The Best Homemaker Quotes: Encouragement for Homemakers
If you are a homemaker, chances are you’ve occasionally felt isolated, underappreciated, and maybe even downright unimportant. It’s so easy to forget that our jobs as the makers of our homes are not only important, but essential.
Here’s a collection of some of my favorite homemaker quotes which help to inspire and encourage me when I’m feeling as though my work doesn’t matter.
Related: Homemaking: Your Complete Guide to Household Management
This first collection of quotes is by a favorite author. Some of these are from her well-known Little House series, but they all serve as reminders of why I’ve always wished I could live like the Ingalls!
Laura Ingalls Wilder
“The true way to live is to enjoy every moment as it passes, and surely it is in the everyday things around us that the beauty of life lies.”
“Ma liked everything on her table to be pretty.”
Little House in the Big Woods
“The attic and the cellar were full of good things once more, and Laura and Mary had started to make patchwork quilts. Everything was beginning to be snug and cozy again.”
Little House in the Big Woods
“What must be done is best done cheerfully.”
On the Banks of Plum Creek
“It belittles us to think of our daily tasks as small things, and if we continue to do so, it will in time make us small. It will narrow our horizon and make of our work just drudgery. There are so many little things that are really very great, and when we learn to look beyond the insignificant-appearing acts themselves to their far-reaching consequences, we will ‘despise not the day of small things.’ We will feel an added dignity and poise from the fact that our everyday round of duties is as important as any other part of the work of the world. And just as a little thread of gold, running through a fabric, brightens the whole garment, so women’s work at home, while only the doing of little things, is like the golden gleam of sunlight that runs through and brightens all the fabric of civilization.
One of my favorite homemaking books is “The Hidden Art of Homemaking.” This book is for a Christian homemaker, and not only is it inspiring, it redefines homemaking as a holy calling and heavy responsibility.
Edith Schaeffer
“I am sure that there is no place in the world where your message would not be enhanced by your making the place (whether tiny or large, a hut or a palace) orderly, artistic and beautiful with some form of creativity, some form of ‘art.’”
The Hidden Art of Homemaking
“There needs to be a homemaker exercising some measure of skill, imagination, creativity, desire to fulfill needs and give pleasure to others in the family. How precious a thing is the human family. Is it not worth some sacrifice in time, energy, safety, discomfort, work? Does anything come forth without work?”
The Hidden Art of Homemaking
“If you have been afraid that your love of beautiful flowers and the flickering flame of the candle is somehow less spiritual than living in starkness and ugliness, remember that He who created you to be creative gave you the things with which to make beauty and the sensitivity to appreciate and respond to His creation.”
The Hidden Art of Homemaking
“There is no occasion when meals should become totally unimportant. Meals can be very small indeed, very inexpensive, short times taken in the midst of a big push of work, but they should be always more than just food.”
The Hidden Art of Homemaking
“It is true that all men are created in the image of God, but Christians are supposed to be conscious of that fact, and being conscious of it should recognize the importance of living artistically, aesthetically, and creatively, as creative creatures of the Creator. If we have been created in the image of an Artist, then we should look for expressions of artistry, and be sensitive to beauty, responsive to what has been created for us”
The Hidden Art of Homemaking
J.R. Miller
“A true home is one of the most sacred of places. It is a sanctuary into which men flee from the world’s perils and alarms. It is a resting-place to which at close of day the weary retire to gather new strength for the battle and toils of tomorrow. It is the place where love learns its lessons, where life is schooled into discipline and strength, where character is molded. Few things we can do in this world are so well worth doing as the making of a beautiful and happy home. He who does this builds a sanctuary for God and opens a fountain of blessing for men. Far more than we know, do the strength and beauty of our lives depend upon the home in which we dwell. He who goes forth in the morning from a happy, loving, prayerful home, into the world’s strife, temptation, struggle, and duty, is strong–inspired for noble and victorious living.”
Home-Making
“She must look upon her home as the one spot on earth, for which she is alone responsible, and which she must cultivate well for God.”
Home-Making
“Whatever else we may slight, let it never be our home-making. If we do nothing else well in this world, let us at least build well within our own doors.”
Home-Making
“The woman who makes a sweet, beautiful home, filling it with love and prayer and purity, is doing something better than anything else her hands could find to do beneath the skies.”
Home-Making
Elizabeth George
“Homemaking is a passion you can pass on from generation to generation.”
“Time is never wasted when you use it to create a better environment for your family and for others. Home is a place where busyness is proper, called for, and desperately needed. Don’t neglect to busy yourself with your homemaking.”
