In a culture where we can have anything at the click of a button, why should we pursue the slow, steady work required of the household arts? Cooking, cleaning, managing, creating – these ordinary skills matter. They are formational. This post will tell you why.
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Hi everyone, I’m Cayce Fletcher, and this is A More Beautiful Life Collective. I’m here to walk with you hand in hand as we grow in grace, build with purpose, and live beautifully.
Years ago, when I first began this blog, I sat down to write, and one of the first topics I chose to write about was habits. I had just gotten done teaching through a class I planned based on Justin Whitmel Earley’s book Habits of the Household.
Central to this theme and the first posts I made was the idea of technology. In this world that is constantly pulling us online, how can we stand fast against the idol of technology?
Since then, I’ve gone through waves of technology use. I’ve gotten off Facebook. I’ve reduced it to a 15 minute time-block. We’ve done no screens throughout the week. And I’ve also been on Facebook for hours and hours. Spent all day on my computer while the TV kept the kids mesmerized.
I find myself reaching for my phone more and more when I am stressed out – and that happened a lot throughout the past year.
Technology is not evil in itself. It is a tool. But, it often tells us the lie that is an echo of the first lie told: If you use this thing, you can become like God.
Technology makes us feel like we can know anything, do anything, be anything without limit or constraint – a fact made even more apparent with the rise of AI.
In 15 minutes, I can have a complete business planned out, along with start-up costs, returns on investment, and a 12-week jumpstart plan.
But just because AI can tell me that I can achieve this thing, does that really mean that it is a thing worth doing? Can I achieve it in my season? Should we achieve it?
Technology – mostly social media and AI – pulls us out of the real world. And there are real consequences for that.
We think we are working and being productive as we make that business plan, watch those YouTube videos, or binge an influencer’s content, but we leave that time without having actually ever done anything. It truly is empty calories. The junk food of our time.
What are we losing when we fall prey to the lie of technology?
Well, we are losing generations of skills.
A Legacy Passed Down through Generations
I hear stories of my great-grandmother. She was a formidable woman. She grew up in South Carolina but married someone who worked on the oil rigs and moved to the plains. After years out there, weathering loneliness and tornadoes, she decided to move back.
She never learned how to drive, so she told my 14-year-old grandfather to drive. They were pulled over by the police, and not wanting to pay the fine, she made my grandfather spend the night in jail before driving the rest of the way back to South Carolina.
She became quite the farmhand, working in the fields and riding on the tractor in her white gloves. (My great-grandfather preferred to stay at home and cook.) Every day, she would make drop biscuits in her oven. She planted some jonquil bulbs in the house they built in the woods, which have since spread down the slope, making a sea of yellow.
Maybe you have some stories of your own, of your grandmother or great-grandmother’s skills. They raised chickens, milked cows, quilted blankets, sewed dresses, canned tomatoes, and grew flowers. They wrote poetry, taught Sunday school lessons, and collected the artifacts that built the legacy of the family you are living in.
I sleep at night with a quilt that my grandmother sewed for me. Heirlooms are passed down from generation to generation.
It is a legacy.
But, I wonder – as I look at my life and what I built – where is that legacy going? Is it stopping with me?
The Quiet Disappearance of Skill
My church has been around since the late 1800s. About once a generation, the church puts out a cookbook. You can see a shift in recipes in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. What was once flour was replaced by cake mixes and a collection of canned and boxed ingredients. In one generation, the from-scratch cooking that made up the diets of those who lived through the Great Depression was replaced with ‘the wonders of convenience’ found in the 1950s supermarket.
My grandmother was a great cook and continued making us special meals well into her 80s. But I could see the way that she lived between two lifetimes. She made special preserves each year from strawberries picked fresh from the field. (I could be seen at 4, 5, and 6 eating my weight in strawberries on those trips.) But, she also would whip together a famous cake made from a white cake mix and a heavy serving of special liquor (The Harvey Wallbanger #iykyk).
For my friends and me growing up in the early 2000s, there was little reason to ever choose a from-scratch meal over the Chick-fil-A drive-thru. We grew up eating sugary cereal for breakfast and a ham and cheese sandwich on white bread for lunch (or make it even easier and just pack a Lunchable). Canning, gardening, sewing, and knitting were something Ma Ingalls did back in the day – not something you would do in suburbia.
