How To Manage Your House Well

Who says working inside the home isn’t a full-time job? My own personal example is non-other than my mom. She runs her home like a well-oiled machine from teacher, chauffeur, chef, and everything in between.

From dinner being on the table at a reasonable time to scheduling the calendar months in advance, my mom showed me how to manage a house well.

Men manage the household in their own ways based on their God-given roles. He provides, leads the family towards wise financial decisions, and teaches his wife and children the Word of God (among many other things) (1 Timothy 3:4-5). However, anything and everything else falls into the woman’s domain. From noticing that your husband’s toothpaste is running low to monitoring the plans you had set 2 months ago — we are the caretakers.

As a woman, specifically wives, we should be taking daily inventory of the needs of our home and family. We have a mental (or physical) checklist of what needs to get done and what priority each of them ranks.

Being a manager is more than a housekeeper. While scrubbing toilets and doing the dishes are a part of household maintenance, there’s also emotional, physical, and spiritual management.

As wives and mothers, it’s our job to foresee issues that might arise and mitigate them before they come up. You take notice of what’s available in your pantry to eat and plan to restock if it’s low. You’re attentive to what your husband and children are wearing. If it doesn’t serve them well (i.e., rips, stains, threadbareness), you provide them with better-suited options (1 Timothy 5:8).

All of those are perfect examples of the physical needs we manage. But going further, we also should address the emotional needs of our family. The next time your husband comes home from work, note how he feels. Be attentive to his needs in those moments, and be a place for him to find rest. (See last week’s blog about making your house a home https://www.julietteclairemarie.com/post/are-you-making-your-house-a-home). It may be asking him specific questions about his day. Or giving him time to rest and recharge before talking to him extensively about the day (Romans 12:15).

However, women generally go into observation mode when someone walks through their door. Predicting how we can best serve them and picking up on unspoken details. Whether it’s family or friends, a proper manager wants the emotional needs of those in her house to be noticed and met.

The theme of management is predicting issues that might arise and catching them before it becomes an issue. The spiritual well-being of our homes is no different. Because of our unity and oneness with our husbands, we know his needs better than anyone else. Petitioning, praying, and surrendering our spouses to the Lord are all a part of the “upkeep.” We are committing ourselves that not one area of our home will go unnoticed.

Spiritual management many times looks like prayer. But it also can be quoting scripture, singing praises, and asking the Lord to cover you, your husband, and your family in his daily grace (Colossians 4:2).

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I’m sure you (I included) often get frustrated at our husbands because he’s not near as attentive as we are.

“Why doesn’t he notice that the trash needs to be taken out? If I never did the dishes, there would be a tower the size of the Burj Khalifa!” And so on we go.

His “lack of attentiveness” is because men and women are different. We have different mindsets, brain wiring, and innate drives because of the roles God has given us. Women are far more detail-oriented, while men tend to be big-picture people (of course, there are exceptions). Men focus on their corporate jobs, financially supporting their families, and their job’s impact on the world. He’s not inattentive but merely attentive to things we simply are not.

But when things around the house get overwhelming —ask for help. There’s no shame in recruiting your spouse to help. But my advice is don’t expect them to jump in without being told. It’s not in their DNA like it is for us. What we focus on is typically not what they focus on.

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And as for my single friends reading this post, I encourage you to manage your home. Having a home doesn’t come with marriage. It can look like your single-bedroom apartment or house rented out by 3 other girls.

Practice foreseeing the needs of yourself and those around you. Push yourself to plan out your meals, organize that forgotten junk drawer, and not only make but stick with a plan put on your calendar months ago.

Overall, the goal with management is to keep your house from running you. Without planning, managing, and maintaining, our world can get out of hand and overwhelming.

If we don’t note that the milk is low, we can’t have cereal for breakfast.

But as the wise Elizabeth Elliot once said, “Do the next thing.” Managing a home is not always easy. The last thing you want to do is go to the store in the pouring rain. But you do it because you are serving your family and ultimately serving Christ through your actions.

Women, assess the heartbeat of your home. Do things run like a well-oiled machine, or is your home running you ragged? If you feel like the latter, then take small steps. Make a list and push yourself to get one or two things done each day. I believe that you’ll see that a house maintained will bring joy to you and those within your home.