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[podcast] De-clutter Your Life #023

June 6, 2016 by Danielle Filed Under: Girlfriends Podcast, Homemaking Leave a Comment

TO LISTEN
Simply hit “play” above!
or subscribe in iTunes
or subscribe in Stitcher
or subscribe in Google Play

Girlfriends is on Patreon! Find out how you can pledge your support for Girlfriends at Patreon.com/Girlfriends

NOTES
This week we are talking about de-cluttering your life. We focus on three main areas:

1. The Kitchen
What spaces need clearing out in your kitchen? How can you make sure to keep the things you use and need, but get rid of those things that are taking up space in your kitchen and cluttering your work areas for no good reason. I share a recommendation for A Slob Comes Clean and her method of storing plastic food containers.

2. Living Spaces
What drives you crazy in your living areas? What “stuff” is piled up or taking up space that you don’t even see anymore? I encourage you to go through your house with a trash bag or a donations bag and clear out the junk. Give yourself the gift of free and open space in your home! If you are overwhelmed by the job of de-cluttering your home, just start small. Pick one area, one table, one drawer and commit to de-cluttering it today. I promise you will be inspired to keep going.

3. Your Heart and Mind
In addition to our physical spaces, our hearts and minds can get cluttered too. What is filling your mind with worry or “busy-ness”? What is burdening your heart and soul? Are you holding onto grudges or past hurts? Are you holding onto guilt that you could be freed of through confession? What are you waiting for? Get in there!

INTERVIEW
This week I share a conversation I had the privilege of having with Dr. Mary Amore. Dr. Amore shares about her work and ministry, her writing and her DVDs. She discusses her life’s triumphs and challenges with a sense of humor and practicality that will endear her to your heart.

Dr. Mary Amore
Mayslake Ministries
Mary’s Book, Primary Symbols of Worship
Mary’s DVD, Eucharist: A Journey of Transformation, Healing, and Discipleship

FEEDBACK
I share Julie’s email, asking about a link to subscribe to Girlfriends with an Android device. We are now on Google Play! A big thank you to my newest Patreon supporter, Angie. And if you would like to leave a review and subscribe on iTunes, I would be so grateful! As always, I am so grateful for your presence here. God bless your week!

SUPPORT
Girlfriends is on Patreon! Find out how you can pledge your support for Girlfriends at Patreon.com/Girlfriends

Links for this episode

Subscribe to Girlfriends in iTunes
Subscribe to Girlfriends in Stitcher
About Danielle Bean
Danielle’s Books on Amazon
Catholic Digest
Subscribe to the Danielle Bean newsletter

Contact:
Email Danielle Bean
Rate and Review Girlfriends in iTunes
Leave voice feedback
Girlfriends on Facebook
Danielle Bean on Facebook
Danielle Bean on Twitter
Danielle Bean on Instagram

Mommy Wars, Schmommy Wars

May 11, 2016 by Danielle Filed Under: Columns, Homemaking, Mothers Leave a Comment

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In an article at Salon a few years back, writer Katy Read admitted something that raised some maternal eyebrows: She regrets having left a respectable job and steady paycheck to be an at-home mom to her two sons for ten years.

It’s not the quality time with her children she regrets, but the financial toll she’s now paying for it.

“The swing set moments when I would realize, watching the boys swoop back and forth, that someday these afternoons would seem to have rushed past in nanoseconds, and I would pause, mid-push, to savor the experience while it lasted… Now I lie awake at 3 a.m., terrified that as a result I am permanently financially screwed.”

In the hundreds of comments her column generated, we find some defense of the value of at-home parenting along with tirades against a sexist system that forces women to choose between work and family.

What very few people note, however, is that the cause of Read’s current financial strain is not really her years of at-home parenting. The cause of her crisis is her divorce.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of two teenagers must be in want of a steady paycheck and employer-sponsored health insurance.”

The notion that any parent can stay home full time with children is based upon the assumption that there are, and will continue to be, two supportive parents in the household, at least one of them earning a paycheck. Whether the mother works outside the home or not, having a traditional marriage at its foundation is every family’s best bet for happiness and prosperity.

Read’s story reminds me of Gaby Hinsliff, a different writer-mom who earned her own set of hundreds of comments a little over a year ago when she announced a surprising decision to leave her high-profile job as political editor at the Observer in order to stay home full time with her young son.

“I had it all,” she wrote at the time, “but I didn’t have a life.”

