The Deep Work of Homemaking

On acknowledging the difference between house work and heart work

It was a Thursday night in early February, and I was tired. I’d woken at 4:30 a.m., as usual, to pray and to squeeze in a couple hours of writing before my three little ones woke. After showering, I said goodbye to my husband as he left for school, made eggs for the kids, then let them watch “Max and Ruby” while I cleaned the kitchen. The next three hours were a blur of reading books, changing diapers, stopping fights, and picking up MagnaTiles all the while. When 12:00 arrived, lunch was served, the little ones went down for naps, and my friend’s daughter arrived to play with Toby so I could get more work done.

I then headed up to the attic, where I wrestled words into shape, until I needed to descend back downstairs three hours later. The babies had just woken up from their naps and the blur began again: changing diapers, fixing snacks, settling fights, trying and failing to tidy the house before my husband returned home. Then, once he did, more cooking, more cleaning, more wrestling, sneaking in answers to Instagram messages here and there, until finally it was 8:30 and all the children were tucked in bed.

Everyone was alive. Everyone was fed. The house was reasonably straight. And somehow I’d met my writing deadline for the day. But that was it. So much had gone undone. Laundry wasn’t put away. Too many toys were still in the tv room, waiting to be purged. No bread or granola had been baked. No closets had been organized. And even though it was February, a few stray Christmas items remained out and about, mocking me and my inability to get anything but the basics of housekeeping done.

That’s when I made the mistake of opening Instagram. First, there was the picture of sourdough bread. Then, the reel of some stranger’s perfectly organized basement. Followed by another reel of some woman twirling in a long linen dress. As I scrolled down, I passed more photos and videos—of daintily checked aprons and freshly folded towels and one gleaming, dish-free sink after another. Finally, one post stopped my scroll. It featured yet another gleaming sink and began “Dear Homemakers…”

“Lord, I hate that word,” I thought. Immediately, I stopped reading, surprised by my own thought. From where did this sudden animosity come? Why on earth would I react so strongly to a perfectly fine word like “homemaker”? That made no sense. I put the phone down and started to think.

Filtered Reality

I’m still thinking. I’ve spent the better part of the past month thinking about this word, which I don’t really hate, but with which I do struggle. The word itself is a lovely one, compounding coziness and comfort, love and creativity, warmth and generosity all into three little syllables. But, as I’ve come to realize, it’s also a loaded word, capable of eliciting pride and insecurity, guilt and longing, joy and sorrow, anxiety and scorn, sometimes all at the very same time, in the very same women. There’s so much bound up in that word—hopes, fears, prejudices, and, at least for me, a nagging sense of failure.

I don’t like to blame social media for problems in my heart, but the time I spend on Instagram has absolutely contributed to the effect the word “homemaker” has on me. My closest friends, mostly Gen X homeschooling moms, rarely use the word. If I see it, it’s usually in the posts and stories of Millennial moms I follow online. There, they share reflections on their work in the home; give advice on cooking, cleaning, and organizing; and offer glimpses of the life they lead. Those glimpses, more often than not, involve light-filled rooms, immaculately swept floors, and well-organized closets filled with curated collections of home goods. Before Instagram, I hadn’t even realized heirloom quality dust pans were a thing.

I appreciate much of the content shared in those posts and stories. The work of keeping a home and raising children is sacred work; it’s the most important work I do or ever could do. I also understand the desire to assert the dignity of the work, to share it and spotlight it and help people see the beauty of it. And I know that many—maybe most—of the women sharing these posts are learning as they go, having been wholly unprepared by our girl power culture for the day-to-day tasks of managing a household, not to mention the mental strain and isolation that can go hand in hand with raising small children. Online, they are looking for (and trying to offer) guidance and solidarity.

Nevertheless, for all my appreciation and understanding, something isn’t sitting right with me about their use of the word. Partly because it’s so often paired with images that don’t match up to my own life at home with children—a life with macaroni shells on the floor and sippy cups on the counter and cupboards with everything but heirloom quality dust pans spilling out of them.

I’ve also found myself questioning if the word even applies to me. Do the women who describe themselves as homemakers count me as one of them? Can I be a homemaker and also a writer? Can I be part of the homemaker club if I buy my sourdough bread and have help cleaning my bathrooms? Does working from home disqualify me from being a homemaker, dividing my attention, stealing my energy, and making it impossible for me to have those perfectly organized cupboards that I covet online?

When I am offline, I feel like a homemaker … and a decent one. But when I go online, I don’t. I don’t feel like I qualify. Not just because I have the wrong dustpan. But because I don’t do what those women do. The hours they spend baking and cleaning and making schedules about when to bake and clean, I spend writing. I have minutes, not hours to declutter. I couldn’t do a home reset if my life depended on it right now. I’m just happy when I have time to do a kitchen counter reset.

I am not, by some online standards, a homemaker. But to say that I’m not a homemaker would be to say that my own mother, who also had a career and worked from home, wasn’t a homemaker. Yet she was. And she did it so well. Not the baking or the organizing or the cleaning. But the literal work, the home making, the making of a home.