Saturday, December 3, 2011

The Un-Domesticated Housewife...

I have always wanted to be a wife and mother, and I have always wanted to be a Stay At Home Mom (SAHM). I have made career choices based on this, given up opportunities, and it's something my husband and I talked about extensively before we had children (even before we were married).

I am not what some would consider a SAHM, but I do have a flexible career that allows me to work when I want, and take off time as I need (I can work evenings and weekends when my husband is home, and stay home when he's on trips, or if there's something big happening). I work no more than about once a week, and it's wonderful so far. I am happy to be at-home while my babies are little, and I'm happy that I can return to work more as my littles grow up.

There's only ONE problem to my "Stepford" life... I don't cook, and I don't clean.

It's not that I can't... I mean, I do actually know how to run the vacuum, and as for cooking, I haven't met a recipe I couldn't tackle, including soup stocks, turkey dinners, steak, and baking (pie crust from scratch, chocolate souffles, you name it!) The problem is that I just don't want to. I have to be in the right MOOD to cook, and that mood is usually destroyed with fighting children, or a long day. And it also doesn't help (or does...) that my husband LOVES to cook. We have "Special Dinner Sunday" which is when he gets to try out a new recipe. And as for cleaning, well, I get overwhelmed. Our house is never really dirty but it's definitely cluttered. We have stuff everywhere (as I type I am sitting at our kitchen table. The layer of stuff is only about 1 or 2 items deep, but you really can barely see the tabletop...)

So I start my Project Domestication. It's a New Year, but we also moved into a New House in the fall. It's almost double the room we had, and there's plenty of room for us to exist in it, which has been wonderful. I finally have a place for all our stuff, and that means that there's no reason the house can't be clean, at least most of the time ;) A New Year also means new resolutions for me and my family health-wise. Last-minute meals tend to be less healthy for us, as a vegetable is sometimes forgotten, or processed food is involved. So instead I am dedicating myself to making better food for my family, and this blog will hopefully help me keep on track. So please feel free to follow along, and leave any helpful tips, comments or cheers as we go!