Read and Hinsliff might have come to opposing conclusions, but they each give voice to the same universal truth. The mothers of previous generations, many of whom abandoned home life in favor of careers, had a secret they kept from us: “Having it all” comes with a price. And it’s a price that some of us won’t be happy to pay.

The media’s notion of the “Mommy Wars,” where briefcase-wielding career women face off against stroller-pushing homemakers, is largely a fabricated stereotype. Some mothers work because they want to. Some mothers work because they have to. Especially in tough economic times, though, intact families will find all kinds of creative and cooperative ways to get the bills paid without sacrificing their children’s needs like the the best baby travel systems and activities for hands-on parenting.

Are we working moms? Are we at-home moms? Or are we an unlabeled something in between?

I suppose that I am a working mom. Those words look odd to me on the page and feel foreign on my tongue, but they are true. I never in my lifetime planned to be a “working mom,” and yet here I am… with a husband, eight kids, and a job that provides income my family depends upon.

I happen to be one of the lucky ones. I have a supportive husband, I enjoy what I do, and I am able to work almost exclusively from home. But still my work costs me something. It costs my family something, too.

Dinner might be more homemade, the refrigerator might be clean, and the laundry might be caught up this afternoon if I didn’t have phone calls to make and a deadline to meet. At the end of most days, I do come up short on time somewhere – for sleep, for exercise, for answering emails. I make family my first priority, and I aim to make sure it’s never my kids or my husband who get the short end of that stick, but I would be lying if I said they never did.

Pretending that being a working mother doesn’t come with some level of compromise isn’t fair – not to our families who pay part of the price, and certainly not to other women who might then enter family life or working life with unrealistic expectations.

Just like every family, there are compromises we have been willing to make. A spotless refrigerator might be good for my family, but a paid gas bill and health insurance are good for them, too.

Whether we moms leave our homes every morning to earn a paycheck, stay home full time, or attempt some creative combination of the two, it’s most important that we make working decisions with our eyes wide open about what they will cost us.

No one can have it all. We need to figure out what we really want.

Not too long ago, one of my sisters, an at-home mom, wrote me a quick note: “It’s all well and good to be a stay at home mom and find fulfillment and happiness right here at home, but it feels good to see a mom out there in a business environment telling it like it is and keeping up with the best of them. Congratulations.”

Meanwhile, as I watch her family thrive and grow, I say, “It’s all well and good to find happiness in a combination of work and home life, but it feels good to see a devoted mom in a home environment raising beautiful children who are true lights and gifts to the world. Congratulations.”

There are no Mommy Wars. We’re in this together. With God’s grace, the best moms – at home, at work, and all the places in between – will win.

This is an old column of mine that originally appeared at Inside Catholic.

My Kingdom for a Pencil

March 21, 2016 by Danielle Filed Under: Homemaking Leave a Comment

notebook-pencil-notes-sketch

My husband is a teacher. I am a writer. We homeschool. You might think it would be reasonable to expect to find a pencil in our household.

But don’t be silly.

Most weekdays in the Bean home begin with a mad search for writing implements of any kind.

My response to our chronic pencil deprivation is cyclic. I endure it until one day (usually after scribbling a phone message onto the gas bill with a fluorescent highlighter) I can stand it no longer. I make an emergency trip to Staples where I buy a case of yellow No. 2 pencils and throw in a few jumbo-packs of ballpoint pens for good measure.

I bring these home and put them into circulation. For a short while, it works.

Dozens of pencils sit, sharpened and ready, in a glass jar on the kitchen counter. I find pencils whenever I need them and even sometimes when I don’t – in the toddler’s pillowcase and in the refrigerator, nestled next to the mayonnaise.

Within a day or two, though, the house begins its pencil absorption. Supplies dwindle until eventually, I find myself right back in the miserable place where I started – where finding even a miniature nub with which to scratch out a grocery list requires a belly-slither through the dust bunny farm beneath the boys’ bunk beds.

And don’t get me started about scissors. Or tape. Or rulers for that matter.

The other day, my nine-year-old daughter Juliette’s schoolwork required the use of a ruler.

“Can’t find one!” she announced gleefully as she slammed closed the school cabinet and readied herself to move on to other things.

Unfortunately for her, I happened to know that there were at least three rulers in that cabinet less than a week ago. I knew this because I was the one who put them there – neatly on the top shelf, next to a new package of pencils.

I checked. Of course the rulers were no longer there. And neither were the pencils. There were sports cards and old gum wrappers. There were plastic pink rosaries and dried out markers. But no rulers. And no pencils.

