Homemaking Skills You Should Practice Up On

Whether you’re a seasoned homemaker, or you’re learning to be a homemaker, these homemaking skills are something you can always refer back to and make sure you’re honing in on… enjoy!

If you’ve been feeling the urge to step up your homemaking game, I have an awesome round-up of homemaking skills that EVERY homemaker can utilize.

Just like any profession, homemaking is something that requires (or is more successful with) a set of specific skills!

Some women are natural homemakers and already have these skills without having to try.

Other women might have had mothers who were excellent homemakers that passed on their knowledge and expertise…

Then, there are many women who don’t know a thing about keeping a home but they’re ready to learn!

Wherever you’re at on the spectrum, cultivating these homemaking skills will make your home run more smoothly and can help you and your family be happier.

Are you ready to learn how you can be a better homemaker with these awesome homemaking skills?! Let’s check them out!

Skills for Housewives

Meal Planning

Your home won’t be running smoothly without yummy food feeding hungry bellies. Plenty of homemakers can get by without meal planning, but I am a firm believer that having some kind of plan for what you’re cooking each week can really be helpful.

Meal planning will help you to have healthy, delicious meals on the dinner table consistently. Without going crazy.

It can help you to save money, and it can also help grocery shopping to go more smoothly.

How to Meal Plan

The secret to being consistent with your meal planning is to keep it simple! Set aside 30 minutes a week to plan your meals for the coming week. Here are some tips to get you started:

• have theme nights to spark ideas (Italian night, pizza night, comfort foods, sandwich night (think burgers, paninis, fancy grilled cheese and soup, etc.)
• go through your pantry and fridge BEFORE you meal plan so you can base your meals on ingredients you already have or things that will soon go bad.
• start out with meals you’re already comfortable making and you know your family loves, then try new recipes once a week or a couple times a month.
• leave a couple days unplanned so you can eat up leftovers, have a night out, or you just want to veg on snacks.
• make your grocery list at the same time that you meal plan so you don’t miss anything.

Meal planning can be intimidating at first but once you find your rhythm with it you will love it! Just stick to it and be consistent.

Keeping a Tidy Home AND a Clean Home

Of course cleaning is a necessary skill for homemakers! And cleaning can be pretty involved. After all, there’s a lot to keep up on in our homes! Everything from dirty toilets, to everyday dishes, to dusting the ceiling fans.

Creating schedules and routines for keeping your home clean can be SO helpful, which I’ll talk about more in a different section below.

Something you should remember as you’re building your cleaning skills is that there are two parts to cleaning as a homemaker: keeping a TIDY home, and keeping a CLEAN home. Let me explain!

A tidy home is when there isn’t a lot of clutter around. The toys are routinely picked up, the throw pillows are put back on the couch, there’s not too much junk on the countertops, etc.

A clean home is when the aforementioned ceiling fans really are dusted (and on a regular basis), the toilets are scrubbed routinely, and the baseboards get a little love every once in a while.

A skilled homemaker will know how to consistently keep a CLEAN home and a TIDY home.

Practice your cleaning skills as a homemaker by learning how to routinely clean every spot, nook, and cranny in your home. This can take A LOT of time to get good at, so be patient. Its also totally dependent on the home you live in!

Its a great idea to do a little research over time and make sure you’re cleaning things in the best way you can.

Are you using the most effective and safest cleaners? Are you getting to everything in the appropriate amount of time? These are all questions you can ask yourself as you build your cleaning skills.

Keeping a Budget

Good homemakers know how to keep a budget, and then they keep one! Learning how to keep a budget will help your family to save money, waste less, and reach some of your financial goals.

Budgets are super personal to your home, family, and goals.

When you’re learning how to keep a budget, start with what you have a lot of control over, like your groceries. See how much you spend on groceries in a week or in a month. Track everything! Then see how you can dwindle that down a bit.

Budgets don’t come easy. I suggest sitting down (with your spouse if you have one) and looking over all of your expenses you have in a month.

I love to first write down expenses that don’t really change: rent/mortgage, phone bill, electric bill, insurance, etc.

Then, I go through previous months credit card statements to get an idea of how much we spend on the extras: gas, groceries, eating out, etc.

We can’t really do too much about the set expenses. But I can control and try to dwindle down the flexible expenses. This is what works for us, but if you’re looking to build your skills in this area, you need to figure out what works for you!

