Homemaking Quotes

“The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.”
― Thomas Wolfe

“It's sad if people think that's (homemaking) a dull existance, [but] you can't just buy an apartment and furnish it and walk away. It's the flowers you choose, the music you play, the smile you have waiting. I want it to be gay and cheerful, a haven in this troubled world. I don't want my husband and children to come home and find a rattled woman. Our era is already rattled enough, isn't it?”
― Audrey Hepburn

“No occupation in this world is more trying to soul and body than the care of young children. What patience and wisdom, skill and unlimited love it calls for. God gave the work to mothers and furnished them for it, and they cannot shirk it and be guiltless.”
― Isabella Alden and Mrs. C. M. Livingston

“I believe that a godly home is a foretaste of heaven. Our homes, imperfect as they are, must be a haven from the chaos outside. They should be a reflection of our eternal home, where troubled souls find peace, weary hearts find rest, hungry bodies find refreshment, lonely pilgrims find communion, and wounded spirits find compassion.”
― Jani Ortlund

“I'm only a housewife, I'm afraid." How often do we hear this shocking admission. I'm afraid when I hear it I feel very angry indeed. Only a housewife: only a practitioner of one of the two most noble professions (the other one is that of a farmer); only the mistress of a huge battery of high and varied skills and custodian of civilization itself. Only a typist, perhaps! Only a company director, or a nuclear physicist; only a barrister; only the President! When a woman says she is a housewife she should say it with the utmost pride, for there is nothing higher on this planet to which she could aspire.”
― John Seymour, Forgotten Household Crafts

“If God is good, and if He wants us to subdue this planet, and if He wants us to obey the Great Commission and conquer this world for Christ, and if He tells half the human race that they're in charge of tending the home, it follows from this that the home is actually one of the most strategic and important tools by which the world will be won.”
― Rebekah Merkle

“I have found that there is romance in housework: and charm in it; and whimsy and humor without end. I have found that the housewife works hard, of course–but likes it. Most people who amount to anything do work hard, at whatever their job happens to be. The housewife’s job is home-making, and she is, in fact, ‘making the best of it’; making the best of it by bringing patience and loving care to her work; sympathy and understanding to her family; making the best of it by seeing all the fun in the day’s incidents and human relationships.

The housewife realizes that home-making is an investment in happiness. It pays everyone enormous dividends. There are huge compensations for the actual labor involved…

There are unhappy housewives, of course. But there are unhappy stenographers and editresses and concert singers. The housewife whose songs I sing as I go about my work, is the one who likes her job (pp. 6-7).

From Songs of a Housewife: Poems by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

“There is no occasion when meals should become totally unimportant. Meals can be very small indeed, very inexpensive, short times taken in the midst of a big push of work, but they should be always more than just food.”
― Edith Schaeffer, Hidden art

“I can use the house to create a home. I can offer my family, my friends, myself, and even strangers the gift of love by making them feel special when they are in my home.”
― Sarah Mae, 31 Days to Clean - Having a Martha House the Mary Way

“Few things are more important than finding a home and working at it constantly to make it resonate with deep memories and fulfill deep longings.”
― Thomas Moore

“When it all comes down to it, though we may be accused of being coddled and cosseted, our consciences need to be right before God. If that is the case, we have nothing to fear or to apologize for.”
― Jasmine Baucham, Joyfully at Home: A Book for Young Ladies on Vision and Hope

“...you need to assess what you love right now and what is authntic to your way of living in this season of life.”
― Melissa Michaels

“Haunted house fictions play upon the complex fears and concerns about domestic issues that women have long grappled with.”
― Lisa Kröger, Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction

“Bake in heels.”
― Adrienne Posey

“The preparation of food also serves the soul in a number of ways. In a general sense, it gives us a valuable, ordinary opportunity to meditate quietly, as we peel and cut vegetables, stir pots, measure out proportions, and watch for boiling and roasting. We can become absorbed in the sensual contemplation of colors, textures, and tastes as, alchemists of the kitchen, we mix and stir just the right proportions.”
― Thomas Moore

“Together my wife and I are building the kingdom of God, exercising dominion, beating back the weeds of stinky dippers, tending the garden God has put us in. This is why my dear wife vacuums the floor, for it is part of the garden she has been called to dress and to keep. But she is doing this not as raw duty, but because she understands that she is exercising dominion over the dust, for the glory of Christ.”
― R.C. Sproul Jr., Bound for Glory: God's Promise for Your Family

“Homemaking is a passion you can pass on from generation to generation.”
― Elizabeth George

“The kitchen is your natural setting as a woman and you should look beautiful, not bedraggled, in it. Whether you go to work or work at home- or both- take advantage of the opportunity the kitchen offers for expressing your wifely qualities in what you wear. Pinafores, organdies, and aprons look wonderful, as do gay cotton wrap-arounds that slip on over your dress while you make breakfast.

