A Homemaker’s Habit Refresh

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Dear Homemaker,

Is your life not exactly what you envisioned when you began this homemaking endeavor? Did you begin with enthusiasm, only to lose your zest after a time? Have you fallen into some bad habits which hinder your efforts rather than helping them?

Maybe it’s time to review your habits of homemaking, and form some new good habits to replace those which really aren’t useful. Think of it as a ‘spring cleaning’ for your homemaking routine!

The perfect time for a reset

This time of year always gets to me. Early spring, when the weather is fickle, can be frustrating. Perhaps it reminds me of my own nature: one moment sunny and smiling, but the next grumpy and overcast because of some small mishap that I allowed to cloud my day. Whatever the cause, I feel restless and unsatisfied with myself this time of year. I can see all too clearly the bad habits that have crept in during the long winter, and I wish I could just jerk myself up and out of them.

But, of course, new habits are not formed in a day, and old ones are hard to break, so I usually just continue in my habitual ruts.

I also find myself comparing my own situation in life to others, and finding my own lot rather less exciting or inspiring or lovely than I would wish.

Now we all know that we shouldn’t compare ourselves to others, but it might be worthwhile to remember the ideals we once had, and compare those to our current lives. Not to make ourselves miserable, but to give us fresh inspiration to begin again and work toward our goals. Of course, we might find that some of our old ideals no longer apply to our current lives; and that’s fine. If you find that is the case for you, it is the perfect time to take stock of where you are in life and where you hope to be. Even if your old goals still apply, perhaps you will decide to add a few new ones based on changes in yourself or your life.

Remembering why you began

Each of us must choose her own goals, but here are two examples:

Perhaps you began homemaking as a starry-eyed newlywed, excited to learn all the domestic arts, all at once! By and by, frustrated by many failed attempts at new skills and the extra demands of a baby or two, you find yourself going the rounds of your daily life with half-hearted efforts and mediocre results. You are no longer on fire with passion for motherhood or homemaking, and you don’t like the life you are leading or the person you are becoming.

Or maybe your life was your career for many years, and transitioning to a homemaker’s role wasn’t all sunbeams and roses. Perhaps you have caught yourself wishing for your old job, where people actually listened to you and took you seriously. You probably had some pretty idea of what a homemaker’s life would be like, but now you feel disillusioned and somewhat cheated.

If you can identify with any of these illustrations, I encourage you to find some quiet time and think seriously about what you want in life, what is best for you and your family, and how to get there.

Discerning what needs to change

When you experience a feeling of restlessness or frustration, it is natural to desire to change something in order to relieve that stress and feel happy again. But what exactly needs to change? The answer will vary for each of us; there is no one-size-fits-all solution here.

How do we discern what we need to change? In order to move from a vague feeling of frustration to a diagnosis of the particular problem and an action plan to improve it, we need to ask ourselves some serious questions.

This should go without saying, but when you do ask these questions, be completely honest in your answers. This isn’t a test, and it isn’t about what looks good to others. It’s about finding which areas in your life need improvement, and honesty is essential, even if it is painful to think about your own failings.

Here are some discernment questions to get you started:

Am I at peace in life? If not, is the unrest in my relationship with God, with myself, or with other people?

Spiritual

The problem might be spiritual if you think you have no time to pray, or if you merely go through the motions of your habitual prayers and devotions, or if you find yourself wondering whether any of this “religious stuff” really matters anyway. If this description fits you, consider blocking out half an hour every day to read Scripture, pray, or just dwell in the present moment with a spirit of gratitude. Quality time is the key to developing any relationship, and this is no exception.

Personal

Are you at peace with yourself? You might not be if you are frustrated by bad habits cropping up such as sleeping in, wasting time on media (social or not), leaving the house messy, feeling sorry for yourself, or half-hearted efforts at doing your duty. These types of faults are what may be called character flaws: laziness, lack of attention, and selfishness or self-centeredness can crop up under many different guises. Fixing them usually requires cultivating the opposite virtue: diligence, attention, and charity or love would be the opposite virtues for the examples above.

Relational

Finally, the problem might lie in your relationships with others if you find yourself gossiping, arguing or yelling at family members frequently, or comparing yourself to others and wishing for what someone else has. All of these habits may be mended by making a firm effort to see every person we meet as an amazing and unrepeatable creation, worthy of our respect and love. C.S. Lewis wrote in one of his most famous essays:

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations–these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals we joke with, marry, snub, and exploit–immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously–no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner–no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.

The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis

This passage is worth thinking over slowly, as it exposes as fallacies several ideas that our society takes for granted. These days, tolerance is touted as the greatest virtue, while human dignity is trampled underfoot. Lewis turns the picture right side up and shows us the relation between persons and civilizations from an eternal perspective. Have we also slipped into habits of thinking and acting as if they were true?

The will and habit

The remedy for any of these faults lies in your will. However, it is not enough to decide that you will never act this way again. Once a habit is formed, whether it is a bad one or good, it leaves a track in the brain. Just as it is easier to follow a path through a field or wood than to cut cross-country, so it is easier for your brain to run in the tracks laid down by habit.

