On Coming Home: Be Content with Less

To read the first parts of this series, go here.

I think the most important thing you can do to make it possible for you to come home is to be content with less. We live in a very stuff and entertainment driven society. Our houses are packed to the gills with clutter and we spend lots of money just to keep ourselves entertained. Sadly, this mentality causes us to miss out on really living purposeful lives and devoting ourselves to things that are truly important--like a good relationship with the Lord and the people who matter the most to us.

If you're going to choose to part with a big chunk of your income, you'll have to evaluate your spending and figure out what things you can cut out. There's nothing wrong with spending money you have on stuff and entertainment and conveniences, though it is important to examine priorities. If things that are truly non-necessities are keeping you from staying home with your children, I would submit to you that perhaps your priorities are out of line.

Look through your purchase history next time your bank statement comes in the mail. What things do you spend money on that your family really could do without? Could you go down to one car? Downsize to a smaller house? Cut cable TV, or text messaging?

There are also several expenses you won't have if you are staying home: daycare for your children (which can be astronomical!), business clothes for you, lunches out while working, fewer convenience foods since you will have more time to cook from scratch, less wear and tear on your car since you won't be commuting, among many others.


Most importantly, be sure to consider what you are giving up to have the things two incomes can buy. Things have no eternal value. They won't matter a bit once you're gone. However, investing your very best into your families can have a greater impact than we can begin to imagine. That's why, for us, the cost of sacrificing the time I have at home with our daughter (and pretty soon, our son too!) is far greater than we are willing to pay.

The Dryer Saga

When we first moved into our home here in Virginia, Ben's parents were kind enough to give us a washer and dryer. They were extras they had at their house (I guess when you have that many people in one house, it doesn't hurt to keep extra appliances around-ha!). The problem: when we got the dryer here, it didn't work. Not a big deal; I just used the clothes line.

A few months ago, Ben's mom surprised me with a dryer she found on Craiglist. It worked really well for about a week--until we had a power surge during a storm while it was running. It was a sad day. For the past couple months, I continued drying clothes on the line or at my in-laws' house if the weather was not suitable for hanging the laundry out.

More recently, it's been too cool most days to hang clothes out, and with a new baby coming (just 6 weeks 'til Benjamin's due-date), I began thinking now would probably be a good time to either get it fixed or get a new (to us) dryer. I think once Benjamin is born, keeping my chores simple and staying home more will be slightly necessary for survival those first few weeks! Thankfully, Ben agreed and we started setting aside some money.

My in-laws know a dryer repairman who they have bought a couple dryers from over the years. When we told him what was going on with our dryer, he was confident he could fix it. We took it to his shop and for $100, he completely rebuilt the dryer. It basically has all new parts and ought to last us a long time!

The day after we brought it home, it wouldn't heat up at all. Thankfully, he has a 30 day guarantee, so two (very long) weeks later, we were finally able to work out a time to bring it back to him. He plugged it in and it worked just fine. He even dried a load of laundry in it! As it turns out, there was just something electrical that needed fixing in our laundry room (the two weeks wouldn't have been so long if we had known that before-ha!).

So, as of yesterday, I am the very happy owner of a (finally!) functioning dryer. My laundry pile hasn't been this small in ages. :)

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Menu Plan, November 8-14

Colder weather has definitely set in in our neck of the woods. We had to defrost the windshield before we could drive yesterday morning! We've also had the wood-stove burning all the time this week. So thankful my hubby deals with all the firewood hauling and keeps the house warm for us! :)

We are really enjoying the meat from the farm we started buying from. It is so fun to be surprised with a variety of cuts of meat, and have some different things to plan our meals around. And, knowing the quality is so high makes this conscientious mama's heart happy. Yesterday, I finally finished 'doing up' the last of the green beans. We had green beans with dinner just about every night over the last week and we have about 3 1/2 gallons in the freezer to enjoy later. I've never had farm fresh green beans before. They are so delicious!

Here's what I'm planning to cook this week. What's on your meal plans for the week?

