Continuing Education

When I worked at the hospital, I attended Continuing Education classes every month. Granted, their purpose was mostly to "teach" us about the latest piece of extraneous paperwork that had to be completed in triplicate, or that last month's politically correct term for a given disease, socioeconomic status, or family arrangement was now offensive; nevertheless, it was part of my job to attend these classes, to learn as much as I could about my field, and to constantly look for ways to improve my job skills.

Every job has Continuing Education. Sometimes you have to be a little more proactive in finding the educational opportunities, but they're always there. I'm a homemaker now. What does Continuing Education for a homemaker look like? Well...it looks like many things. This week, for me, it looks a lot like a stack of books.


You can't go wrong with Martha, right? Just kidding. I do think that Martha (or rather, her staff) has a lot of really great homemaking ideas. Plus I love the photography.

This book...I have mixed feelings about this book. I do not appreciate the author's attitude towards homemaking. Her philosophy is that the faster we can get through meaningless housework, the faster we can get on with more important things, like careers. Rather demeaning. However, she does have good advice and ideas.

I have several books about homemaking, and I find it refreshing to thumb through them every now and again. I don't try to live by them, though. I think that would be overwhelming, impossible, and, quite frankly, wrong. It just seems that a home run solely on housekeeping technique would be devoid of...grace. Yes, that's the word I want. And housekeeping technique is really all that homemaking books can give you. So I read homemaking books to give me ideas on how to make my own all-purpose cleaner, how to restore towels to their original fluffiness, and how to arrange my broom closet. If those things ever get in the way of grace in my home, they will be thrown out the window. And if I am too blinded or stubborn to recognize my own stupidity, I trust that my family will tell me the truth...in love, of course.