Before becoming a momma, I thought I had the art and science of making and maintaining a home down pat.
I’m a speed cleaner and love to cook–so how much would my homemaking really change with the arrival of our baby?
While I smile now at the blissful ignorance of my pre-mom days, I know now that my expectations around homemaking as a new mom-to-be were wrong, wrong, wrong.
Expect an expectations adjustment
Everything is harder when your life is suddenly consumed with nap schedules, nursing schedules, diaper changes, and sleep deprivation on top of it all.
Add in other potential demands like work, or a landslide of new expenses, and it can feel like a tidal wave of new demands are sweeping you out to sea.
The making of a mom
You may very well be soaking up all the magical newborn moments but that still doesn’t change the fact that you’re likely tired (and overwhelmed).
In this new chapter of life, it’s important to recognize there will be a lot of things you expected of yourself, and others, that may not pan out to plan.
In fact, I’m pretty confident in saying they probably won’t pan out perfectly for you.
The making of a home
If you’re used to baking bread, making all your meals from scratch, and responding to text messages from family and friends in a timely manner, you might suddenly be surprised to see how unimportant all of that seems once you’re sleep deprived and focused on feeding your baby.
It was actually after having my daughter that I ditched my sourdough starter (ie: let it meet its acetone fate) and switched to using active dry yeast, because it was just a better fit for my lifestyle at that moment.
Now that my daughter is one, I have decided to make a new sourdough starter again.
In short, expect for your expectations for your house and home to undergo a significant transformation.
You and your family are undergoing a transformation, so your home and homemaking routines will need to accommodate that change as well.
Ask yourself: what kind of mom and homemaker do I want to be?
I firmly believe I shouldn’t take a single day for granted and that means trying to enjoy every moment as much as I can.
For me, my answer to this question is built around gratitude. I want to be grateful for every stage of motherhood and for my home (imperfections and all).
What guides your vision of motherhood and homemaking?
- I decided I didn’t want to have a perfect looking house if it meant being stressed out all the time. I would accept “good enough”.
- While I love home decor and design, I wanted to be cautious and careful with what we spent
- When it came to our family calendar, I didn’t want to schedule my baby for so many library story-times and swim lessons that she (or I) would be inundated with social commitments
Having a slower paced lifestyle, that is focused on being present and being grateful, was the approach I knew I wanted to take.
What is meaningful to you when it comes to motherhood and homemaking?
We will all have a different definition.
Write out a list of values that are important to you when it comes to your motherhood journey and your home.
Gentleness? Patience? Gratitude? Humility? Cleanliness? Organization? Humor?
Is bringing beauty into your home important?
Listing out your values will help paint the picture for your personal vision of motherhood and homemaking. The more personal you can make it, the better.
Adapt your house & home goals to your motherhood goals
When you have a baby, you don’t add a baby to your current, pre-baby lifestyle.
Instead, when you have a baby, your world becomes that baby and you have to figure out how to add everything else back in.
Spoiler alert–you won’t be able to add it all back in. There are people, places, and routines that will just have to wait while you focus on this season of life.
Take some time to think about what you ideally want your everyday routine to look like now that you are balancing both homemaking and motherhood.
For me, I decided that it was important to find new shortcuts around the house that saved time but didn’t compromise our family’s nutrition, finances, or fun.
(I became obsessed with learning “one-pot” meals that minimized the amount of mess needed to make a recipe. And I suddenly understood why moms are all so obsessed with their crockpots and Instant Pots…)
Everything changes
In short, a baby will not accommodate your current lifestyle habits and routine. Instead, you will accommodate your baby and then need to re-engineer what homemaking looks like around being a mom.
If you are used to your home being perfectly clean, and never having a dirty dish in the sink, you might find your cleanliness standards shift.
If you’re used to skipping meals when you’re busy during the day, this simply doesn’t fly once you have a baby, toddler, or kids. Once your baby is eating solids, you have to have a plan for three meals a day every single day.
Simply staying on top of chores and meals is a huge achievement on its own. Being able to have the luxury of extra time and resources to worry about home projects is just that–a luxury.
I know keeping everyone happy, healthy, clean and well-fed is an important goal of mine. Therefore, I had to dramatically decrease my expectations for how quickly house and home projects would be completed, because my motherhood goals came first.
Master your 3Ps: planning, preparation, and patience
Spontaneity kind of went out the window for me once my daughter arrived. I quickly realized how unlikely things were to happen if I didn’t first have a plan in place.
The plan
Whether it’s going to the park or making dinner, you need to consider how you are going to get from point A to point B before you even start.
The plan is all about knowing how you are going to get something done, what you need to get that done, and what else needs to get done first. For example, I know that in order to leave the house for library storytime, I need to have our lunch and water bottle packed first.
Preparation
Preparing is about taking action in advance. Preparation is your way of responding to your plan for the day. You’re anticipating what your home and family will need and taking the necessary steps.
If our family is going on an all-day outdoor adventure (we love to go to the mountain), then I pack up everything the night before.
Patience
Despite your best planning and preparation efforts, everything can still fall apart. It might be a lot, or just a little bit, but your plan won’t unfold exactly as you hoped for and this is where patience comes in.
I realized that when it came to my daughter’s nap time schedule, it was crucial that I didn’t plan anything during that time. Part of patience is managing our expectations, too, and I found it was better to have zero expectations for what I could get done around the house during that time.
As a new mom, it can be a challenge to cope with the diminished free time that you have but building up how much you can get done during nap times can set you up to be disappointed if your baby just has a butterfly nap or is a light sleeper.
Embrace this new season of life—and know that the seasons will change
How I homemake in 2024 looks different than it did in 2023.
Now that my daughter is old enough to help, I take longer to make dinner because I involve her in the process. Same thing with cleaning.
This is what she needs and that means I often get less done during the day now that she’s one versus when she was one-month old.
Each season comes with trade-offs. As our children get older, there are continual trade-offs. They learn something new (crawling, walking, talking, etc.) and then suddenly they have a little more independence and so do we.
But then there are new challenges that come with that your baby is now a toddler and on the move!
It’s a constant give and take. A push and a pull. Accepting each season of life and its unique challenges and benefits will make us more present as they’re happening.
As my sister in law continually reminds me, “the days are long but the years are short”.
There is a season for each stage of motherhood and our homes will reflect each season.
But our babies don’t stay babies for long–and so it’s important to soak up the magic of each moment while we have it.
Appreciate motherhood and homemaking as ministry
It’s easy to get lost in the whirlwind of laundry, diaper changes, nursing, and nap schedules–and to just be going through the motions.
But motherhood and homemaking are defined by acts of service. It’s a transformation from just worrying about you, and your individual wants, to that of your entire family.
It’s a ministry and should not be undervalued by you (even if our culture does).
Remember: the days are long but the years are short.
-my very wise sister-in-law
Like rocks transforming into diamonds, marriage and motherhood can end up transforming us from the ordinary to the extraordinary.
It can soften our hearts and break us wide open to experience life a-new.
In the end, it’s not about whether your kitchen is “Instagrammable” but about the food and memories you make in that kitchen with your family.
Motherhood reminds us that there is magic in each moment and to never underestimate the life-shaping significance of those small moments.
Remember: the days are long but the years are short.
