Becoming a Domestic Goddess

By Leah of www.goddessinthehouse.com

Before having children, I was a substitute teacher looking for a full time teaching job. However, where I live, teaching jobs are non-existent. What I mean is; there are more teachers looking for work than there are jobs. At that same time, I was pregnant with my first child. I always had every intention of having children, but also working outside the home. That is…until my son was born. Once I had him, I couldn’t imagine having everyone else’s children and then come home to mine. I’m sure it works for many people out there, but I knew me…it wouldn’t work for me. So after a lot of number crunching, my husband and I decided that the best thing for our family would be for me to stay home with the kids. Thus becoming the Domestic Goddess that I am today (and yes, I do put that down as my job title whenever need be)!

And boy has the decision to change career paths from a teacher to a Domestic Goddess been the right one for our family! My husband travels A LOT for his job and I honestly don’t see how we would make it work if I also worked outside the home. Things are stressful enough with him gone and me at home to add both of us working outside of the house and him being gone. Over the past 6 months, I’ve really had to step it up and come up with additional ways to make our home run smoother with my husband’s travel schedule. I would really like to share some of those things with you and hopefully it can help you as much as it has helped me.

The craziest time of the day for me is dinner time and bed time. I am pretty much worn out by that time of the day and my patience has really started to wear out. So the best thing I can do is make sure I have a dinner schedule planned out for the week. I almost always do this when my husband is out of town. Before dinner, my daughter and I pick my son up at school and we almost always (unless it’s raining) stay after for about 2 hours so the kids can play with their friends (and the moms can talk!) and run off some energy while they’re at it (making bedtime much easier). If they get all muddy and dirty (which they usually do), we take a shower first and then have dinner. We end our night with our bedtime routine of watching a TV show and reading a few books. Nine times out of ten, my evening goes pretty smoothly. The key is planning.

Another thing that really helps, whether my husband is traveling or not, is to plan my day (see, told you the key was planning!) so that I rarely have to take two kids on errands at a time. I don’t know about you, but the grocery store and two kids…it’s just crazy. One wants Oreo’s, the other wants ice cream….I just want to get the heck out of there. So I either run my errands when my daughter is in preschool and I only have my son with me or when my son is in Kindergarten and I only have my daughter with me. Likewise, I also try to do all my cleaning when I only have one child at home with me. I don’t know about you, but when my kids see me start to clean it’s like a sign is attached to my head telling them to make the biggest mess they can make. Not to mention, when I am with both of them, I want to do fun things with them and cleaning and errands are not fun!

Being a Domestic Goddess is both the hardest and the most rewarding job I have ever had!

Check out Leah’s bog at www.goddessinthehouse.com