you towards a more productive Christ-centered way of keeping house.

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