Author: calicohearthome Page 1 of 2

Many changes throughout the year can affect how you use your kitchen. In the warmer months it feels natural to lean toward fresh, light foods whereas in the winter people love warm, filling foods. Going a step further, focusing on eating foods when they are in season (and preserving them for future seasons) can really help to decrease food costs. I will share a list of some of the most common produce items available each season but it is non-exhaustive and will depend some on where you live. I love to embrace seasonal eating and like to have certain focuses for each of the seasons to help take advantage of what that specific season has to offer.

Spring Seasonal Eating – Prep and Finish

Produce in Season: Asparagus, Avocados, Broccoli, Collard Greens, Kale, Peas, Spinach Strawberries, Pineapples

Spring is the season of change. Of welcoming a new year. What better time to finish off some of the foods you preserved the previous year and create more room for the coming year? So make an effort in your meal plans to use up what you have available rather than making a trip to buy something else from the grocery store. If you want some meal planning tips check out my post Meal Planning for Busy People. Even if you are going for long term storage, make sure you rotate through your stores each year, using the oldest stuff first. This way you can make sure all of your food storage stays good to eat.

One of my favorite parts of spring is planning and planting a garden. Currently for us this isn’t a traditional garden due to our living situation. Instead, we do container gardening on our front porch and plant half the front flower beds with produce instead of flowers. It is a great way to maximize space and get to have a garden without land.

Summer Seasonal Eating – Fresh from the Garden

Produce in Season: Apples, Beets, Peppers, Blueberries, Cantaloupe, Corn, Cucumber, Cherries, Summer Squash, Tomatoes, Watermelon, Zucchini

With so many fresh produce options available, this is the ideal time to eat fresh from your garden (or the farmers market) as often as possible. This is good for your health, the planet, and your budget. And I don’t know about you but in the hot weather I would pick fresh salads and fruits over heavy stews any day.

Also take advantage of chickens laying extra eggs during the summer. If you don’t have your own, check to see if any of your friends or neighbors do or if any are available fresh from your farmer’s market. We don’t currently have chickens (definitely on the homestead wish list!) but my mother in law does and she often shares the extra eggs with us during the summer months.

Autumn Seasonal Eating – Harvest and Preserve

Produce in Season: Apples, Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, Cauliflower, Grapes, Green Beans, Potatoes, Pumpkins, Sweet potatoes, Yams

Autumn is my favorite season. There is something about the harvest that always gets to me. This time of year is perfect for harvesting large amounts of food from your garden (or buying it from produce stands), eating as much as your heart desires, then preserving the rest.

Preserving methods include curing fruits and vegetables, dehydrating, freezing, and canning (both water bath canning & pressure canning). These skills are a real art and I am still working on mastering all of them but they are also so much fun and really fulfilling. Taking the time now to preserve what you can’t eat really makes a difference a few months from now when nothing is growing locally and is a cornerstone for seasonal eating. Make sure to use the best preserving options for the produce you have. For instance peach jam is perfect for canning but broccoli will really be best if frozen.

Winter Seasonal Eating – Baking and Slow Cooking

Produce in Season: Avocados, Brussels sprouts, Collard greens, Kale, Onions, Oranges, Potatoes, Pumpkins, Sweet potatoes, Yams

Winter is the perfect time to run your oven! Filled with holiday celebrations and family get togethers, there is a beautiful air of warmth during the winter. During this season, I like to spend plenty of time baking because the oven warming up the house is a positive side effect rather than a negative one as experienced during the summer. And many of the most nostalgic items from this time of year, like gingerbread cookies, roasted hams, and warming stews, require long cook times anyways. So take advantage of it!

In addition to baking and slow cooking, winter is the perfect time to enjoy all of the wonderful food that you preserved the seasons before. While those canned peaches, pickles, and jams may look beautiful on your shelf, their true purpose is to be eaten and they will bring great joy there too. It is so nice to be able to enjoy the delicious produce all year long. Don’t forget about the food you preserved in your freezer as well! And if you need or choose to supplement with grocery store produce take advantage of the foods that are still in season, even if nothing currently grows in your immediate area. Also take advantage of their freezer section where you can buy foods affordably in the off season.

