The Household Economy
“Household economy
Makes family and land
an independent state.
Never buy at a store
What you can grow or find
At home— this is the rule
Of liberty, also
Of neighborhood. (And be
Faithful to local merchants
Too. Never buy far off
What you can buy near home.)”
econ·o·my / i-ˈkä-nə-mē / noun
The careful management of available resources
Within the past century or so, we have lost a lot of purpose. Everything is so easy now. “Isn’t that a good thing?”, we wonder. But I would argue that the loss of honest work of our hands has done more harm than good. The home never used to be sterile or boring.
I often ponder the restlessness of the 1950’s housewife, leading to the mass exodus of women from the home. This happened not because of oppression but rather dissatisfaction. This was an era of incredible technology being introduced into the home, leaving women no longer needed for tasks that had been dependent on them for thousands of years.
“Being bored comes from within themselves. Boredom is, in fact, easily cultivated if you work at it, and it is a kind of blindness…And I believe it is basic in the feminine temperament to long to be important, to be needed.”
With the rise of convenience and consumerism, food no longer needed to be grown in the backyard or preserved or even elaborately cooked— just go to the grocery store at the corner of the street and purchase something already harvested or already packaged. Clothes for the family no longer needed to be made or mended or darned— just go to the department store at the mall when you need something new. The land no longer needed to be tended and tilled— just keep your suburban lawn freshly mowed and green. The children no longer needed to be taught— just send them to public school.
All that was left for the women to do was…put on some heels and look pretty.
But we know that is not true womanhood. Biblical femininity is not a spa day. It is strength. It is fruitfulness. It is skill.
The Fruit of Her Hands
Women are to be fruitful. Women are to be productive. In a way that is different from men, yes, but still working toward the good of their household. Instead of using advancement in technology and increase in leisure time for good, a mass form of manipulation was (and is still) underway to get women to leave the home completely…and it worked.
I’m hardly advocating for a return to primitive days. Aren’t you so glad that laundry is no longer a back breaking affair? However instead of allowing technology to make our everyday tasks easier, lending us more time for creativity and production, we have instead treated technology as a cop out.
Duties of the home are now viewed as unnecessary because they can be outsourced elsewhere. But what if we consider the idea that modernity has made building a household economy as easy as ever, not as unnecessary as ever.
Consider the preservation of food, for example. Much is available to us all year round, so the concept of “preparing for winter” is nothing like that of our sisters of days gone by. Conveniences like grocery stores and frozen foods can be viewed as an excuse not to grow and preserve our own food. Or conveniences like the ease of bringing the canner to a boil on a gas stove—not wood burning—or drying food out in the dehydrator—not in the sun ridden with bugs—gives us no excuse not to preserve our own food. Is it more work? Yes. But is it a frugal, more nutritious, worthwhile pursuit? Also, yes.
We are meant to do what many machines do for us.
A woman is blessed with the great responsibility of careful management of the home, using the resources available to her, cultivating a productive household. This is the fruit of her hands. This is a prudent woman. Back in the day, properties were productive. The house was more than just a place to come home to. The kitchens were lived in and worked in. The yards were grown in. The pantries full. The rooms cozy and welcoming, not sterile and cold. It was a beautiful melding of domesticity, business, and family life. Everyone was involved from mom, dad, the children, and even the grandparents who continued to pass down skills and knowledge. I often think of the Proverbs 31 woman as a beautiful example of this kind of household.
pro·pri·e·tor / prə-ˈprī-ə-tər / noun
Someone who owns productive property: property that makes you a living
Contrary to the eisegesis of many, the Proverbs 31 woman is not a career woman. She is not climbing the ladder, she is not a boss babe, and she isn’t on the Forbes list. She is a mighty hard worker and makes her arms strong for her tasks, but the Proverbs 31 Woman runs a cottage industry out of her home for the good of her home. The work of her hands blesses her husband, her children, her home, and her community. Her responsibility to “love her husband and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive that the word of God may not be reviled” (Titus 2) is never shirked by her production of goods and services. The work of her hands is simply an outflow of her already established obedience in those things.
The Proverbs 31 woman is skilled in home and hearth. She sews, grows, cultivates, cooks, buys, sells. She delights to work and produce.
cot·tage in·dus·try / kädij ˈindəstrē / noun
A small scale industry that intertwines the workshop with domesticity. A business cultivated out of one’s home.
A household economy does not necessarily mean that you are making a business profit from the production of your household. You don’t have to run a business to cultivate an economy. Learning how to make homemade bread instead of buying bread weekly saves a lot of money. That right there is a profitable and productive pursuit. A productive household is simply one that is alive and active and working toward the good of the family that dwells there. A few more examples would be:
Growing a garden (even if it’s small)
Preserving your own food (even if you didn’t grow it yourself)
Stocking a frugal pantry and learning how to eat from it
Baking bread and keeping the breadbox full
Making your own laundry soap or other household needfuls
Learning how to sew, mend, and make do before buying new
Keeping chickens for meat and eggs
Cooking at home from scratch
Selling homemade, handmade, or homegrown goods if the opportunity presents itself
Teaching our daughters homemaking skills
Teaching our sons durable trades
Multigenerational living— fulfilling our Christian duty to care for aging family members
“and aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.”
If possible, we should not have to be dependent on pagan institutions for everyday life. No, not everyone will have the opportunity to secure their own water source, heat source or land large enough to grow a lifetime of food. But why have we allowed modernity to take away our knowledge of cooking, baking, sewing, cultivating, growing? Ladies, these pursuits are our birthright. We are not better off for outsourcing these things. We are not trendy or cutesy for not knowing how to do these things.
Amongst the world’s economies of globalism, corporatism, and convenience, let’s instead cultivate household economies. Let’s make our hands fruitful again. Let’s be producers and not consumers. We can rightfully pursue this whether we are single, married, mothers, daughters, sisters, whether we have a windowsill, a balcony, or a backyard. What resources are available to you? Take hold of them. Grow! BUILD! Tend and plod on. And maybe read some Wendell Berry, to inspire your efforts, along the way.
“The very root of economies is stewardship, household management.”