Breakfasts: biscuits and gravy, whole wheat pancakes, toast--all served with scrambled eggs; breakfast burritos; quiche

Lunches: homemade pizza, grilled cheese sandwiches and smoothies, leftovers

Dinners:
Monday~Adobo Red Rice, Pinto beans
Tuesday~Chicken Roll-ups with gravy, green beans
Wednesday~Brown Bag Burritos, oranges
Thursday~Rice & Bean Burritos, butternut squash fries
Friday~Pan-Seared T-Bone steak with creamy pepper sauce, green beans
Saturday~homemade pizza, fruit
Sunday~fellowship at church (bringing these to share)

For lots of menu planning inspiration, be sure to head over to OrgJunkie's Menu Plan Monday!

On Coming Home: Why? (Part 2)

If you missed the beginning of this series, you can get caught up here.

As we discussed last week, there are many practical reasons for a wife choosing to be at home over having a full-time job; ministering to the needs of her family by preparing nutritious foods, keeping the home, providing clothes, helping her husband's business, and ministering on behalf of her family to those outside her household are just a few.

Aside from all those (very important!) tasks, though, is perhaps the most important reason a woman should choose to stay home. That is, to disciple her children. When you become a mother, your children become your life's most important work. Training them to love and serve Christ is one of your absolute most important priorities as long as they are in your home. In each of your children, there is huge potential for Kingdom-advancement, not only in their lives personally, but also in the generations that follow them. Raising your children to follow Christ has the potential to impact hundreds of thousands of people with the gospel.

Just think about it. I'll use my in-laws as an example. They have nine children. If all nine of their children persevere in the faith and go on to have even five children each (and, I know for sure several of them--including us!--are hoping for very large families if the Lord is willing), that is forty-five grandchildren. If those grandchildren have five children each, that is 225 great grandchildren. That makes for a potential of 279 disciples in just three generations! And, those 279 disciples will most likely not just influence their own children for Christ, but many in the communities around them.

If Ben's parents had slacked in their duties and failed to disciple their children, that potential would have been lost; no amount of 'ministry' or other work they could have done would have made up for the loss of disciples the generations following them could have produced.

In Deuteronomy 6:4-7, parents are given a clear mandate for the discipleship of their children:

4  Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:
5  And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
6  And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
7  And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

How can we best obey this mandate? Spending time with our children. Of course, there needs to be formal instruction time, but nothing will make up for living out a life of obedience before their eyes and using "teachable moments" as they present themselves. If both parents are gone all day working, it is inevitable that someone will have a greater influence on their children than they do. Since God has given the husband the burden of providing for the family and has called women to be at home, moms have the role of discipling the children in the father's absence.

So, why come home? At work you can be replaced. Most likely, you and your family can learn to live without a second income. However, no one else can be a mother to your children.

As a side note: I am in no way trying to condemn those of you who, for one reason or another, are absolutely not able to stay at home with your children. Obviously, if you are a single mom, your husband is disabled and can't work, or something of that nature, you have no choice but to work to provide. Next week, we'll begin talking about how to come home; hopefully some of you will be able to use some of those tips to be able to spend more time at home even if you can't completely leave the work force.

We just played

The other day at lunchtime, I shared a smoothie with Katie and she (of course) made a huge mess of herself. After we finished eating, we headed to her room to get her some new clothes. After I got her dressed, we stayed in her room for a while and we played.

We tried on clothes and shoes. Katie ended up in a silly outfit complete with a summer hat and snow boots. I, too, ended up wearing a (much-too-small) toddler hat and a little pink hair bow, both of which Katie picked out just for me. There were lots of tickles, giggles and sweet baby hugs. And for this mama? A few tears too (pregnancy hormone-induced, I do believe).

That hour spent on the floor in Katie's room was such a sweet reminder of the precious blessing the Lord has given me in having this season of life at home with my daughter. Sure, I spend most of my time every day with her; we read books, we clean together, we 'talk'. Too often, though, when she goes in her room to play, she plays all by herself. While I definitely see the importance of regular independent play, I will not soon forget how happy it made her just to have her mama in there playing with her.

One of these days, my sweet, chubby, blue-eyed baby girl will be too big to play with her mama. I know when that time comes, I won't look back and regret leaving the lunch dishes for a little later; however, I may very well regret not taking more time to just play when I could have. So for now? I think we'll just play together a little more often. And folks, that's definitely one of life's finer things.