Don’t be surprised if very soon after you make a decision to stop a bad habit, you slip into it again without thinking. This is the nature of habit, of course. It is like an “autopilot” setting on your brain which lets you carry out many actions, and even thoughts and feelings, without thinking.

Obviously this can be very helpful in the case of good habits, but it makes bad habits that much harder to break. For in order to break a bad habit, you will have to be very watchful. You will have to think about what you are doing more than you normally do, so that you can stop yourself from slipping into the bad habit unintentionally.

How can this be done? One way is to think of a good habit to replace the contrary bad habit you are trying to erase. Next, think of the situations where you are likely to slip into the bad habit. Then make a plan for what to do in those situations instead of the thing you normally do, which you are now trying to avoid.

An Illustration

Consider the example of a mother who is trying to stop wasting so much time on her phone. She knows that after a stressful day, when the kids are finally asleep, she often pulls out her phone to relax, and before she knows it, an hour or two has slipped by.

To prevent this from happening in the future, she needs to make a plan for when this situation presents itself. She sets out a book and some bath salts next to the chair where she usually relaxes with her phone so that when she collapses into the chair, tired out at the end of the day, she will see these items and remember to go take a bath and read instead of mindlessly scrolling her feed.

Formation of Habits

Numerous studies have established that habits take about two weeks of constant repetition to form, and months to solidify. Habits which are practiced for years without interruption become very hard to break indeed.

After the first few weeks, you will notice that much less effort of mind is required to follow the habit, although you do still have to be vigilant that you do not slip back into the previous habit, which will not be fully erased yet. This is one of the most dangerous points in the formation of a new habit, according to Charlotte Mason. She writes that the critical moment comes when a newly-formed habit has been practiced successfully perhaps twenty times in succession. She uses the example of a boy learning to shut the door after himself:

Some day Johnny is so taken up with some new delight that the habit, not yet fully formed, loses its hold, and he is half-way downstairs before he thinks of the door. Then he does think of it, with a little prick of conscience, strong enough, not to send him back, but to make him pause a moment to see if his mother will call him back. She has noticed the omission, and is saying to herself, ‘Oh, poor little fellow, he has been very good about it this long time; I’ll let him off this once.’ He, outside, fails to hear his mother’s call, says to himself–fatal sentence!–‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ and trots off.

Next time he leaves the door open, but it is not a ‘forget.’ His mother calls him back, in a rather feeble way. His quick ear catches the weakness of her tone, and, without coming back, he cries, ‘Oh, mother, I’m in such a hurry,’ and she says no more, but lets him off. Again he rushes in, leaving the door wide open. ‘Johnny!’–in a warning voice. ‘I’m going out again in just a minute, mother,’ and after ten minutes’ rummaging he does go out, and forgets to shut the door. The mother’s mis-timed easiness has lost for her every foot of the ground she has gained.

Home Education, Charlotte Mason

In this example, the mother was acting as the little boy’s conscience, in order to help his weak child’s will form a good habit. The same kind of dialogue takes place inside our own minds when we are tempted to abandon a young habit. “Oh, just this once won’t hurt.” “I’ve been so good lately, I deserve a break.” “I’m in too much of a hurry today.”

Will it really be a big deal to break your habit once? Perhaps not if it is fully formed; but in the first stages, such a lapse can render all your previous effort bootless.

Steps to form a habit

Whether you need to change something in your relationship with God, yourself, or other people, habits can help you turn your thoughts and change your actions. Here is how to start:

• Examine your life and determine which actions or thought patterns you would like to change.
• Write them down on one side of a piece of paper.
• Opposite each bad habit, write down a good habit which will replace it. If you have a long list, choose just one or two habits to work on at first.
• Make a plan by thinking of the situations which trigger the bad habits. Plan how you can intervene in those situations to prevent the bad habit from taking over.
• Give yourself a time frame. Pick a date about two weeks away and make a note on your calendar to review your progress in forming a new habit.
• Consider asking a friend to be your accountability partner, and check up on your progress. This is especially helpful if you are trying to correct a fault like gossiping, which is more of a problem in a group setting.

Try to be perfectly consistent in practicing your new habit. Do not consciously allow yourself to return to the bad habit, even in times of stress. If it should happen accidentally, though, don’t berate yourself unduly. Just resolve firmly to begin again. It may help to keep a record for the first few weeks of how many times you have succeeded in keeping the new habit, and how many times you reverted to the old habit.

I will end with Charlotte Mason’s encouragement to mothers who are overwhelmed by the number of habits they think they need to cultivate in their children. She reminds them to focus on one habit at a time, and remember that “the formation of habit itself becomes habit;” that is, once you have trained yourself or your child in a new habit, the process of forming a habit gets easier. It is easier to form the second habit than the first, simply because you have more practice in forming habits. Even if we find a long list of areas we need to improve, let’s flex our habit-forming muscles and dive in!

Happy homemaking!

-Kimberly