Read 50 of the most charming, inspiring, and practical homemaking quotes to brighten your day at home. Homemaking is not simply for the stay-at-home mom with many children. The art of making a home does not and should not fit into a mold! You can be a full-time working mom and still have a charming home that is a safe haven for your family from a darkening world. No matter what your homemaking circumstances are, be encouraged and inspired by 50 of the best homemaking quotes out there.
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General Homemaking Quotes
We start our exploration of homemaking quotes from seasoned homemakers like Elisabeth Elliot, Edith Schaeffer, Jamie Erikson, and more. As you go ahead with your household duties in your own homes, let these quotes echo in your mind. These lovely ladies have gone before us in the trenches of motherhood and homemaking and offer invaluable nuggets of truth as we too embark on our homemaking journey.
“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.”
Elisabeth Elliot
“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
“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
“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
“God chose you for this task, so don’t question His ability to choose wisely.”
Jamie Erikson, Homeschool Bravely: How to Squash Doubt, Trust God, and Teach Your Child with Confidence
“Seeking perfection usually just leads to paralysis.”
Jamie Erikson, Homeschool Bravely: How to Squash Doubt, Trust God, and Teach Your Child with Confidence
“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.”
Elisabeth Elliot
“Homemaking is surely in reality the most important work in the world”
C.S. Lewis
The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It’s doing something that you appreciate, something you believe is worthwhile.
Julia Child
I enjoy doing housework, ironing, washing, cooking, dishwashing. Whenever I get one of those questionaires 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
Purpose is found in those quiet moments when no one but God sees the work of your hands.
Darlene Schacht
“Hospitality, thriving relationships, well-being, a welcoming atmosphere, comfort, contentment, and rest—these are the markers of hygge. But they’re also qualities seen in the first Garden home and exhibited by Jesus.”
Jamie Erickson, Holy Hygge: Creating a Place for People to Gather and the Gospel to Grow
“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.’”
Elizabeth George
And then she realized she was replaceable in every area of her life except her home. So she invested her time, her energy, and her heart wisely.
Jillian Benfield
“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.”
J.R. Miller
“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.”
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.
J.R. Miller
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. The children who are brought up in a true home go out trained and equipped for life’s battles and tasks, carrying in their hearts a secret of strength which will make them brave and loyal to God, and will keep them pure in the world’s severest temptations.”
I love this next quote! It is a reminder that our housewife’s work is not worthless. We are learning an art!
“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’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
“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.”
Sophie Hudson
Wisdom from Edith Schaeffer
I hope you are enjoying these favorite homemaker quotes! Let’s move on to a woman of great wisdom. If you are anything like me, when you first heard a quote from Edith Schaeffer, you may have thought, ‘who”. Edith Schaeffer was the widow of Francis Schaeffer, who you may be more familiar with because of his work as a Christian theologian. She wrote the popular book “The Hidden Art of Homemaking.”, which has turned into a beloved classic.
“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.’”
“It seems to me that whether it is recognized or not, there is a terrific frustration which increases in intensity and harmfulness as time goes on, when people are always daydreaming of the kind of place in which they would like to live, yet never making the place where they do live into anything artistically satisfying to them. Always to dream of a cottage by a brook while never doing anything to the stuffy house in the city is to waste creativity in this very basic area, and to hinder future creativity by not allowing it to grow and develop through use.” pg 66”
Edith Schaeffer, The Hidden Art of Homemaking
“Food cannot take care of spiritual, psychological and emotional problems, but the feeling of being loved and cared for, the actual comfort of the beauty and flavour of food, the increase of blood sugar and physical well-being, help one to go on during the next hours better equipped to meet the problems (p. 124).”
Edith Schaeffer, 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.”
Edith Schaeffer, Hidden Art
“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.”
Edith Schaeffer
“It is not necessary to have an extravagant food budget in order to serve things with variety and tastefully cooked. It is not necessary to have expensive food on the plates before they can enter the dining room as things of beauty in colour and texture. Food should be served with real care as to the colour and texture on the plates, as well as with imaginative taste. This is where artistic talent and aesthetic expression and fulfillment come in.”
Edith Schaeffer, The Hidden Art of Homemaking
“If you *stop* putting off homemaking until your hope of marriage develops into a reality, and *start* to develop an interesting home right now, it seems to me two things will happen: first, you will develop into the person you could be as you surround yourself with things that express your own tastes and ideas; and second, as you relax and become interested in areas of creativity, you will develop into a more interesting person to be with.”
Edith Schaeffer, 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?”
Edith Schaeffer
Wisdom from Sally Clarkson
Sally Clarkson is a true inspiration like no other. She has written over 25 books since her first book in 1998 and continues to be an inspiration to millions of women around the world. One of her most beloved books is “Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming.” It continues to be a favorite among mothers and homemakers as we are encouraged to create our own version of a life-giving home.
