Shannon asked:
How do you think growing up in your family prepared you for being a homemaker? Furthermore, what tips would you offer mothers like myself, who want to be the kind of mother yours was for you?
My mother and I sat down awhile back to reflect upon this very question. This is the list we compiled with just a few ideas of things she emphasized in my training. This resource is usual for mothers but the first half was written originally addressed to daughters with ideas and suggestions on how to use your single years to glorify the Lord while preparing to be homemakers. The tendency I believe is to get too focused on preparing to be married that we lose sight of some valuable skills that can be learned in serving others. If you are a single young lady, please read on as well! It is a high and wonderful calling to prepare little homemakers! Above all, the goal is to prepare daughters that first love Jesus, love the home and His beautiful design for placing us there, but also love to give their single years to serve and bless others!
1. Read good biblical books on womanhood and homemaking (i.e. Biblical Womanhood in the Home, 
Feminine Appeal, etc.) Daughters should prayerfully ask how they can begin applying these principles now with their fathers, brothers, etc.
2. Find a family in the church with small children whom you can serve on a regular basis.
There were many abundant opportunities in my teens to help sit with a family during the church service and help care for children (as we include all the children in our Sunday services). I also enjoyed being a mother’s helper on a regular basis by going over to a families’ home and serving them (cleaning, entertaining children, organizing, etc). These were wonderful opportunities to prepare me in my homemaking, service, and child caring skills. Giving your daughter opportunities to serve will teach her the value and delight in serving others and not just focusing on ourselves. Use your single years to serve others and you will be greatly blessed!
3. Find an area that you are passionate about that you can serve in the church. (i.e. a book study, missions, etc.) How has the Lord gifted you? Where do you see a need that you could fill in the church? As a daughter, discuss these things with your parents and prayerfully evaluate how you could use your skills in service to others under the leadership of a godly older man (whether it be your father or some other man in the church). I was burdened with a desire to stir up a heart for missions in the church, and thus I put my administrative skills to work by organizing mission trips, activities and events. I also had a passion for young ladies while in my late teens and loved to teach. I started a young lady Bible study (for ages 10-up) which met twice a month and we discussed all sorts of Biblical issues that correlate to their different struggles. We memorized Proverbs 31 together, had many a tea party together, made various crafts and also included service projects where we would prepare meals for families in need, doing housecleaning projects together, singing at a nursing home, etc. This was a wonderfully fruitful ministry for two years prior to getting married.
4. Learn how to serve your daddy. This is the best way to prepare to serve your future husband. Read So Much More by the Botkin sisters and their recent video called Return of the Daughters. These are excellent resources for stirring up a heart to serve your fathers. What better way to prepare to be a wife and homemaker? Ask your daddy how you can pray for him and help fulfill his vision for your family. I learned bookkeeping skills to help serve my daddy in managing his business. I continue serving him in this way to this day!
5. Learn how to cook healthy on a low budget. Sue Gregg’s cooking course Baking with Whole Grains is a wonderful resource for a high school curriculum. My mom, sisters and I went through this course together prior to getting married in more flexible approach. It is a huge resource for learning how to cook nutritionally, including soaking, sprouting, bread making, and a wealth of further resources. This course is great for anyone on the path to healthy eating! Learning how to menu plan is another important skill to learn. My mom would menu plan weekly and taught us this skill. Each of us girls would be included on the schedule for preparing a dinner once a week as well.
6. Learn how to organize. Confessions of an Organized Homemaker: The Secrets of Uncluttering Your 
Home and Taking Control of Your Life was a book my mom required of me to read. Learning basic organization skills was very helpful in preparing to manage my own home. Each of my siblings and I had assigned jurisdiction areas in the home. We each had our own bedrooms to maintain in addition to one other area of the home (i.e. mine was the living room). Each morning we were assigned to clean up that area for inspection. We had a limited amount of time to clean up before the “inspector” came. Mom or another sibling would inspect the room and if it met their approval we would receive 5 points. After collecting a total of 25 “5 points”, we would receive a $5 gift card to Barnes and Nobles. This was a great way to maintain our home and also encourage a love for reading!
