Home Management

What is home? Is it (as Wikipedia says) a place in which an individual or a family can rest and store personal property, complete because it contains sanitary facilities and a means of preparing food? Is it (as far too many holiday songs croon) the place we go to for Christmas? Is it the building in which a handful of people who happen to be related sleep and eat, only to scatter to the four winds when the morning comes?

Home certainly includes a building (for at the very least it must provide shelter of some sort to its inhabitants), whether yours is a mansion with a three car garage or in a suburb looking remarkably similar to all the others on the street; whether it is down a rocky country driveway with no others in sight or in the middle of an apartment building in the middle of a city. Home will involve walls and roofs and pipes which must be maintained and repaired. This physical structure will also feel more “home-like” when it is decorated to reflect the personalities of the people who reside in it. Cooking, organization, and money will all be concerns in the running and managing of this place called “home.”

But could home be more than just a building? Could it be a culture, a mini society, one that shapes the people in it so that they can go out and shape the world? Could it be a haven in which those people rest and rejuvenate their spirits? Could they invite others into this haven, thus extending that peace beyond the walls of the building that holds this “home”?

Home is a place in which people live: their lives are shaped in the walls that make up their home. Their habits are formed by the way in which routines are lived out; their personalities are fashioned by the decorations adorning each room; and their characters are established so that they will face the world either with joy, peace and confidence or with resentment, irritation and insecurity. Home is where the transformation of the world begins.

C. S. Lewis said: “The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only—and that is to support the ultimate career.” Our culture wants us to forget that, to think of the home as a boring place and to think of homemaking as a degrading way to spend a life. Consumerism, commercialism, and careerism all breed dissatisfaction with the home. As Christians we should reject that and make our homes into places of contentment, love and service from which the inhabitants can go out to conquer the world.

Review by C. Hollis Crossman
C. Hollis Crossman used to be a child. Now he is a husband and father, teaches adult Sunday school in his Presbyterian congregation, and likes weird stuff. He might be a mythical creature, but he's definitely not a centaur. Read more of his reviews here.

 

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"I Don't Know How to Cook" Book
by Mary-Lane Kamberg
2nd edition from Adams Media Corp.
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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
by Barbara Kingsolver
from Harper Perennial
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Art of Chinese Cuisine
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Art of Making Wine
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Bread, Bread, Bread
by Ann Morris
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Building Her House
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Celebrating Biblical Feasts
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Christian Homemaker's Handbook
by Dorothy Kelley Patterson, Pat Ennis
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Confessions of a Happily Organized Family
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Cooking Green
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Creative Counterpart
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Curious Cook
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Do I Dust or Vacuum First?
by Don Aslett
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Face to Face
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Family Celebrations
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Flourish
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Food Anatomy
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Food for Thought
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For the Family's Sake
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Green Smoothie Revolution
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Healing Foods
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Hidden Art of Homemaking
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High Performance Cookbook
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Home Comforts
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Home: A Short History of an Idea
by Witold Rybczynski
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Hospitality Commands
by Alexander Strauch
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Hungry Scientist Handbook
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If I'm Diapering a Watermelon, Then Where'd I Leave the Baby?
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In Defense of Food
by Michael Pollan
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$18.00
International Cookbook for Kids
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Joy at the End of the Tether
by Doug Wilson
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Kathy Cooks: Vegetarian, Low Cholesterol
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Life Together
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Lifegiving Home
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Lifegiving Table
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Lip Smackin' Vegetarian Backpackin'
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Little House Cookbook
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Loaves of Fun
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Lobscouse and Spotted Dog
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Nautical Cookbook for 9th-Adult
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Log Cabin Cooking
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Ministries of Mercy
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25th anniversary from Herald Press
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My Life For Yours
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New Way to Cook
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Omnivore's Dilemma
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Omnivore's Dilemma - Young Reader's Edition
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Perla Meyers' Seasonal Kitchen
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Pig Out?
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Power Eating
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Practicing Hospitality
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Professionalizing Motherhood
by Jill Savage
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Real {Fast} Food
by Trina Holden
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Real Food Revival
by Ann Clark Espuelas, Sherri Brooks Vinton
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Redwall Cookbook
by Brian Jacques
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Second Helpings of Roast Chicken
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Shopping for Time
by Carolyn Mahaney, Nicole Whitacre, et al.
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$12.99
Simple Foods for the Pack
A Sierra Club Outdoor Adventure Guide
by Claudia Axcell, Vikki Kinmont Kath, Diana Cooke
3rd edition from Sierra Club Books
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Sneaky Chef
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Spicy Camp Cookbook
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Supper of the Lamb
by Robert Farrar Capon
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Trailside's Trail Food
by John Viehman, Editor
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Treasuring God in Our Traditions
by Noël Piper
from Crossway Books
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U. S. History Cookbook
by Joan D'Amico and Karen Eich Drummond
from John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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What Einstein Told His Cook
by Robert L. Wolke, with recipes by Marlene Parrish
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What Is a Family?
by Edith Schaeffer
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What's Cooking in Chemistry?
by Hubertus P. Bell
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