Happy Homemaking: 10 Practical Tips for a Joyful Home

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Being a homemaker is so special. We get to set the tone for our homes. We get to choose to complain about the dishes and laundry and moody toddler, or rejoice in a kitchen to cook in, morning sunshine streaming through the windows, and children to hug. And while happy homemaking is a CHOICE, there are also so many things we can do to make it even more enjoyable!

We can choose to be joyful in a chaotic home where nothing seems to have a “spot”, the laundry is never caught up, clutter abounds, and we don’t know what to cook for dinner. But it’s much easier to choose to be joyful while also managing the home well with systems, routines, beauty, and room for creativity!

Being a wife, mother, and homemaker is my absolute favorite thing. Waking up each morning with children to snuggle and read to, goals to complete, a garden to enjoy, meals to make, and rhythms to fall into makes the days fly. There’s nothing I’d rather be doing!

If you feel like homemaking seems a bit like drudgery, is too overwhelming, or leaves no room for creativity, I hope these tips can help. Sometimes tweaking just one thing can give us the momentum we need to start making changes that eventually make a big difference.

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10 Tips for Happy Homemaking

1. Set Goals

Small goals and large goals! We were created to create and to be productive. When there’s nothing “bigger” we’re working toward, the days can begin to feel drudgerous sometimes.

You don’t have to dedicate hours per day to additional projects, but choose something you care about and work toward it, even if it’s just a little bit each day.

Ideas for goals:

A certain number of books to read in a year
A skill to learn (sewing, knitting, an instrument, a cooking skill, gardening…)
A business idea
An event or group to organize (i.e. a neighborhood moms group, a simple nature walk with friends with littles, or a monthly visit to a nursing home)

2. Make Your Everyday Life Enjoyable

Work to create a life that doesn’t make you feel like you need to get out of the house constantly or always be looking forward to the next vacation. Add helpful rhythms into your day, create motivating goals, make your home as beautiful as you can, invest in your family and community, train your children so that they’re fun and enjoyable to be around.

3. Put Some Creativity Into Each Day

Routines are wonderful (and I might argue, essential), but that doesn’t mean every day has to be exactly the same. Make sure there is some sort of creativity in your days, whether it’s some sort of craft, gardening, writing, decorating, or just enjoying the process of making dinner for your family.

flowers in front of window of wood sided cottage

4. Declutter and Organize

Part of making your home a place you love to be is also making it a place that’s not overwhelming. Everything in your space should have a place. If it doesn’t, it’s either time for better organization systems or (better yet), time for it to go!

Get rid of clothing you haven’t worn in the last year.

Remove kitchen tools that aren’t essential.

Children only need about 5 outfits. Get rid of the rest!

Don’t be afraid to throw away junk or clutter that doesn’t have a purpose in your home.

Make your home a place that can’t get so messy that it takes all of your mental strength to gear up to pick it up. Keep what you need and donate (or throw away) the rest.

5. Cultivate Community

A home is meant to be shared. Cultivate community wherever you are. Be involved in your local church body. Get to know your neighbors. Find like-minded women and get together with them regularly. Make time for others who may not have many friends. Host a potluck. Have an acquaintance over for tea or a family over for dessert.

Invite as much as you can, even if you’re busy with littles and lots to do around the home. People want to be loved and much prefer genuine friendship over a perfect home.

6. Stay Busy (And Put Your Phone Away)

We live in a time where so much is done for us. All we have to do is stick our dirty laundry in a machine, and it gets washed. Or throw meat in a crock pot, and it’s ready a few hours later. Or turn on a robot vacuum, and the floor is clean.

Sometimes we feel overwhelmed, but are really not busy enough.

And a lot of that overwhelm comes from the constant stimulus coming at us from screens.

Put your phone away and fill the day up with things that actually matter—time with your kids and spouse, sunshine, cleaning and creating, etc. You will notice a mental difference right away!

Tip: If you struggle with checking your phone many more times per day than you want to, find a spot that’s out of the way and not obviously visible (in other words, not the kitchen counter) and set it there. A top shelf works well. Don’t pick it up unless you genuinely need to use it for something.

7. Choose Joy in Laundry and Dishes

Have you ever been on vacation, eating too many meals out or packed sandwiches, and just wished for your own refrigerator, stove, and kitchen sink?

Having food to cook and appliances to cook it on is such a gift.

As is having drawers full of laundry to wash and fold.

Find ways to enjoy it! Play games, seeing how fast you can wash the dishes, or challenging your child to see who can find and fold the most pieces of her clothing in the basket of clean laundry.

8. Carve In Time for Rest

Plan rest into your days and your week. Part of happy homemaking is knowing that you’ll have time to take a break from your labors. For moms especially, planning rest is crucial.

For our family, weekly Lord’s Day rest on Sundays is vital to starting the week off rested and filled.

But even during the busy days of raising four littles, there’s (usually) 30-60 minutes of morning quiet time before the kids wake up for reading the Bible and planning the day, quiet time/naps for littles from 1-3pm, and some quiet after 8pm when all the kids are in bed.

beautiful kitchen with sunlight streaming through the window

However this looks for you, figure out how to schedule in times where you can sit down, read, and rest for a bit.

9. Create Systems That Work for Your Family

Life is a lot less stressful when you know where things will fit in! For example:

Laundry system. Whether it means throwing one load in each morning or dedicating a couple hours to laundry each Saturday, find a system that works for you so you know it will get done.
Meal system. A routine for meal planning and grocery shopping means you don’t have to spend mental energy figuring out what to cook each day.
Family time. Schedule it in! Our family runs multiple businesses, so the work could literally never end. But every night from 5:30ish-8ish is dinner and family time. There are very few exceptions to this.
Scheduling. Physical calendars and a simple spiral planning notebook do the trick for us. Whether you use paper or a Google calendar, find a way to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Decluttering. Stuff always seems to accumulate. Create a system to get it out! This could be anything from a quarterly review of everyone’s closets to a monthly donation box that you fill throughout the weeks.

10. Have a Rhythm

Whether you are single, married, or have a slew of littles, having a rhythm for the day gives purpose and helps to avoid wasting time or a lot of mental energy trying to figure out what’s next.

Of course, a rhythm doesn’t mean that you’ll never be spontaneous or do something different for the day, but it provides a structure to anchor the days and to go back to on days that are different.