“A pleasant atmosphere in the home creates a beautiful background for happy memories. Because I want the warm atmosphere and the good memories it fosters, I plan for it. I plan the meals, including how I set the dinner table and make it beautiful. I plan for order in the home, for the housework, for the laundry, and for the upkeep of our clothing so that life is calmer. I plan surprises, too, so that life at home is fun. If all the planning sounds like a lot of effort, remember that no work of art is slapdashed together. Artistry calls for planning and design, and so does the work of art called ‘Home.’”
This next author is one of my favorites to read. Her writings are encouraging – but they also leave me with the conviction that I can and must do better.
Elizabeth Elliot
“Work is a blessing. God has so arranged the world that work is necessary, and He gives us hands and strength to do it. The enjoyment of leisure would be nothing if we had only leisure.”
“The way you keep your house, the way you organize your time, the care you take in your personal appearance, the things you spend your money on, all speak loudly about what you believe. The beauty of thy peace shines forth in an ordered life. A disordered life speaks loudly of disorder in the soul.”
“This job has been given to me to do. Therefore, it is a gift. Therefore, it is a privilege. Therefore, it is an offering I may make to God. Therefore, it is to be done gladly, if it is done for Him. Here, not somewhere else, I may learn God’s way. In this job, not in some other, God looks for faithfulness.”
I never read this next author until I was a homeschooling mom, but she’s a new favorite!
Sally Clarkson
“Home is the kingdom in which we have the daily choice and power to make our tiny domain one of light or darkness.”
“I want my home to be the best place to be in the minds of my family. Peace and acceptance, excellence and a passion for living, comfort and fun. I want all these qualities to come to my children’s minds when they think about home.”
The following quotes are all from one of my all time favorite books – Little Women.
Louisa May Alcott
“Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well.”
Little Women
“The humblest tasks get beautified if loving hands do them.”
Little Women
“Go on with your work as usual, for work is a blessed solace.”
Little Women
“I do think that families are the most beautiful things in all the world!”
Little Women
“The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.”
Little Women
Various Authors
“There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.”
Thomas Wolfe
“The home is not just a place to change clothes between activities and then crash at night; rather it should be a vibrant center of education, industry, service, and worship. God created the home to be a place bursting with activity and conversation, while simultaneously providing peace and refuge.”
Zan Tyler
“I enjoy doing housework, ironing, washing, cooking, dishwashing. Whenever I get one of those questionnaires and they ask what is your profession, I always put down housewife. It’s an admirable profession, why apologize for it. You aren’t stupid because you’re a housewife. When you’re stirring the jam you can read Shakespeare.”
Tasha Tudor
“The best things in life are nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
“You are as much serving God in looking after your own children, and training them up in God’s fear, and minding the house, and making your household a church for God, as you would be if you had been called to lead an army to battle for the Lord of hosts.”
Charles Spurgeon
“I’m only a housewife, I’m afraid.” How often do we hear this shocking admission. I’m afraid when I hear it I feel very angry indeed. Only a housewife: only a practitioner of one of the two most noble professions (the other one is that of a farmer); only the mistress of a huge battery of high and varied skills and custodian of civilization itself. Only a typist, perhaps! Only a company director, or a nuclear physicist; only a barrister; only the President! When a woman says she is a housewife she should say it with the utmost pride, for there is nothing higher on this planet to which she could aspire.”
John Seymour, Forgotten Household Crafts
“I have found that there is romance in housework: and charm in it; and whimsy and humor without end. I have found that the housewife works hard, of course–but likes it. Most people who amount to anything do work hard, at whatever their job happens to be. The housewife’s job is home-making, and she is, in fact, ‘making the best of it’; making the best of it by bringing patience and loving care to her work; sympathy and understanding to her family; making the best of it by bringing patience and loving care to her work; sympathy and understanding to her family; making the best of it by seeing all the fun in the day’s incidents and human relationships. The housewife realizes that home-making is an investment in happiness. It pays everyone enormous dividends. There are huge compensations for the actual labor involved…There are unhappy housewives, of course. But there are unhappy stenographers and editresses and concert singers. The housewife whose songs I sing as I go about my work, is the one who likes her job.”
From Songs of a Housewife: Poems by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
“So what really matters? Well, housework, among other things. It is not the only thing that matters, but it does matter. It matters that people have somewhere to come home to and that there be beds and meals and space and order available there. Whether we do a lot of housework or a little of it, whether we keep house only for ourselves or for other people as well, housework forms part of the basic patterning of our lives, a pattern that we might identify as a kind of ‘litany of everyday life.’”