7. Teach a class. Learn how to organize materials to impart something to others. Teaching a home school course to my siblings and neighbor children was an effective way to learn how to teach important skills and knowledge to others. I taught my two favorite subjects (creation science and geography) and always learned more from it myself than my students. This was great preparation for my own children’s home educating in the future! It was also a great way to build relationships with my siblings. They still talk about it to this day! This was part of my own home school education. What subjects do you enjoy or skills do you possess that others might need? Sewing, cooking, tutoring, etc.
8. Compile favorite family recipes into a cookbook. This was a great resource that I prepared prior to getting married. I went through all my mom’s cookbooks and recipe cards and compiled them together in a Word document. I printed it out and gave a copy to my sister-in-law, mom & sisters and myself.
9. Learn how to schedule your time. My mom used the Managers of the Home resource by the Maxwells to help get us all on a daily schedule with schooling, house cleaning, etc. This was a great means of keeping the home peaceful but also taught us the value of a schedule for keeping motivated and getting things accomplished. My mom included me in the process of making a household schedule. Another wonderful read I read on the topic is: Shopping for Time: How to Do It All and NOT Be Overwhelmed by Carolyn Mahaney.
10. Learn other basic skills: basic mending/sewing, hospitality, decorating, etc. My mom did not teach me every little skill such as knitting, crotcheting, scrapbooking, gardening…but I felt like I had the basics down and could explore these other areas on my own if necessary. The above nine points where far more beneficial to focus on. You can’t teach everything!
Further tips for mommies…
1. Read good books together with your daughter! We spent a lot of time together with m
other and daughters reading these books on Biblical girlhood and womanhood from our early teens. They are in order as to how we read them, as they progress in maturity with each title. I also used the first three titles for my young ladies Bible study.
Beautiful Girlhoodby Karen Andreola with the Companion discussion guide
Raising Maidens of Virtue: A Study of Feminine Loveliness for Mothers and Daughters by Stacy McDonald
His Chosen Bride: Living as Daughter of the King, and Bride of Christ by Jennifer Lamp
Girl Talk: Mother-Daughter Conversations on Biblical Womanhood by Carolyn Mahaney & daughters
We also used 
Polished Cornerstones extensively as a Bible study and character training resource. This book has an endless supply of practical application activities.
2. Include your daughter in your homemaking endeavors - let her cook and bake with you! Give her a little bit of her own domain to manage and maintain. Give her the freedom to use her gifts in the home. Is she gifted in creativity? Give her the resources to help decorate the home. Organization? Give her a little space to organize to her tastes. This will help encourage these giftings and help them blossom and grow!
3. Take her out to coffee dates – my mom would take us regularly out to a special coffee date and just spend time talking together. This does not have to be limited to coffee, but scheduling in time to just be one on one with your daughter is important.
4. Give her lots of praise and support! Love her, praise her for her progress and steps towards godliness, and cheer her on! Never stop encouraging her onward in using her gifts to develop her homemaking and service skills!
Above all, remember that your example, attitude and enthusiasm in the home will greatly impact your daughter’s desire to make it her domain as well! If you are a joyful homemaker, she will become one as well! Make the Lord Jesus your refuge and source of strength every step of the way, and don’t give up! It is worth it! Your daughters will eventually rise up and call you blessed (Proverbs 31:28), as it has only been in the last two or three years since entering into the roll of a homemaker that my eyes have truly been open to see the treasure of the mother that I have and desire to express that appreciation ever more!
I am so extremely grateful for the blessing of a mother who had a heart for the Lord, who read his Word faithfully, and taught us to treasure it. One of the greatest things I admire about my mom is her heart for prayer and her quickness to repent when she stumbled and sinned before us. She was always prompt of confessing her sin and seeking forgiveness. This is such a significant trait for a mother to possess! Not perfection, but faithfulness and a willingness to repent.
Other reading…
New 2 your blog. Great insight. Thanks for sharing.
I loved this article. It was just what I was looking for. I will totally be checking out the books you suggested.
I have lived most of my life quite feministically, but that mindset has changed quite dramatically for me recently. I am 29 & single, & for the past 6-7 yrs have been quite happy in my singleness to the point of not really caring to every get married, much less have children. Then, out of the blue, about 3 months or so ago, something changed. It wasn’t all of a sudden but one day I just realized I was looking up sites on homemaking (cooking, cleaning, organizing, etc…). When I realized what I was doing, I was agast. “Was I actually considering the idea of becoming a housewife one day or even a stay-at-home mom?!” Then I got this peace & excitement about the idea come over me that I never thought I would feel towards family life. I’m still single with no prospects at the moment but I had also recently came to the same conclusion as you, that I should be using this time to prepare for homemaking. Whether I am ever blessed with a husband or not, I can use these servant & hospitality skills now & in the future.
