Focusing on "Food" - The 8 Foundations of Homemaking

The 8 Foundations Of Homemaking is the system I created to organize how I approach improving my family's life at home as an intentional homemaker. 🏡

As I grew in my understanding of homemaking and home management over the years, I realized that tasks and projects related to homemaking could be divided into eight focus areas. These areas of focus, which I call "Foundations", include a variety of topics that relate to it.

I realized that by asking myself thoughtful questions about these topics, I could make intentional decisions about how I wanted to create a wonderful life at home through homemaking - in a way that’s authentic to me. 

Doing this completely changed my life, and I'm passionate about teaching other women how to create an amazing life at home through intentional homemaking!

The 1st Foundation of Homemaking is "Food" which we're diving into in this blog post. 💕

Foundation 1) Food

The 8 Foundations of Homemaking

I've been on my homemaking journey since I got married in June of 2013 and one of the most important things I've learned... is that the foundation of "Food" is a cornerstone of successful homemaking.

Mealtimes have such an influential impact on how our daily life feels and operates.

Food:

• provides sustenance that carries us through day to day,

• is a way to comfort and care for our family,

• and creates strong memories!

When I first started homemaking, I felt overwhelmed with everything that can be related to food and mealtimes. But when I stopped shying away from the overwhelm and started intentionally working to grow my understanding and skills, my confidence as a homemaker soared! 🙌 It's very rewarding to see yourself improve in this area AND see how much your family benefits from the investment.

"Food" is a fun area to focus on because there will ALWAYS been more we can learn and do with our homemaking in this area.

Since the ultimate goal of an intentional homemaker is to create a life at home that's functional, comfortable, and a wonderful place to be - asking thoughtful questions about how to improve this foundation of homemaking is well worth the effort.

Topics Related to the Foundation of "Food"

When using the 8 Foundations of Homemaking framework to improve your life at home and grow as a homemaker, you'll want to consider the topics that are related to the foundation you want to focus on.

The topics in each foundation give you a variety of opportunities. This is why I love this framework. Instead of simply doing what everyone else is doing - the 8 Foundations of Homemaking helps me understand homemaking as a whole. That way, I can see everything that's related to a certain area of homemaking and make my own decisions about where to focus.

It's VERY motivating, exciting, and empowering to practice homemaking this way!

You have more options, more clarity, and a strong sense of direction about what you're focusing on and why. Your choices are authentic to you because they are based on what you and your family need for your particular season of life.

You're free to break away from trends and instead, make choices that are authentic to you. You can create a life at home YOU love and that uniquely blessed the people you live with.

So when it comes to "Food", what are some of these "topics" you can explore and focus on?

Examples of topics related to food and mealtimes:

• Improving Your Cooking and Baking Skills

• Traditions With Food

• Meal Planning

• Grocery Shopping

• Healthy Choices

• Collecting Recipes

• and so much more!

Knowing the topics related to "Food" helps you have a better understanding of this area of homemaking - and more importantly - it helps you analyze how well you're currently managing this foundation of homemaking. So many fun opportunities to learn and grow!

You can read about all the topics, questions, and ideas related to the foundation of "Food" in my Intentional Homemaking Guide here! 👇

https://www.thehomemakerlifestyle.com/intentional-homemaking-guide

Questions to Ask - Related to "Food"

Intentional homemaking is all about making decisions that align with your values. It's about creating a life that is a blessing to you and your family. In order to make intentional decisions, it's important to start the practice of regularly asking ourselves thoughtful questions. The answers give us a clear direction and purpose about what we're choosing to do and why.

In the 8 Foundations of Homemaking framework, I include questions within each of the topics related to each foundation.

That way, you aren't making your life look exactly like someone else's. You're learning the true art of homemaking. You're designing a life at home that you are inspired to create. Your home becomes a reflection of your unique personality, strengths, and values.

This will bless your family more than you can imagine! Food creates a strong sense of "home" and is a great way to build your confidence as a homemaker.

Here are some examples of questions you can ask to get you thinking about how you can improve your homemaking as it relates to food! 🍝

(I have found it VERY helpful to open a Google Doc on my laptop and type out my thoughts as I answer questions. This brainstorming process helps you not lose ideas or thoughts, and gives you a list to refer back to when you want to make more improvements or changes.)

Questions to consider:

1. Are you and your family ACTUALLY enjoying the meals you’re having for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? If so, why or why not?
   

2. What are some cooking or baking skills you would like to learn or improve?
   

3. What new ingredients, cuisines, or recipes would be fun to try?
   

4. How could you start meal prepping for the week to make cooking easier?
   

5. Do you have a place to keep favorite recipes you’ve used?

✨ Let me give you an example of how this looked for me by using the question. (Are you and your family ACTUALLY enjoying the meals you’re having for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?) When I first went through this particular question, I recorded some of the reasons I liked and didn't like our meals at the time.

Breakfast: Yes, we're liking some of our breakfasts. They taste good and are quick to eat BUT... I don't truly like the way we're doing breakfast. The foods have a lot of sugar in them and aren't making my family feel great. We get hungry again quickly and don't feel like we have a ton of energy.

(Writing down the answers to the questions forces you to actually picture things in your head and think through them.)

Lunch: No, don't like the lunches we're having. We always eat late because I don't have things planned, so we often just eat random snacks or frozen foods like nuggets or taquitos. They don't feel healthy which I don't love. I'd rather have more variety, too.

Dinner: Yes, we like the dinners we're having but that's mostly because we're defaulting to pizza, tacos, hotdogs, or fast food. I like the convenience, but the meals don't really feel "special". They also don't make us feel great, and we'd like to save money and eat healthier. I wish our dinners had more side dishes. I have fond memories of my mom making some of my favorite meals from scratch, and I'd like to have more of that feeling in my own home.

This is an example of how you can use thoughtful questions to give you a LOT of inspiration about where you can focus on improving your life at home or give you inspiration of where to do more research and exploring of ideas!

I was immediately able to see that:

• My family needed more protein and less sugar in our breakfasts.

• I needed to plan ahead better for my meals.

• I wanted to be more intentional about adding healthy fruits and vegetables to our diet.

• My family would enjoy some more creativity and variety to our meals.

• I was ready & wanting to make a lot of changes to how my family handled dinnertime - which prompted me to create my Seasonal Meal Planning System!

SO many great ideas and changes came from me simply sitting down, asking myself the questions, and going through the process of brainstorming and writing my answers out.

Making these changes were so rewarding and impactful in my family. They came from my personal values and made a very real, practical difference.

I encourage you to use the questions above to inspire you to really think about the answers, write them down, and explore new ideas! 💜

There are so many more topics, questions, and ideas that I share in the 8 Foundations of Homemaking framework. If you're ready to learn about intentional homemaking and create a life at home you love - download my "Intentional Homemaking Guide" to get started!

✨ Download the guide here: https://www.thehomemakerlifestyle.com/intentional-homemaking-guide