A Personal Helper For Your Home

Ina Garten wrote this in one of her cookbooks regarding home ~

A good home should gather you up in his arms like a warm cashmere blanket, soothe your hurt feelings, and prepare you to go back out into that big bad world tomorrow all ready to fight the dragons.”

Refreshing your heart, HOME, and life have been my passion and inspiration here on my blog since 2008. I have LOVED being a homemaker for 42 years, and I am passionate about making my home inviting, organized and comfortable. It’s far from perfect, and I often drop the ball when it comes to home management. It takes intentionality, discipline, work and a whole lot of inspiration sprinkled in to keep me motivated! It’s not about perfection, but the spirit of welcome. I find that when my home gets disorganized or dirty, I don’t feel at home here, so how can I feel ready to welcome others inside my doors?! It’s then that I know it’s time to get things in hand!

While I was blessed to have great training ground from my own parents regarding cleaning and organizing while growing up, I realize that not every woman had that advantage, or perhaps it was there, but she was distracted by her education or simply a lack of interest. Now that she has a home of her own, she feels unequipped or frustrated because all the homemaking tasks are hard, or maybe even seem impossible. How can she ever figure out menu planning and grocery shopping so mealtime can be easier? How can her home ever get organized? What are the best ways to keep a home clean and tidy? She doesn’t know, and she feels embarrassed to seek out help.

Maybe that “someone” is you.

What if you could have someone step into your home and guide you step by step in getting things in order? What if they could tell you the 1, 2, 3’s of sprucing up and cleaning your home so it could be inviting and welcoming when you step inside its doors? What if that person was speaking to you in your ear telling you what to do next so that in six weeks time you could have your house in hand? What if that person was me speaking to you through my podcast?

Last week when I began my own spring cleaning, I got to thinking about so many women that I’ve talked to who have shared with me their feeling of inadequacy when it comes to homemaking. My next question was, “How can I help them?!” The Lord brought to my mind this outlet (my blog and podcast), as a simple way to be a “voice in your ear” to help you. Here’s my idea:

Each week in my “Clean with me” series on my podcast, I’m going to guide you step by step in cleaning one room, say the bathroom, the kitchen or a bedroom. You can listen and follow the guide and pause the podcast while you follow the instructions. Once that step is finished, you can turn the podcast back on and go to the next step. In so doing, you should be able to spring clean every room in your house and have it in tip-top shape by the end of May (depending on how many rooms are in your house). I’ll share little tips and tricks of cleaning and organizing to help you speed up the process. It will be light-hearted, and I hope fun to listen to! I hope it will feel like you have an in-person helper giving you help in the next step to take, and the inspiration to finish the task!

I would love some feedback! Would you care to comment on one or more of these questions?

• What do you think about this kind of podcast ? Would you be interested in listening?
• What part of homemaking /cleaning is most difficult for you?
• Would you love knowing you could have your home clean by the end of May?

I’ll be anxious to hear your thoughts and comments that will help guide my subjects!

Refreshing your home with joy,