My superior technique for washing dishes

Tell me your late night kitchen-cleaning tips!

Part 1

Part 2

Here’s a snip from a discussion I started on a public message board (over 1,300 members now!). In my post, I had asked for advice on hiring a mother’s helper - how much to pay, what responsibilities should be include, etc.

This was one reply to my question:

I have never used a mothers helper. I would never allow another female into my home around my dh and dc. Unless it was a family member. And there are some family members that I would not trust. I have seen too many movies and heard about too many real life situations about how these things turn out. I try to handle all things related to the dc myself. That is my job since dh works outside the home.

It may be a little hard to get everything done sometimes, but it is better than worrying about if someone else is treating my dc right. I have seen situations where the dc end up liking the mothers helper better than their own mother. No, I could not do it. I would not even trust a teen girl because there is so much going on nowadays and adults being accused of things.

I think my household would go much smoother without letting someone else interfere.

Below is my response. I hope that it will encourage others to think about taking risks vs. potentially isolating themselves from ministry opportunities because of a possible outcome.

(Please feel free to leave a comment as to how you have either grown in the area of reaching beyond your comfort zone or how the Lord has helped you overcome a temptation!)

Dear ——–,

Respectfully, statistically 40% of children who are sexually abused are abused by family members. The only family members who are available to watch my children during the day are teenage boys. As much as I love them, and am in no way implying that they are perverted, I don’t feel comfortable with them caring for my baby girls because I know that some of them are at an age where they are very curious about the female body and it could be a temptation to peek. I love them so much I would not want to tempt them in this way.*

Honestly, It was hard for me to read your post. I thought it was kinda hurtful. “I would never” is an absolute statement and could imply that your way is the only way and that those who do otherwise are inferior. Your post also seemed to imply that it was shameful for a wife to seek help in order to keep up with her role-specific job.

When my husband is overseas for weeks on end and I do not have a break, I admittedly fall behind sometimes. In this situation, it seems like I can address the urgent chores and not the deep cleaning stuff. Yet, because of his travel, if I waited until he was home, I would perpetually never get the “deep cleaning” done.

During these time, I do need fellow Christians to encourage me in the Lord and walk along side of me. In the past, I have appreciated when friends have allowed me to borrow their dear Christian daughters to lend a hand with children so I can clean out the linen closet or give an extra effort to scrubbing the grout in the tub without worrying if my children are getting into trouble while I work. I don’t live in a one-roomed house - I can’t physically see them all the time! My 5 children are each about 14 months apart, and are not quite old enough to be self-governed if I need to concentrate on something for an extended period of time. Please consider that having extra help for children keeps them from being tempted to sin just because mommy isn’t looking.

I’m really am happy for you that you are able to manage to take care of “all things related to the dc and myself.” Praise God that he has given you this ability!

Please also consider that there are Christian sisters out there who may be suffering with migraines or physical problems, such as myself, or maybe are under a particular amount of stress - like not seeing their husband for over 40 days! - who could really benefit from your housekeeping and responsibility balancing expertise. I do hope that if you have that opportunity that you will do it with a servants heart, humble, loving and for God’s glory.

May I also suggest that scripture tells us that fellowship with other Christians is a necessary part of our Christian walk. Having a young woman in the home provides fellowship and an opportunity to mentor her, encourage her in the Lord, showing her first hand what a joy it is to be a mommy (how many GOOD examples do teenage girls have these days about motherhood? They are told, “don’t get married or have kids - you’ll never achieve YOUR CAREER!”). We must be careful not to become prideful in our faith and think that we don’t need to allow other Christians to use their gifts and talents on our turf.

It is hard to overcome fears of people interfering or fears of the things “going on nowadays and adults being accused of things.” However, our trust is in the Lord and we must realize that, to effectively minister to people, we are going to have to take risks. Think of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. Joseph was falsely accused, but we know that IT WAS PART OF GOD’S PLAN for Joseph to minister to Pharaoh. If it hadn’t been for being falsely accused, Joseph would have never been in the position to help his family avoid starvation.

All throughout scripture, we see people stepping outside of their comfort zone and taking risks. Think of the ultimate example we have in Christ. Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners, after all. That was pretty risky! When the Pharisees talked down to Jesus and chastised him for this appearance of evil, Jesus said, “it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick!” What should this tell us about interacting with others? When I read this passage, it gives me courage.

Much love,
SJA

*I would say that we do have to be careful not to purposefully place ourselves or others in a tempting situation.

It probably wouldn’t be smart to leave a teenage girl home alone with a man as a “father’s helper”. And, we must think realistically here, if a woman struggled with lusting after teenage girls it probably wouldn’t be wise for her to hire a young girl as a helper, either. In these exceptions, dropping the children off at a trusted as-needed-daycare provider may be a better solution.