Easy Ways to Save Money as a Homemaker

• use up leftovers
• meal plan
• utilize scraps (throw them to the chickens, make compost for the garden, etc.)
• turn the lights off during the day
• buy generic brands at the grocery store
• make more food from scratch
• make your own cleaning products
• decorate with thrift store finds

Doing Laundry

Have you always had a knack for doing laundry and known exactly what to do? Yep, me neither! Laundry may seem like a super basic thing but it actually takes a lot of practice and learning. At least to get good at it!

You’ll be doing laundry for the rest of your life! Its worth it to make sure you’re doing it correctly and efficiently.

A skilled homemaker should have a solid laundry routine, and should know how to do laundry to best take care of their family’s clothes.

HERE is a quick look at some laundry basics. You’ll learn what’s best for the laundry you have and your home.

I also have a post HERE on creating a solid laundry routine. Guess what?! A little bit of laundry EVERY day will be a game changer for you sanity.

If you want some of the clifnotes for creating an effective and efficient laundry routine, here you go:

• do a little bit of laundry every day (wash, fold, put away, iron, etc. just one thing every day)
• try out different detergents until you find one that you love, or make your own!
• have a system for washing that works for your family and your laundry
  • wash bright colors, darks, and whites, all in separate loads
  • use bleach, oxygen bleach, or some kind of natural whitener in your whites
  • wash delicates on a cold cycle
• have a designated day once a week for doing extra laundry (washing bedding, curtains, towels, etc.)

Creating Schedules and Routines

Having schedules and routines as a homemaker is SUCH an invaluable skill and will contribute to every area of your homemaking.

What do I mean by schedules and routines? Here are a few examples:

• a morning routine that may include unloading the dishwasher, personal time, making your bed, etc.
• an evening routine for tidying up the house, feeding your sourdough starter, pulling the curtains, prepping for the next day.
• cleaning routines that can help you to make sure every area of your home is cleaned on a regular basis.
• a laundry routine that helps you stay on top of all of the dirty clothes

I LOVE talking about schedules and routines, creating my own has helped me a ton to stay organized and stay on top of all the things as a modern homemaker.

With the schedules and routines I’ve created, I’m also able to make time for some of the old-fashioned things I love like sewing, baking with sourdough, gardening, etc.

If you’re interested in learning how to create effective schedules and routines for your home, check out my ebook HERE. Its chock full of ideas for pulling everything together in your home and figuring out systems to make it all work, especially the old-fashioned way.

P.S. its 25+ pages!! With printables to take all of the tips and get started on your own.

Cooking & Baking

You don’t need to be an amazing cook or a 5-star baker.

BUT you should have some very basic cooking and baking skills so you can get decent, healthy meals on the table. This can include things like roasting a chicken, easy, 30 minute recipes, a few tasty cookie recipes, etc.

Over time, you’ll become a better cook and a better baker if you just continue to chip away at it.

What you need to be able to cook and bake is totally dependent on your family and your day-to-day life. Maybe you have extra time and your family really appreciates home cooked meals, so you can get a little more elaborate.

On the other hand, you could be super busy with extracurricular family activities and you just need a handful of quick meal ideas in your back pocket. Maybe you have a very large family and you need healthy, large batch meals… there are so may variances!

Figure out what your family needs and would appreciate and try to get really good at those things.

For example, my husband LOVES dessert. So, I’ve made it a priority to learn quite a few different, really yummy dessert recipes. He in particular loves peanut butter cookies… so I tried out a bunch of peanut butter cookie recipes until I found the perfect one.

It’ll take time, but the more you practice, the better you’ll get at cooking and baking. It will also take time to figure out what meals and recipes work best for your family.

If you want, you can can even get a little vintage with your cooking and baking skills by making things from scratch, learning to use a sourdough starter, fermenting and canning, etc. SUCH FUN!

Vintage Homemaking Skills

On that note, maybe you’re all brushed up on the homemaking skills above and you want to challenge yourself a little more. Vintage Homemaking Skills may be right up your alley. They’ll challenge you, help you save money, and they can be SO much fun.

Here are a few vintage homemaking skills to try today:

• baking/cooking with sourdough
• cooking from scratch
• canning and preserving
• making your own cleaning products
• washing dishes by hand
• soap-making
• sewing
• gardening
• DIY’ing all of the things

I LOVE talking about old-fashioned homemaking and I have plenty of resources for you if you’re interested in more vintage homemaking ideas. Here are a few popular ones:

Vintage Homemaking Routines

Traditional Homemaker Dresscode

What is Old-Fashioned Homemaking?

I hope you find something you love. Happy homemaking!

Other Ideas in Homemaking

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