First of all, why are so many of us numpties when it comes to house keeping?
To be a modern woman is by definition to be unequipped to run a home and a family effectively. The vocation of home-keeping and child-rearing are those tasks which are traditionally understood to be the domain of the lady of the house. As such, in every culture around the world, and in every well-functioning civilisation, women have been brought up to learn the skills required to do this job well. However, over the last two generations at least, civilisation has been gripped by two destructive, yet fashionable, ideas. The first is that men and women are interchangeable human economic units and therefore there is no need for girls to learn female specific roles and duties in the running of society. The second ideas is that the running of a home and family are unimportant and unworthy of care and devotion to doing well so neither boys nor girls learn these skills.
Both ideas find their motivation in the destruction of the family and the home, which is crucial for making people better factory-workers and consumers. For if a man and woman decide to make their own family, and have their own children, and look after their own little home well...their allegiance to the establishment would become contingent upon whether that establishment helps their family or not. In other words, the individual, isolated from kin and legacy, is easy to enslave. The family is not.
The consequences are simple to observe. Both young men and young women are raised poorly, with little or no skills on how to maintain, nurture and look after a family. Many men don’t know how to fix basic things in the home. They do not know wood working, car maintenance, basic trades of the material world. Many women cannot cook a meal for five from scratch, mend clothes or simply, stay organized with housekeeping.
Before the pitchforks come for me, I am of course speaking generally. There are many who were raised well and know such skills by the age of eighteen. It is curious though, isn’t it, that though our generation spends the longest in school, we are the most uneducated of all. Throughout my own childhood there was such great emphasis placed on doing well at academics that all other chores and tasks were of secondary importance and therefore done haphazardly if done at all. I’m sure I am not alone in this experience.
I lived away from home from the age of eighteen to twenty-five, on my own or with room-mates at university. Although there are many chores one learns to do when living on one’s own, there is little or no comparison to being responsible for a home and furthermore, to be responsible for other human beings. My first three years of marriage were an intense and incredible learning curve for me. I will admit, I entered marriage mostly inept at all domestic tasks, and because I got pregnant on my honeymoon and then again shortly after my first was born, I had to learn quickly how to manage a home and look after small children. It was quite a journey and here, I am writing down a few things so that other “aspiring trad wives” may find guidance and advice to profit from. More than that, I hope that if there are girls like me who could barely cook for two people or plan a grocery shop for a whole week...that you are not alone and improvement is possible. Here’s what I did to improve myself: