Homemaking: What is the Point?

Taking care of a home takes up a lot of time. So when you are  loading the dishwasher for the second time in one day, it is easy to slip into thoughts on the futility of it all. There will always be more dirty dishes (even more if you like food as much as I do) and so it is possible to lose perspective on the purpose of the task.

I have been giving a lot of thought to what the goals of homemaking actually are. It is my hope that by having these clear in my mind, it will be easier to prioritize tasks and to make sure that what I am doing is in support of these goals.

• Basic Hygiene: obviously many housekeeping tasks fall into the category of "illness" or even "grossness" prevention.
  
• Pleasant environment: some of the tasks that go above and beyond this are meant to make your home nice. Nicer than a hotel. Nicer than other places you might go. Housing ourselves is one of the most expensive things we all do in life (whether you rent or own) so it seems reasonable that you would want to make your home desirable for yourself. For some of this, it means a good internet connection, for others it means matching drapes and carpet.
  

For me, the corollaries to these goals are the following

• To be ready to feed/host people with little preparation.
  
• Related to this first point: to be able to stay in our apartment for a week without leaving if we had to (which means not only food, but books, candles, etc.)
• To be able to prep for guests or other special occasion with minimal work (which means everything has to be kind of clean to begin with). This is related to goal #1, grossness prevention: I never want something to be so dirty that I am afraid to clean it.
  
• To NEVER spend an entire day cleaning

These ideas will no doubt shape the nature of future posts, and so I plan to revisit them periodically to see if I still think they hold true.