Homemakers-in-Training: The Heavenly, the Hopeless, and Me

people my age have trouble figuring out what to do with their lives.

There are three kinds of women in America.

There are those who are raised to be homemakers, who can cook and clean and organize and know exactly what to do when faced with scraped knees or algebra homework.

There are those who are not raised to be homemakers, and have to learn the hard way - after marriage, when Easy Mac and ignoring the clutter are no longer enough.

Then there's those who are in between.  That'd be me, lovely readers.


I'm great with kids.  I know how to make salads, enchiladas, and rice; I can bake a mean banana bread (from a box, but these days even that's an accomplishment apparently).  I've very proud of my bedroom, which I actually decorated myself and manage to keep clean.  It's like my own little house.

But I've never couponed or made a meal plan in my life.  I feel overwhelmed by a cookbook.  My number of fingers is greater than the number of loads of laundry I've ever done.  My dad is better with a sewing machine than I am.  (Well, okay, he's better than my mom, too.  I'd say it must be hereditary, but my grandma's a wizard.  Maybe it skips a generation and I'm just a late bloomer?  A girl can hope!)

So I've decided to take matters into my own hands and improve these things, or at least some of them, before I'm thirty and wondering why I call myself a homemaker.

Right now, this takes the form of creating a "household planner/binder" involving schedules, cleaning checklists (for my bedroom, I guess), and meal plans (hopefully that I can try out on my guinea-pig brothers).  To start off, I've hopped over to Only a Breath, one of the few Mom blogs I actually read.  I'm really glad I've been subscribing to her posts so long, because I know it's a place I can go for tips I'll understand on things I used to think were only for minivan-driving, three-kids-or-more-raising, coupon-blogging moms.

Sadly, this may result in actually getting my driver's license (for the purpose of grocery shopping) which my parents have been pushing me towards since I turned fifteen.

Can I just say that I hate growing up?