How did you make the decision to be a homemaker?

Hi there, it's Chrystal Hurst here, and I'm here with another Ask Me Anything. Kia wants to know, how did I make the decision to be a homemaker? Well, certainly that's a decision that my husband and I made together. He had a job where he traveled a lot for a living, and we just decided, because my job when we got married was demanding as well, that one of us should be available to be a have more time to look our kids in the eye. And because he was the breadwinner more so than I at the time, we decided that was him. It was definitely a sacrifice, but it was something that we decided together. Now, that said, being a homemaker was, and still is, the hardest thing I have ever done. There is no job that is more thankless, more job that takes more work, more— no job that has office hours that are not clearly defined than taking care of your people in the place in which they live. But it is been my most rewarding job in all of my life, and I can say that. We had small children after that, and there never seemed to be a good time to go back to work. I am working now, but still I spend a lot of my time working from home, so I still value and spend a lot of time in that homemaker world. When you're thinking about whether or not you should make the decision to be at home with your kids or to be a homemaker even if your kids aren't at home, the first thing is definitely think through the money. Y'all, it costs to stay at home, but it also costs to go to work. The daycare, the clothes, the dry cleaning, the gas. So weigh the cost. You want to make sure that financially it's a decision that makes head sense to you and make that decision with your husband. But the second thing I want you to consider is what difference it will make for you to have additional bandwidth to manage the people in your home and the place in which they live. I read a book by Jill Savage called Professionalizing Motherhood And when I started looking at the value that I bring to my home, when I look at my home as a place to run, just like I would run my own business, it elevated the way I saw my home. I got structured, we got scheduled. I was excellent in how I shopped for food and the clothing that we got and how I was organized with the records for my family. It just changed the way I looked at my job because it is a big job, y'all, to manage people and to manage a place in which those people live. But look at it like a job and show up with excellence to that job. Get dressed, at least get dressed down to your socks if you don't put on shoes, and show up for the job of taking care of your people. And the third thing is it gives you the unique opportunity to have additional bandwidth to create memories. There are a lot of things that I've done with my kids that while I did as much as I could when I was working, and I think I did a good job, I just have more pockets of time as a homemaker, both with toddlers and teenagers alike to leave just snippets of things in their memory. The special plate that we eat on when a holiday comes around or how we celebrate when we have pajama Fridays because it's raining outside and we don't have to go anywhere because the kids are homeschooled. What can you do whether you work or not to give your family, your husband, your children a solid sense of home? That's something that you can do whether you work or not. And homemaking, while it can be a full-time profession, Whether you work or not, it is a profession that matters because ultimately home should be where the heart of the people you love most want to be. Do you have a question? You can go to ChrystalEvansHurst.com/AskMeAnything.