——— A Message To Christian Women ———
We continue from where we left off regarding the management of time. Everybody who lives in a home has some responsibilities, some more than others. Whether you are a single woman living a alone, a single woman living with family, a single parent, or a married woman, you have your chores cut out for you. This segment is on handling various domestic responsibilities.
1. PLANNING: Plan the use of your time and apportion time for everything. You cannot do it all. If you do not have help, you cannot wash everyday, clean up everyday, cook, as well as fulfil the demands of your work each day. Have a private roster to ensure you have meals, you clean and wash, even iron, and still have time to be social with your family and with friends.
2. HOUSEWORK: Don’t try to be Superwoman, if you can get help to take care of your family, take it. That should include getting your husband (if you are married), to help you with what he can willingly contribute. If you can afford house-help, by all means get one. You need all the help you can get. Do not allow people who turn their noses at getting help keep you from doing so. Your life is full, and anything that helps you to reduce stress should be welcome. Please let your children when they are old enough to help with house chores, do so. They will not die if they do household work. While it will free up time for you, will also be helping them for their own later lives.
3. STRATEGIES: Learn to create shortcuts for yourself. Make use of your freezer (or the freezer part of your fridge). Cook for the week and store for use during the week. If your husband insists on eating a freshly cooked meal everyday, make sure that you keep things partly prepared in your freezer. That is to say, if you do your shopping at the weekend, spend time to either cook stews and soups or simply wash and cut your fish and meat, and vegetables grind your vegetables so that putting them together into a fresh meal will demand little effort and will not drain you. Don’t go to work, come home and cook from scratch. If you do that, you will do no-one any favours. That includes you. You cannot spend quality time with your husband (and/or children) when you fall asleep right after you eat and wash up. In addition you will put on unhealthy fat. Don’t.
4. PARAMETERS: If you are self-employed, set parameters. For example, the fact that as a hairdresser you work from home does not mean that you work all the time and that your customers can come to you at unreasonable hours. Learn to nicely, sweetly and politely communicate your working hours. Once in a while, if a customer is in a real bind you can relax them, but that should be the exception, not the norm.
Plan your life, girl!