On the other hand, I have hired young men for lawn care when my husband was traveling and I was pregnant and physically unable to do the work. Sometimes there is no avoiding situations like this. Or, more recently, I had to hire someone to fix my boiler. Guess what? Heating and air condition repairs are jobs normally done by men. It’s not like I could say, “I’m sorry, I only let women into my house”. It was 18 degrees out and I needed my boiler fixed!

Wise women know how to deal with other people and treat them in a respectful and platonic way. I did NOT answer the door in a towel, nor did I speak of obscene activities. Duh.

I also made sure that my husband knew the repair company I called and the time the repairman would be at the house. I called my husband as soon as he left - not just to relay the cost of the bill, but to let him know that all went well and that he didn’t have to be concerned about me.

Who knows, maybe a woman reading this is sexually tempted by the repairman. Perhaps she could ask a trusted friend to visit for coffee during that time and keep her accountable so that she wouldn’t be alone.

God never places us in a tempting situation where we are FORCED to sin. He promises we will not be tempted beyond what we can bear. Part of this process is seeking wisdom from God, and thinking of God-honoring solutions to get us through.

Deuteronomy 8:2 “You shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.”

I Corinthians 6:18-19; I Corinthians 6:23-24 “Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” vs. 23-24 “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.”

I Corinthians 10:12-13 “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall. No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.”

How to Cook a Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher, attacked my curiosity when I saw the title amongst the cookbooks at the local library.

(My faithful readers know that book titles have a strange power over me - sometimes with life changing results.)

First published in 1942, when wartime shortage were at their worst, the premise is learning to make due and, more importantly, be content with very little.

The “wolf” is a metaphor for the feelings of poverty, particularly the growling of an empty stomach.

Do you know anyone who lived through the Great Depression? Perhaps a mother or grandmother?

Reading this book is bringing back memories of my dear late grandmother-in-law, Trudy Seymour. My eyes well with tears even as I write her name. She was the queen of thriftiness. She scrimped, saved and rationed everything she had. Her basement was stocked with enough food to feed a small army, with everything from canned vegetables to Crystal Pepsi (that had been discontinued years before). She was also notably generous.

Maybe you have a Grandma Trudy in your life. This quote will make you love and appreciate them all the more:

There are very few men and women, I suspect, who cooked and marketed their way through the past war without losing forever some of the nonchalant extravagance of the twenties. They will feel, until their final days on earth, a kind of culinary caution: butter, no matter how unlimited, is a precious substance not lightly to be wasted; meats, too, and eggs, and all the far -brought spices of the world, take on a new significance, having once been so rare. And, that is good, for there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself. When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts.

For all the self-help books out there on the self-imposed woes of managing greed and excess, this book is convicting, refreshing and even freeing.

I’m only into the second chapter, “How to Be Sage Without Hemlock”, which deglamorizes the influence of *”slick magazines” on the housewife. Instead of making simple, hearty meals, wives are faced with the panic of trying to fashion a gourmet experience at every meal. Fisher writes about the expectation that it creates, even in our young children. She noted that children growing up with plenty say things like “what kind of pudding will we have after dinner?” as if they have a right to dessert.

She writes about meal planning rituals, “You read magazine articles filled with complicated charts and casual references to thiamin, riboflavin, non-organic nutritional nutritional essentials and International Units. You try to be serious about them all, and with a dictionary and a pencil you fill in at least the first week on a monthly chart, putting little circles, triangles and arrows for minerals and vitamins and such, until you see practically the same chart in a rival magazine and realize that it has switched symbols on you.”

While her words may seem harsh and even cynical, I do think they are a wake up call. How true are her words! I confess that I have been brought to tears while hiding behind my stacks of magazines and cookbooks, wishing that I had more free time. I do believe that women should strive for excellence as they serve their family - but as I read this, I am convicted that it may not have to involve a trip to both Wegmans and Trader Joe’s to find expensive, rare ingredients for each everyday meal on the menu.

Her answer is to create simple, healthy meals (for which she provides recipes throughout the book) and to have so much simple food on the table that people can concentrate on the fellowship and not on being amateur food critiques.

Better is a dish of vegetables where love is
Than a fattened ox served with hatred. - Proverbs 15:17

* This is unbelievably funny to me - at the same time I was writing this, my husband was upstairs making this comment on my Martha Stewart magazine collection. And no, dear, if you’re reading this, it does not necessarily follow from the above epiphany that I will be canceling my subscription any time soon

How often when they find a sage,
As sweet as Socrates or Plato;
They hand him hemlock for his wage,
Or bake him like a sweet potato!

-from Taking the Longer View by American humorist Don Marquis

I woke up this morning around 5am and noticed something was wrong - NO HEAT!

Overnight, we had quite a snow storm (it’s still snowing, actually). These things never happen on mild-weathered days.

Not wanting to cause mass-panic, I put an extra blanket on each kid and let them sleep.

It was cold but bearable, so I waited till 8am to call the repairman.

Despite the snowy roads, the repairman was here within an hour. He flushed out the clogged hoses that circulate the water in our radiators through the boiler and then waited for the water to heat and the radiators began to warm.