These are the little things – like ancient water torture – that wear away at a mother’s psyche. Tiny drops of annoyance add up and threaten to send us straight through to insanity. When the nice young men with white coats finally come screeching up my driveway to straitjacket me and carry me away, I am pretty sure I will be mumbling something about invisible rulers, walking pencils, and disappearing scissors.

After years of suffering these kinds of annoyances, I have come to feel a great sense of solidarity with my father. When my eight siblings and I were growing up, he kept secret stashes of pens, pencils, lined paper, index cards, scotch tape, and super glue squirreled away in locked cabinets and dresser drawers. I am not sure even my mother was privy to his treasure’s exact location.

My father has accomplished many admirable things in his lifetime. He is a father of nine, a philosopher, an author, and a college professor. But one of his achievements that I have come to admire most is this: He chained a pair of scissors to a wall in the kitchen.

I distinctly remember being frustrated by the lack of mobility I got with those scissors as a child. It was hard to maneuver my way through elaborate poster board projects without being hampered by the chain.

Our childish complaints, however, fell on deaf ears. We could always find the scissors when we needed them, right? What were we whining about?

In an effort to preserve my own sanity the other day, I told Juliette that failure was not an option. We were going to look for a ruler until we found one.

And find one we did. We retrieved a blue plastic baby toy ruler from the musty bottom of the toy box. It rattles when you shake it. But it is a 6-inch ruler.

Juliette used it for her math work and left it on the table. After the kids finished their schoolwork and left the room, I examined the toy ruler more closely. I noticed that it happened to have a rather convenient-looking hole in one side.

So now, I am looking for a chain.

This is an old column of mine that originally appeared at Inside Catholic.

My Oasis

March 8, 2016 by Danielle Filed Under: Homemaking, Mothers Leave a Comment

my oasisI really should stop reading magazines. That might be an odd thing for a magazine editor to say, but it’s true that certain kinds of periodicals are bad for my self esteem.

Take that popular homemaking magazine, for example. What’s it called? Better Homes Than Yours, I think.

I browse through its slick pages, squint at the glossy photos, and search in vain for a sign of peanut butter fingerprints on the glass doors, sippy cups tucked beneath couch cushions, or last week’s fraction worksheets piled on top of living room end tables.

No such luck.

I saw a young family’s home featured in one recent issue. The husband and wife were pictured with their two small children. All of them were seated on a spotless, glowing white couch. A white couch! I squinted long and hard at that photo and came up with the only logical explanation – that the children were plastic props.

It was in one of these fantasy magazines that I happened upon an article about making grown-up bedroom spaces special. A “relaxing oasis,” I think were the words used to describe the ideal grown-up bedroom.

“Keep it clean, keep it quiet, and keep it yours,” the article urged me.

Pillows, candles, and quiet music… it sounded perfectly fabulous. How nice it would be to retreat to an adults-only oasis at the end of each day!

One thing the fancy magazine didn’t mention, though, was what to do if you happen to share your oasis with a two-year-old boy, his clothes dresser, and a basketful of his favorite Tonka trucks. It neglected to mention the problem of a grown-up bedroom being the only room with a lock where older kids can hide to play an undisturbed game from casinodames.com, or sort stacks of precious sports cards during the day. And what about the fact that a soft, high bed with fluffy pillows happens to be the ideal spot for little girls to organize dolly naptimes?

I try to fight it, but it’s no use. By bedtime each day, our grown-up bedroom has been infiltrated. Since we’ve been watching 24, Dan and I jokingly refer to the pint-sized invaders of our bedroom space as the “hostiles.” Really, though, it’s just the kids. And their stuff.

When I finally stumble my way toward the relaxing oasis these days, I usually need to clear a path through a pile of plastic princess shoes, dolly blankies, stacks of story books, and Tupperware containers filled with sports cards before I find the bed. Surprisingly, however, I don’t really resent the invasion.

Before I had children, I used to worry sometimes that I wouldn’t make a good mother. The kind of constant self-giving love that I saw in other mothers felt foreign to me, and I thought I might be too selfish to do the same.

What I didn’t know then, though, was that children take the love they need. By their very existence, they claim it. Parental generosity is something that develops naturally from having children who, with or without our permission, work their way into our hearts, into our lives, and into our personal spaces.

When I entered my oasis last night, after kicking my way past a pile of Playmobil pirates and a partially completed wooden puzzle, I noticed a folded piece of paper perched upon my pillow.

Inside I found a pencil drawing of a small girl with an extra large bow in her hair. Beside the small girl was a mother figure in a full-length glamour gown. Their stick figure arms stretched toward each other, eager to embrace, as a smiling sun shone down on them approvingly.