Oxygen Bleach Review & Giveaway

 **The winner of last week's Febreze giveaway was comment #41. She has been notified by e-mail.**

Since we got married, I have chosen to use only natural cleaners, save one: bleach. I mainly have just used it for cleaning the toilets and making the occasional white load of laundry come out whiter. I hadn't tried any toilet bowl cleaners that worked as well as regular ol' bleach. When I was given the opportunity to review Tropical Tradition's Oxygen Bleach, I went for it!

From the Tropical Traditions website:

Tropical Traditions Oxygen Bleach is a safe and effective alternative to chlorine based products and it can be used in many applications in and around the home. It is based on sodium percarbonate which uses oxygen for destaining and deodorizing. Oxygen Bleach is safe to use at all temperatures, on most washable fabrics, and all colors, in hard or soft water, and is compatible with other household cleaners. Also, it produces no harmful by-products which negatively affect the environment. Unlike chlorine bleach, which can merely cover up a stain, Tropical Traditions Oxygen Bleach attacks and breaks down organic stains to totally remove them from the garment.

I have used it for the past two weeks for cleaning our bathrooms, and I have been very pleased with the results. Much like chlorine bleach, I put a little bit (2oz., per the instructions on the container) into the toilet, let it sit for a while, and then swish it around with my toilet brush and voila! White toilets with almost no effort. I haven't yet used it for any other cleaning, though the list of applications is very long.

In addition to providing me with a 6lb. container of Oxygen Bleach to review, Tropical Traditions has kindly offered to give away a container of their Oxygen Bleach to one of y'all! To enter, just leave a comment on this post.

For additional entries, you can follow me on twitter (@mrsmurch), follow Tropical Traditions on twitter (@TropTraditions), tweet about this giveaway and include @mrsmurch and @troptraditions (and a link to this post!), subscribe to the Tropical Traditions newsletter, and/or subscribe to the Covenant Homemaking RSS Feed. Please leave a separate comment for each entry! This giveaway will close next Wednesday.

Disclaimer: Tropical Traditions provided me with a free sample of this product to review, and I was under no obligation to review it if I so chose.  Nor was I under any obligation to write a positive review or sponsor a product giveaway in return for the free product. 

Incorporating locally grown food into our meals (Menu Plan, November 1-7)

This Saturday, I ventured to the Farmer's Market in 'the big city' for the first time since we moved here last summer. I was able to get some great deals, and it was exciting to buy locally grown produce. I paid $5 for half a bushel of unsprayed green beans! We're enjoying them with meals this week, but I'm blanching and freezing most of them to enjoy through the winter (and beyond, probably--it's a lot of green beans!). I was also able to get some butternut squash for $1/lb. This is a new food for us--Ben and I have never had it! I also got a couple different varieties of pumpkins, which I'm planning to leave out to look pretty for a bit and then I'll cook them up.

Recently, Ben and I also decided to start getting our meats from a local farm. We finally made the plunge after our Kroger went about a month without organic chicken and raised the price of their hormone/antibiotic free ground beef. $6-$7 for ground beef is just too much, y'all! We found a farm nearby that raises their animals naturally on pastures, and they have a meat CSA program. We will get a delivery of beef and a whole chicken every other week. We got the first delivery yesterday and I'm really pleased! It's fun to have a variety of cuts of meat to work with (this shipment we got a chuck roast, T-Bone steaks, stew meat, and ground beef), and the average price per pound works out to less than the "good" ground beef at Kroger, and this is much higher quality! Supporting a local farm and getting higher quality food for less? No brainer!
 
Here's our menu plan for this week:

Breakfasts: scrambled eggs and sausage served with grits, pancakes, or muffins
Lunches: sandwiches (PB & J or grilled cheese), leftovers, rice & beans, smoothies

Dinners:
Monday~We had stew meat and gravy over mashed potatoes with green beans on the side
Tuesday~leftovers, with coconut custard for dessert (haven't made this yet--if it's good, I'll share the recipe!)
Wednesday~Chicken roll-ups with gravy, green beans
Thursday~leftovers
Friday~Italian Roast Beef over pasta with butternut squash on the side
Saturday~our usual homemade pizza night