When we sit at our tables, we are not just an aggregate of individual family members eating and drinking to stay alive. We are a congregation of communing souls, hungrying and thirsting to experience the goodness and beauty of the life that God has designed just for us.
Sally Clarkson
The following quote is one of the many things that led me to start this blog and ministry Healing Home. We can create our homes to be a refuge and a safe place for our family. It does not mean that we shelter them from everything. But it does mean that we get to decide when they are able to handle the realities of a very dark world.
“Home is to be a safe place, a refuge for all who enter, a protection from the harm and storms of the world. Yet often or even daily we open our doors — usually via television or the internet — to ideas and images that can damage our faith, abuse our hearts and minds, sear our psyches, and tear apart our peace. Home should be a place where, behind its doors, one should expect to find protection and safety from all the harms of life, including voices that do not speak truth or wisdom. Only the foolish would invite just anyone to enter the door of their home.”
Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming
One of my all-time favorite quotes from Mrs. Clarkson…
“When someone once asked me just what it was that my parents did that made me believe in God, without even thinking I said, “I think it was French toast on Saturday mornings and coffee and Celtic music and discussions and candlelight in the evenings . . .” Because in those moments I tasted and saw the goodness of God in a way I couldn’t ignore.”
Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming
“Every day in each inch of space, each rhythm of time, each practice of love, we have the chance to join God in coming home, in living so that we make a home of this broken and beautiful world all over again. Love is enfleshed in the meals we make, the rooms we fill, the spaces in which we live and breathe and have our being.”
Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming
Homemaking Quotes from Laura Ingalls Wilder
Did you know that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books were not published until later in her life? The first book that she wrote was published 84 years after she wrote it. We can only wonder if Ingalls knew the impact her books would have on the world.
“Home is the nicest word there is.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder
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 cosy again.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods
Ma liked everything on her table to be pretty.
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods
“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.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
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.”
“So much depends upon the homemakers. I sometimes wonder if they are so busy now with other things that they are forgetting the importance of this special work.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder
“Let’s be cheerful! We have no more right to steal the brightness out of the day for our own family than we have to steal the purse of a stranger. Let us be as careful that our homes are furnished with pleasant and happy thoughts as we are that the rugs are the right color and texture and the furniture comfortable and beautiful.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder
“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 cosy again.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods
Wisdom from Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott is known and loved for her classic book, “Little Women”. It is beloved for its storyline and characters, but also how cozy and wonderfully Alcott made the March’s home feel in her book. Perhaps the ironic turn of events is that Alcott herself never married or had any children. Yet, even still, she had a wonderful grasp of what it meant to make a home.
“The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.”
Louisa May Alcott
“The humblest tasks get beautified if loving hands do them.”
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. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life become a beautiful success, in spite of poverty.”
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
“A woman’s happiest kingdom is home, her highest honor is the art of ruling it not as a queen, but a wise wife and mother.”
Louisa May Alcott
Go on with your work as usual, for work is a blessed solace.
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
“I do think that families are the most beautiful things in all the world!”
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
Practical Quotes about Homemaking
Homemaking can seem like a very romantic notion. Just hop onto Instagram and get your reels sprouting all the latest loveliness of homemaking and you will quickly feel like you could never measure up. Thankfully Instagram, although entertaining and certainly can have its place, is a bunch of malarky. However, there are some practical truths that we can take from those who have gone before us to bring a little bit of practicality into our homemaking.
“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.”
Louisa May Alcott
Jesus bookended his ministry here on earth with meals. Perhaps because he knew that discipleship happens around a table. Vulnerability happens around a table. Accountability happens around a table.
Jamie Erikson, Holy Hygge, Creating a Plaec for People to Gather and the Gospel to Grow
“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.”
Elisabeth Elliot
“Joy begins with thankfulness. Quite often our attitudes hang in the balance; by making a conscious choice, we can tip our souls into dark moods of complaining, or into thankfulness and praise. It is amazing how much your mouth controls your soul. You.”
Debi Pearl
A good help meet makes valuable use of her time at home, creating a clean and pleasant home.
Debi Pearl
“A happy homemaker performs even her monotonous duties and routine chores faithfully and patiently. In so doing she serves others and achieves greatness in the process.”
Dorothy Kelley Patterson
We hope that these homemaking quotes have encouraged you, made you laugh at times, and give you plenty to contemplate as you spend your day making a home. We are living in a troubled world and creating a home for those you love is a valuable way to spend your time and life. As the Bible says, a wise woman builds her house!
“The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down” (Proverbs 14:1 ESV).
Many of the quotes were taken from beloved books which are listed below. I would also like to invite you to download my free monthly planner for the homemaker. If you find it helpful but would like to see an additional section or resource, please feel free to contact me and let me know!
Homemaking Resources
The work of a woman is important. Maybe these resources and books encourage you in your homemaking life! Don’t forget that ordinary work is kingdom work when you are doing it for Christ! Christian homemaking is important work!
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