“WEE LOVE EACH UDDER,” was scrawled in the sky above, and five-year-old Gabby’s unmistakable signature was in the bottom corner of the page.

I don’t need an oasis; I’ve got oceans.

We parents might not always love our children perfectly, but most of us do a pretty decent job of it most days. I don’t think, though, that we can take much credit for the ways in which we become more generous and loving as a result of having children. It just happens. It’s part of the gift of grace that is family life, and its source is the source of all grace. It’s God.

It’s all part of a Divine plan. Our children force us to abandon selfishness simply by laying claim to what is rightfully theirs – which is everything we’ve got.

(This is an old column of mine that originally appeared at Inside Catholic.)

[podcast] What ‘Doing It All’ Really Means #003

January 19, 2016 by Danielle Filed Under: Girlfriends Podcast, Homemaking, Marriage 6 Comments

TO LISTEN
Simply hit “play” above!
or subscribe in iTunes
or subscribe in Stitcher

NOTES
This week we’re talking about “Doing it all.” Do you do it all? What does that mean? Does anyone really do it? Of course not. But sometimes it feels like we do.

No one can do it all, but many of us busy women are doing MANY things. So many things, sometimes, that we are exhausted. When looking for balance in our daily lives, it is important to consider all the things we do and prioritize our time. Among our many responsibilities — personal time, prayer time, marriage, parenting, and work — how can we figure out how much time is reasonable for us to spend on each?

Well, the answer to that question is going to vary from person to person. In this show, I walk you through the thought process of determining how to best balance many responsibilities, using some ideas I got years ago from the book A Mother’s Rule of Life by Holly Pierlot.

We each need to decide how our time ideally should be spent each day, and then comparing our ideals to the ways in which we are really spending (and sometimes wasting!) our time each day. By making a thoughtful, prayerful, intentional plan for the ways we will prioritize our responsibilities, we can not “do it all,” but we can do what really matters. With God’s help, we can do all the great and wonderful work he is calling us to do each day.

In this week’s interview, I talk with Jennifer Willits, the awesome mom, author, radio personality and podcaster. Jennifer shares some touching moments from her family life, as well as some hilarious ones. You won’t want to miss her chicken wings “recipe” for success!

This week’s Girlfriends’ shout-out goes to listener and friend Sasha, along with a touching tribute from her good friend Nicole. What great girlfriends these two are!

This week’s challenge is to think about one of your many commitments, a responsibility you are taking care of inside or outside of your home and family, and re-think it. Look at the benefits this commitment provides and balance those with what it “costs” you and your family to do it the way you have been. In the end, decide whether there is a new way you can approach this responsibility, a new person who could take on the responsibility, or if it could be placed on hold for a while, OR if you think it’s definitely worthwhile to keep doing it the way you have been.

Thanks to my Twitter friend Dena for reviewing Girlfriends on iTunes this week. I would love it if you would consider doing the same, rating and/or reviewing Girlfriends in iTunes to help me get the word out about this new podcast.

And thanks, as always for listening. I’m so glad you’re here! Know your worth, find your joy!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Girlfriends in iTunes
Subscribe to Girlfriends in Stitcher
About Danielle Bean
Danielle’s Books on Amazon
Catholic Digest
Subscribe to the Danielle Bean newsletter

Books
A Mother’s Rule of Life: How to Bring Order to Your Home and Peace to Your Soul, by Holly Pierlot

Jennifer Willits 
GregandJennifer.com
Jennifer and Greg’s podcast, Adventures in Imperfect Living
Jennifer and Greg’s book, The Catholics Next Door: Adventures in Imperfect Living

Contact:

Email Danielle Bean
Rate and Review Girlfriends in iTunes
Leave voice feedback
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One Little Thing at a Time

November 30, 2015 by Danielle Filed Under: Babies, Big Kids, Homemaking, School 2 Comments

1280px-Ladybug_walk(This is an old column of mine that originally appeared at Inside Catholic. Just like yours, my life is still ridiculous, but some of the details are different from what is described here. The message still applies, though.)

My life is ridiculous. Do I need to tell you this, or can you reach that conclusion all on your own when I tell you that I am a homeschooling mother of eight who also works from home?

Some days, the different roles I play meld seamlessly together.

“Of course I can do this!” I find myself thinking as I take a phone call from the pediatrician while the toddler plays peacefully with poster paints, the 11-year-old memorizes prepositions, the 15-year-old completes her algebra, and the 10-year-old whips up a fresh batch of banana muffins. “Who couldn’t do this?”