Coming Together

And finding joy

I hope this guide helps you make the most of your kitchen with the changing seasons and helps you find joy in each of them. I feel that seasonal living can really help to bring the focus to the little things in life and help us fully appreciate them.

There is a lot of debate as to what homemakers “should wear”. Some people wear nothing but sweats, others are always wearing floral dresses. And there are people in both of these groups that totally rock it and feel great. Ultimately, this should be a personal choice and you shouldn’t feel pressure to dress a certain way just based on being a homemaker. Personally, my preference is to ride the line between feeling comfortable and feeling “put together”. I also don’t like wearing things that will get in the way when I am doing the tasks that I need to do for the day. So what I wear as a homemaker is going to be different on mostly cleaning days, mostly cooking days, or days that I am working outside.

Cleaning Days

For cleaning days especially, my go to are my favorite leggings. These are incredibly soft and honestly I would happily live in them permanently. They work great with a t-shirt when cleaning the house, but look nice with a blouse for out and about. And they also work great for under dresses in the fall and winter when it is cold. I feel like sometimes people are pretty judgmental about anyone who wears yoga pants or leggings on a regular basis but honestly, all that really matters is that you feel good about yourself.

Cooking Days

On cooking days, especially when we are having company over, I tend to want to dress up a little bit and wear soft dresses, like this pretty floral dress. Then I put a cute apron over it to protect it. I am currently working on sewing a different apron for each season based on this pattern. I like the vintage vibes from them and am very excited for them to be finished.

Working Outside Days

On days when I am working outside, it is all dependent on the season and the weather. In the summer I love wearing tank tops and denim shorts and just soaking in all the wonderful sunshine. It makes gardening feel almost like a vacation for me. In the fall and winter though, you can’t go wrong with classic jeans. They protect you from scuffs and if they get a little dirty, oh well.

I hope this post helps you to feel accepted and validated on whatever you choose to wear as a homemaker. And I feel like with as varied of a job as homemaking is, it makes sense to have a large amount of variation in our wardrobes. So embrace the changes! And don’t feel stuck. It doesn’t matter what other people think. What matters is how you feel, both inside and out.

I don’t always love home management but I love homemaking. I am distinguishing between these two terms because I believe that homemaking is the art of making a house feel like a home whereas home management is all of the tasks that keep a household running, including things like budgeting and meal planning. So homemaking is a part of home management, and for me, the most enjoyable part. Like I’m sure many of you do as well, I tend to romanticize homemaking with images, feelings, and smells of things like thick warm quilts, pies baking in the oven, and apple picking with my husband. So for this section the focus is on JOY! Here are a few things I’ve learned in my journey.

Work with where you are

This one has always been hard for me. I have been dreaming of my own house for years but we have yet to make it a reality. In the past, me and my husband were living in an apartment in a small city. Here we had a couple of bedrooms and bathrooms, as well as our own living room and kitchen. But a couple of years ago, we made the difficult decision to move back into my parent’s home in order to save money to eventually buy our own house. Here “our space” consists of a small bedroom where we have our bed, as well as a bean bag and tv set to function as our “living room”. The kitchen is ultimately my moms, but we can use it as we need. And the bathrooms are all shared. This has pushed me immensely to rethink my ideas around homemaking.

Ultimately homemaking is about making the most of where your are living right now, whatever that looks like. So if all you have to work with is one room, do your best to make it work. In some ways this forces you to focus on the area that would make the most of a difference to you anyways.

Embrace cooking delicious meals

When you are very busy, it can be hard to find time to dedicate to making your house feel like a home. But ultimately people need to eat. And your options are to get premade or takeout food, or cook something at home. The first two may be quicker but if those are your go to all day every day, it will end up costing you a ton and isn’t exactly feasible.

So embrace cooking at home, and try to make the best of it. Even if it is just a few times a week, try and get lost in the romance of cooking a delicious meal. This does not have to mean a difficult or time consuming dinner, just something that tastes great and can give you that sense of accomplishment and fill the house with beautiful smells. You may think you aren’t good enough of a cook. I promise that the path to becoming a great cook is simply one made by practice. Since I have embraced cooking as a hobby, I have turned a chore into something I truly enjoy.