Living alone & rarely ever having company, I have let my apartment go. I confess, I am lazy & messy. However, I feel that God is calling me to get my life sorted out now, to start practicing the art of homemaking now so that that is one less hurdle I may have to face as a newlywed. Last night I ordered several books on the subject of home organization & homemaking and today, I spent the whole day cleaning my closet & bedroom. It still is quite messy but it is a start.
If I am ever blessed with a husband & he supports the idea of me being a housewife, my main concern will be with dealing with my parents. They are Christians & want the best for me but my mom is a bit of a feminist & my dad is often concerned about finances. Basically, neither would want to see me “waste my career/degree.” Anyway, that is just a bridge I’ll have to cross if & when I get there. I guess I better start praying about that now.
So sorry this is long. I aspire to write one day, so I use that as an excuse for long emails & responses. Anyway, one last thing. I’ll look in some of your other posts but I have been looking for a list of areas of discipline for homemakers; such as finances, cooking, cleaning, etc… I guess those are the big three but is there anything you would add to the list? I do realize, kids would be added if there were children, but other than them or even including them, what would you add? I’m a planner/researcher so when ever I take on a project (learning to be a good homemaker) I make folders with plans in it. In this case I would probably have a folder for finances, one for cooking, & one for cleaning. That is just so you can have a glimpse into my psychosis.
New 2 your blog. Great insight. Thanks for sharing.
A wonderful post, and great ideas! Thank you so much for the recommendations and resources and inspiration!
Thank you for this post, Lindsay! I’ve been pondering alot recently about how to further integrate homemaking skills into my life while I’m studying nursing, and I found what you had to share very insightful! I’d love to chat with you at church sometime and get more ideas :0).
This is great, Lindsay! It’s so good to be able to hear how your mom raised and trained you, as it really helps to give me vision and more ideas to consider as I am raising my daughter. I wasn’t trained in homemaking or being a wife and mother at all, and somedays it is so difficult trying to figure things out and break that cycle.
I am so blessed to be learning now, while my daughter is young, the things that I can do to train her well and encourage her towards Biblical womanhood. Go give your mom a huge for me, ok?
Thank you Lindsay for another inspiring post! The Lord really uses your heart to help others. I do not have any girls, but it ws wonderful for me to read!
Blessings!
Wonderful post! As I raise my daughters I’m looking for all the help I can get. I was raised in a Christian home, but the concept of true Biblical Womanhood was never taught.
One last thing – do you have tips for raising boys also?
Actually, I was just thinking of getting my mom-in-law (who raised 7 boys) to write a post for me on that topic…stay tuned!
What an awesome blessing that you had a mother that took so much time and effort to train her children as your mother did. It is so lacking in today’s society. I really had to learn from scratch how to be a wife and mother because my mother believed it more important to get an education than to cook and clean and learn how to care for a family and home.
Excellent post today! I have been blogstalking for a while and never commented. I found you while looking for a bread recipe. Of course, that is just the way the Lord led me to you. But, I have loved reading your blog, not to mention my bread : ) Today’s post is very motivational and inspiring. Thank you! It looks like I have a lot of reading to do! I also forwarded this to my mom and all the young mothers I care about. I know it will bless them too.
Wonderful, Lindsay! I’ll be keeping this post. There are so many things my mother did right, but also so many things I’ve struggled to learn. I’m going to keep these things in mind for my 3 daughters.
Thank you so much for posting this! My daughter is almost three, and I worry sometimes about how I should go about teaching her biblical womanhood, as I am honestly only recently learning it myself! Unfortunately, my mother did not instill those values and teachings in me, so it was an adult venture for myself, and I want to ensure that I prepare my daughter for her future husband!
Lindsay,
Blessings,
The information in this post is priceless. Thank you so much for answering my questions; it’s exactly what I needed. I will be referring to this over and over again, and passing this along to other moms (and daughters!) as well. Again, thank you – and thank YOU, “Lindsay’s Mom”!!
Shannon