Margaret Kim Peterson
“Keeping a home not only requires time, energy, and creativity, but it also calls for skills and experience. I believe homemaking is an art, and to pursue any piece of art demands time and talent.”
Dorothy Kelley Patterson
“I believe that a godly home is a foretaste of heaven. Our homes, imperfect as they are, must be a haven from the chaos outside. They should be a reflection of our eternal home, where troubled souls find peace, weary hearts find rest, hungry bodies find refreshment, lonely pilgrims find communion, and wounded spirits find compassion.”
Jani Ortlund
“The ordinary arts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.”
Thomas Moore
“It’s okay to live a simple life if that is what brings you joy and peace. We are not all called to be ball-busting CEO’s, “Boss Babes,” or superstars. It’s okay to have a day that is simply filled with rhythmic chores, hobbies, hushed conversations, and peace.”
Mrs. Midwest
“Housekeeping creates cleanliness, order, regularity, beauty, the conditions for health and safety, and a good place to do and feel all the things you wish and need to do and feel in your home. Whether you live alone or with a spouse, parents, and ten children, it is your housekeeping that makes your home alive, that turns it into a small society in its own right, a vital place with its own ways and rhythms, the place where you can be more yourself than you can be anywhere else.”
Cheryl Mendelson
“I can use the house to create a home. I can offer my family, my friends, myself, and even strangers the gift of love by making them feel special when they are in my home.”
Sarah Mae, 31 Days to Clean: Having a Martha House the Mary Way
“I think I can understand that feeling about a housewife’s work being like that of Sisyphus (who was the stone rolling gentleman). But it is surely, in reality, the most important work in the world. What do ships, railways, mines, cars, government etc exist for except that people may be fed, warmed, and safe in their own homes? As Dr Johnson said, ‘To be happy at home is the end of all human endeavour’. (First to be happy, to prepare for being happy in our own real Home hereafter: second, in the meantime, to be happy in our houses.) We wage war in order to have peace, we work in order to have leisure, we produce food in order to eat it. So your job is the one for which all others exist.”
C.S. Lewis
“What you do in your house is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God. We should accustom ourselves to think of our position and work as sacred and well-pleasing to God, not on account of the position and work, but on account of the word and faith from which the obedience and the work flow.”
Martin Luther
“It’s sad if people think that’s (homemaking) a dull existence, [but] you can’t just buy an apartment and furnish it and walk away. It’s the flowers you choose, the music you play, the smile you have waiting. I want it to be gay and cheerful, a haven in this troubled world. I don’t want my husband and children to come home and find a rattled woman. Our era is already rattled enough, isn’t it?”
Audrey Hepburn
“Rain is in the forecast. A pot of coffee is brewing on the counter, and the kitchen is fragrant with apples and cinnamon. Eleanor Tomlinson’s album is playing on repeat; I could listen for the rest of my days and never tire of it. Autumn is in full swing here in Maine and it makes the rhythms of homemaking all the more joyous.”
Samantha Lindsey
“No occupation in this world is more trying to soul and body than the care of young children. What patience and wisdom, skill and unlimited love it calls for. God gave the work to mothers and furnished them for it, and they cannot shirk it and be guiltless.”
Isabella Alden and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
“Watching and learning from Mama and the other women in my family gave me a deep love for home and hearth and taking care of people. I knew from a young age that there was eternal value in those things.” From “A Little Salty to Cut the Sweet: Southern Stories of Faith, Family, and Fifteen Pounds of Bacon.”
Sophie Hudson
“I beg of you, you who could and should be bearing and rearing a family: Wives, come home from the typewriter, the laundry, the nursing, come home from the factory, the cafe. No career approaches in importance that of wife, homemaker, mother — cooking meals, washing dishes, making beds for one’s precious husband and children. Come home, wives, to your husbands. Make home a heaven for them. Come home, wives, to your children, born and unborn. Wrap the motherly cloak about you and, unembarrassed, help in a major role to create the bodies for the immortal souls who anxiously await.”
Spencer W. Kimball
“Please hear me now. I don’t believe that homemaking is all that there is. I believe that some women, many women, have been called to work and use their skills to bless others in a variety of careers. But I’m fed up with our culture making women feel like they have to work outside the home. Like raising children, producing food, loving a husband, and keeping a home isn’t enough. Because it is.“
Shaye Elliott, The Elliott Homestead
It is my sincere hope that this post has been helpful and encouraging to you. Please add your own favorite inspirational homemaking quotes in the comments! Happy Homemaking.