Try out baking

That is if you haven’t already. Baking is one of the easiest ways to make your environment feel like home because the beautiful smells of fresh baked goods and warm comforting taste are truly hard to beat. I would recommend starting with something easy such as chocolate chip oatmeal cookies or a basic white bread. Stay tuned for my recipes on these. Another great thing about bread is that the vast majority of the time it takes to make it is just time spent waiting. It takes maybe ten minutes of engaged work, the rest is all the yeast and the oven. There is also something nice about ditching the consumer culture and making your own bread at home.

Decorate your space

Decorate your space with things that make you happy and remind you of wonderful memories. Be intentional. In our room, we don’t have too many decorations out but the ones that we do, we love. We have a wedding picture, a woodcarving we got on our first vacation together, a blanket from my husband’s grandmother on our bed, and some other things that we love. These small things make it feel not just like a home, but our home.

Do things out of joy, not obligation

Some people love sewing, others don’t. The same goes for gardening. These are two things commonly associated with homemaking. But they aren’t necessary. So especially when you have a limited time to spend on homemaking, don’t waste it on things that won’t actually make you or your family happy. Instead of doing things out of obligation, do the homemaking tasks that genuinely bring you joy, I promise that will be enough.

Check out the other posts in the Home Management for Busy People Series:

• Budgeting Tips for Busy People
• Meal Planning for Busy People
• Managing Everyday Chores for Busy People

I hope you that homemaking brings you the same kind of joy that it has brought me.

Everyone has dishes and laundry, they are pretty unavoidable. And all spaces need to be cleaned up occasionally. I’ve found that these things weigh on me when they get out of control, and it is worth prioritizing the time to keep up on them. Here are a few tips I have for making it easier to manage everyday chores when life is extra busy.

Focus on the most important areas

While I was going to school, this meant to always keep my studying area clean. That way I had a nice place to focus without having the distraction of clutter around me. Now this has transitioned to keeping my living room clean because that is where my husband and I spend the most time at home now. So if you spend majority of your time in your bedroom for instance, taking care of it first can make a bigger difference in your life than another room.

Involve kids in age appropriate chores

If you have children, involve them in everyday chores that are appropriate for their ages. This will help ease the work load while also teaching your children important life skills. They will need these skills when living on their own in the future. Many college kids struggle when they move out and no longer have their cooking and laundry done by their mother. The kids who helped with family chores have one less learning curve when going to college which is really helpful.

Load directly into the dishwasher

If at all possible, load dishes directly into the dishwasher after eating and rinsing them off. Run it at convenient times like overnight or when you leave for work even if it isn’t 100% full. This way it gets done and will have room for the dishes from the next meal. Leaving them in the sink often leads to them building up and causing stress. When cooking, try and load dishes as you finish with them.

Keep cleaning supplies accessible

Keep cleaning supplies in an easy to access place so that you can quickly take care of messes as needed. This looks like keeping a spray bottle of cleaner and rag underneath the bathroom sink, keeping washcloths or “unpaper towels” in a basket or roll on the kitchen counter, and keeping a laundry basket anywhere that people normally undress, like the bedroom and bathroom. In general, people are much more likely to wipe down the countertops when there are washcloths within reach.

Clean as you go

Along the lines of the previous tip, try to clean up messes as they happen instead of putting it off until later. If possible wash the prep dishes from dinner as it is cooking and wipe up spills on counters immediately. This way you will not have to come back to these messes later in the day or week. Sometimes the hardest part about cleaning up is the mental overhead of starting and this trick can help avoid that feeling.

Fold or hang up only what you want or need

This tip may be a bit controversial… but in my opinion, when you are really busy and stressed, worrying about folding and putting away all your laundry may not be worth it. Sometimes just having separate baskets for clean clothes, dirty clothes, and clothes to wear again before washing is enough for items that don’t show wrinkles easily. Unless this is a specific priority for you, feel free to let it go without guilt.

Check out the other posts in the Home Management for Busy People Series:

• Budgeting Tips for Busy People
• Meal Planning for Busy People
• Homemaking for Busy People

Ultimately decide on the everyday chores that are most important for you and your family to have done, prioritize them, and let the others go occasionally.