This isn’t the first time that it was clogged.

A year a ago last week, we had the same thing happen.

Tom was in Japan. It was below freezing outside and very windy.

The children and I had been visiting at my in-laws and we came home around 10pm. After getting the kids in bed, I sat down to go over the bills and realized it was quite cold!

I tried to figure it out for about an hour. I replaced the batteries in the thermostat for good measure, checked to make sure all the switches were “on” and bled the air in the radiators.

I couldn’t think of anything else I could do on my own to fix the problem and finally called the the repairman at 11:30pm.

He came over and it took about three hours to fix. The clog was in a little hidden hose and was very hard to find.

When he found it, he emptied the debris, which was quite substantial compared to this year’s, into my utility sink.

The next afternoon, I was rinsing out the sink and the water wasn’t draining. The debris wouldn’t “tap out” of the strainer into the trash. I had to clean it out by hand.

I pinched the slimy blackness between my fingers. It crunched.

Instantly, I realized what it was: two dead mouse skeletons in a compacted furry dirty mush. Ooo… I shudder just thinking about it. I picked the little bones out of the holes in the strainer and then bleached my hands. I avoided eating finger food for a while after that!

Well, I’m praising God the house is warming up. Now it’s time to go play in the snow!

If anyone in eastern Pennsylvania is looking for a heating and air conditioning company (they both install systems and repair them), I recommend Absolute Heating & Cooling in Parkesburg. Both times we called them, they were prompt when called and tenacious until the job was complete. The employees are professional and kind. Today, the guy didn’t seem to mind that the children sat on the steps and watched him while he worked. He answered all their questions about the heater, and even laughed at the 20 “Why did the chicken cross the road?” joke variations they told him.

Let’s just say that there are some toddler-created poop messes that, when you see them, you just know that there is NO WAY to clean them up without getting said fecal matter on your hands… and maybe your favorite jeans.

Today I am thankful for sweet-smelling, deep cleaning hand soap, Arm & Hammer HE laundry soap, and my faithful GE Frontloading washing machine - which is certainly the best tool for the job.

Oh yes, and I’m thankful for my stinky little guy… but I sure hope that he tries a little harder to hit the potty next time! And, if the poor fellow doesn’t, that he’ll remember to call me from the bathroom instead of freaking out and tracking his mess across the oriental rug, down the steps, all the way to the dining room. This way, perhaps the other children won’t have to step in it as they try to be (read fight over) the first to inform me about the event.

I think it’s time to go back and read the “poop mess” referencing, “If You Give a Mom A Cookie”, which is, coincidentally, located in my links

By the way, I did find a remedy for ‘potty talk’ : Make the offending kid HELP with the cleaning the poop mess. They truly just don’t understand the meaning of the words coming out of their mouths without this experience. And, upon the threat of having to clean up the next poop mess - because there will always be a next time - it does cause them to think twice before joking about poop. Oh yeah, and if you’re lucky, they’ll tell the other kids about their horrible experience and suddenly the poop-jokes will disappear… for a little while at least. No worries, though. So long as there are little ones in the house, there will always be the looming threat of “next time”.

This morning, I dug up every last dandelion in the back yard - and left all the wild violets behind.

Does anyone else have a special place in their heart for flowering weeds? I once dug up many violets in the yard and lined the borders of my flowerbeds - that’s how much I love them
I always think of this verse when I look at my lawn, dotted with flowering weeds:
(more…)

I heard Al Gore’s presentation on global warming. While many politicians and commentators laughed at Gore, I believe that we’ll see a trend from businesses trying to become more environmentally conscious, and I think they’ll get more media coverage. Businesses doing more to take care of the earth isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

I’m not a scientist, and I know that there are Christians who believe that global warming is real and there are those Christians who refuse to take a stand on the issue.

Honestly, I don’t know enough about earth science to debate whether or not global warming is real. But, I do not see a problem with Christians thinking about the environment in the sense that we are stewards of the earth.

(I did mention the book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger earlier in my blog. It was the book that I was reading when I met my husband. I just can’t bring myself to fully agree with Sider to say that it is sinful to be wealthy or condemn people who own SUVs - I have one, we fit seven people in it, and it keeps us safe on icy roads. Sider’s goals are admirable, but his applications and conclusions about sinfulness are off. Yet, there are few Christians who have have written about poverty and the environment, so he has become an “expert” by default.)

Certainly being a good steward means that we should do what we can to be less wasteful. I don’t understand why stewardship principles have to be thrown out just because people may or may not believe that global warming is real, or that to be environmentally conscious that you have to worship the earth. I believe that taking care of the earth is a way that we can show our appreciation to God for His provision.
(more…)

Currently, I’m working on regrouping after having baby #5.

The Organized Home website - complete with free printables to help plan and organize everything from cooking to cleaning to homeschooling to shopping - has been an inspiration today.