But other days? Other days, my seamlessly melding roles collide. They crash, smash, and burn.

I’ll never forget the time I was on the phone with a work colleague – one whom I had just met and hoped to impress with my “professionalism” – when I heard a knock on my bedroom door. One rule I have to keep me sane is that if I am on the phone for work, I can lock my door and that means NO BUGGING MOM.

I knew that the insistent knock meant something important was going on, so mid-conversation, I took a deep breath and opened the door.

There stood my oldest son with one hand over his nose. Blood dripped through his fingers, ran down his arm, and formed a small puddle on the floor at his feet.

“Do you understand what I am saying?” I remember the man on the phone asking me then, “Because I’m not sure at all that you do.”

I mumbled something about a bleeding boy and hung up the phone.

I am not exactly proud to report that the cause of the furiously bleeding face was another one of my sons. An argument over a ball game had turned violent. Younger brother’s fist managed to hit a lucky spot on older brother’s nose where there happened to be a willing vein. To me, the worst part of the whole messy incident was the fact that they were supposed to be working on a geography quiz.

I still talk to the colleague from that interrupted phone call sometimes, and to this day I suspect he believes I am a brainless loon. And he’s probably right about that. But it’s not my fault. It’s the bloody children.

When people on the outside ask what daily life looks like in my home, I think many of them picture me working in a pristine office with a mountain view while my children recite the Pledge of Allegiance and sit in neat rows of desks in our classroom.

We do have a classroom. But like many rooms in houses that belong to men who build, it is unfinished. It has no floor yet, and it is the current home of my washing machine and my husband’s weight bench. It also features a sizable collection of half-empty paint cans. Because we will need them someday.

My husband sometimes has the older children sit in the classroom for math lectures, but they need to kick empty laundry detergent bottles out of the way and brush aside saw dust from the nearby circular saw (did I not mention the saw? The one my husband keeps in there for trimming firewood?) before they can sit down. On the weight bench.

Welcome to our home school. We do and learn all kinds of things all over the house. And the process is not always pretty.

I don’t pretend to be the only person on the planet with a crazy life, though. I know plenty of people who, in my estimation, live even crazier lives than mine. I have nutty friends who have reached double digits in their child count. I know wild women who work outside the home. I know crazy moms who care for aging parents or homeschool children with multiple disabilities.

I think we’re all crazy in some way. Many of us, in our own hidden worlds, are taking on daunting tasks and tremendous responsibilities.

I can’t do all of this, I am sometimes tempted to think – particularly on days where my various roles and responsibilities seem to be in conflict with each other. But what I fail to see at those times is that no one is asking me to “do all of that.” Not all at once, anyway.

I think about this sometimes as I wipe down the tiles in my kitchen. I long ago stopped pulling out a mop to clean this spot that needs cleaning at least once a day. It’s just more efficient to get down on my hands and knees with a damp cloth and wipe the floor by hand. One tile at a time.

Cleaning an entire sticky floor can seem like a daunting job, I always notice, but anyone can wipe one square foot of tile at a time. If I keep working, all those tiles eventually add up to a clean floor.

“Faithfulness in little things is a big thing,” St. John Chrysostom reminds us.

I need to remind myself more often that one small thing at a time is all God ever asks me to do. All the little things – spilled juice, phone calls, grammar lessons, e-mail replies, laundry piles, baseball games and other fun games (learn more about them here), Band-Aids, and sticky tiles – add up to God’s great big will for me every day.

One thing at a time. I think I can do that. And you can, too.

Brownies, Teen Boys & Important Stuff

October 29, 2015 by Danielle Filed Under: Boys, Homemaking, Newsletter Leave a Comment

capt-americaAfter dinner Monday night, my husband and kids asked if we had anything for dessert. There was nothing. We rarely have an “official” dessert after dinner here, and they rarely ask, so I felt a little bad. I did remember a brownie mix in the pantry, though, and promised I could make them that evening.

After dinner, I kept busy with work while football played in the other room. I lost myself in magazine submissions and email conversations, and before I knew it, it was almost 8:00 and I had not yet made the brownies.

But you know what? I was tired …

Read the whole thing here, and then SUBSCRIBE to the Danielle Bean newsletter so you never miss an issue!

We can’t get enough of that laundry talk

October 27, 2015 by Danielle Filed Under: Homemaking 2 Comments

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In last week’s newsletter I asked readers to share laundry tips, and you guys sure came through! As I promised, I’m sharing some of your input here …

[Read more…]

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