Too much attention is paid to kitchen equipment and decor; too little to what is worn in this setting. Why look like Cinderella's crotchety stepmother when you can be a lyrical embodiment of all that a home and hearth means!”
― Anne Fogarty, Wife Dressing: The Fine Art of Being a Well-Dressed Wife

“If a woman is flourishing in her home and glorifying God while rejoicing in her domestic duties, and doing them well, but still finding extra hours in her day, she is in a position to look for more to do. She has something to export. This might be volunteer work for the community or church, it may be part-time employment, or it might be learning new skills at home. The possibilities are endless when we really think about it. A new wife may be able to ease gradually into assuming more responsibilities outside the home as she becomes more and more proficient at the job God has given her, but it is unwise to do this too quickly. Sometimes a woman can kid herself into thinking she has extra time, when in fact she is actually just barely getting by with the minimum in her basic domestic duties. For example, if she simply rotates three dinners over and over because that’s all she knows how to make, her problem is not that she has too much time on her hands. She needs help and input and encouragement, not outside activities to give her more to do. She has to determine to become skilled at the tasks God has assigned for her.”
― Nancy Wilson, Building Her House: Commonsensical Wisdom for Christian Women

“It's not the nineteenth century; I'm not meant to be judged on how good a housekeeper I am. Getting down on the floor with a lemon and a bucket of vinegar does not make me a better person.”
― Emily Matchar

“I have, to fill my mind and occupy my hands, the daily rounds of my economy. I have food to harvest and preserve in the summer and fall, firewood to gather and saw up and split in the fall and winter, the garden to prepare and plant in the spring. I have clothes and bedclothes to wash, and myself to keep clean and presentable. I have the endless little jobs of housekeeping and repair... I have books to read, and much to sit and watch.”
― Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

“Jo had got so far, she was learning to do her duty, and to feel unhappy if she did not, but to do it cheerfully, ah, that was another thing!
She had often said she wanted to do something splendid, no matter how hard, and now she had her wish, for what could be more beautiful than to devote her life to Father and Mother, trying to make home as happy to them as they had to her?
And if difficulties were necessary to increase the splendor of the effort, what could be harder for a restless, ambitious girl than to give up her own hopes, plans, and desires, and cheerfully live for others?”
― Alcott Louisa May, Little Women

“On weekdays, as soon as she picked Bela from the bus stop and brought her home, she went straight into the kitchen, washing up the morning dishes she'd ignored, then getting dinner started. She measured out the nightly cup of rice, letting it soak in a pan on the counter. She peeled onions and potatoes and picked through lentils and prepared another night's dinner, then fed Bela. She was never able to understand why this relatively unchallenging set of chores felt so relentless. When she was finished, she did not understand why they had depleted her”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland

“Over the years I've done everything from small organization units in condo closets with sliding doors, to one massive one-thousand-square-foot duplex closet for a pamper socialite that included a wall of climate-controlled storage for her substantial fur collection, and no lie, a CIA-level fingerprint lock on the door. The only thing that was ever more fun was doing a panic room for a paranoid woman who had recently lost her husband. She wanted to be sure that if someone broke into her Gold Coast brownstone she could survive in comfort for at least a week. We referred to her as the Preppy Prepper, giving her a large panic room with en suite bathroom, which included a mini kitchen stocked with canned caviar and smoked oysters and splits of vintage champagne, completely upholstered in a huge-scale blowsy floral chintz.”
― Stacey Ballis, Recipe for Disaster

“Watching and learning from Mama and the other women in my family gave me a deep love for home and hearth and taking care of people. I knew from a young age that there was eternal value in those things.”
― Sophie Hudson, A Little Salty to Cut the Sweet

“It will take some clever appraisal on your part, but your clothes should express value without extravagance, warmth without being brazen, and understanding without looking like Whistler's Mother.”
― Anne Fogarty, Wife Dressing: The Fine Art of Being a Well-Dressed Wife

“Firstly, as a wife (and maybe mother, grandmother, or guardian of children) our role is to be the keeper of our homes. Let’s not spend time debating whether or not wives and mothers should have jobs, but instead agree that our priority needs to be our family.”
― Christina Fleming

“Being trustworthy like the Proverbs 31 woman during the time of winter preparations means we are making sure our family is equipped for the changing seasons. It means they rightfully rely on to keep them fed, warm, and safe to the best of our abilities.”
― Christina Fleming

“Fra le tante cose che suscitano nell'uomo una sensazione di impotenza, l'architettura è più di ogni altra arte soggetta a condizionamenti. Luogo, materiale, destinazione, grandezza, costi, le bizzarre richieste del cliente, e inoltre i carpentieri, gli imbianchini, i mobilieri... [...] Una casa come testamento significa una casa come piacerebbe a me.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, Arcobaleni