Recently, I was making a cake for my daughter’s birthday, and of course, I ran out of powdered sugar for the icing. I ground up some in the food processor to mix together into the pink frosting to decorate the princess cake. When I told someone I knew about this, she scoffed and asked why I wouldn’t just run up to Dollar General.
We live in a culture of outsourcing, convenience, and consumption.
Why would we take the time to make something from scratch when we can purchase the same thing at the store? Or better yet, order it and get it delivered – sometimes on the same day – for a fraction of the price?
Quilting, Knitting, Crocheting, Canning, Playing Piano, Drawing, the list goes on and on.
These are all skills that require time and effort to cultivate. Who has the time? Why is it worth the effort? When we can go to the store and buy the same thing made with machine-like efficiency more cheaply?
When we cut everything down to the bottom line, we lose a valuable portion of the worth of the household arts.
These practices are not just practical. They are formational. Through these ordinary household arts, we practice the embodied skills of creativity and beauty. We practice the skills of creation, of culture.
It’s time to return to the household arts.
What We Mean by “Household Arts”
What are the household arts?
It may bring to mind an image of a Regency-era girl doing watercolors on the moor. Or maybe a 1950s housewife wiling away hours doing cross-stitch. (And, both of these skills can be household arts.)
Household arts are the practical, ordinary skills of everyday life. Some may find their homes in domesticity, but truly, all are just the ways we cultivate creativity and create a beautiful life.
They can include:
- Cooking real food from scratch
- Keeping a home livable and welcoming
- Sewing, mending, tending, organizing
- Budgeting, planning, stewarding resources
These skills are arts because they require time, attention, and love. They are skills that we must grow in. And as we grow in them, we grow more into the image of that Proverbs 31 woman working with love for the household that praises her.
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Why Skills Shape the Soul
My family always seemed to have their feet in two places at once. I was thoroughly in the suburban world of minivans and soccer practice. At the same time, my parents did grow up in the fields picking okra and tomatoes till their arms itched.
So the weekends were spent weeding the garden at the farm and putting away gallons of tomatoes, while the weeks were spent eating TV dinners after homework was finished.
As a child being woken up at the crack of dawn to beat the South Carolina summer heat, I did not appreciate the pursuit of the household arts. Chores – like weeding and cleaning – were something to run away from. I learned quickly to never say that I was bored because I would be found something to do.
Many of us can probably relate to the tension between the skills that we cultivate and the chores that we shirk. But that is exactly why pursuing the household arts is so important.
Ordinary skills teach us patience, humility, and realism. As we struggle with starting seeds (and failing – in my case), we learn patience. When our loaf of sourdough bread falls like a pancake, we feel humility (It is our 137th loaf of bread after all). When we feel the constraints of the time it takes our fingers to crochet a blanket, we understand that we are embodied beings. We cannot create out of nothing. We learn realism.
We work within the limits imposed by life, but it is in the process that we cultivate gratitude and contentment. The process is the enjoyment.
Ordinary skills help us to understand the importance of faithfulness in everyday actions. No one will ever become an expert overnight when it comes to these skills. Excellence is cultivated in the daily returning to practice.
And as we return, we learn what it means to care for what we own – whether that’s a garden, a flock of chickens, or our hard-earned money.
The household arts are a lesson in stewardship, as we work to do the best that we can with what we are given in this life.
Household Arts as Resistance
Modern life tells us many lies.
That everything is disposable – from plates, to clothes, to marriages.
That everything is not worth doing – let someone else cook your bread, wash your clothes, even think your thoughts.
That anything that is worth doing happens outside of your home – namely in an office or documented online somewhere.
The household arts are a return back to what is good, true, and beautiful.
It is a form of resistance to the lies of the modern age.
Resistance to disposability. Resistance to constant outsourcing. Resistance to the lie that “real work” happens elsewhere.
When we set our minds to work with our hands, we are committing ourselves to stewarding our lives with care. And that impacts all those around us, as they see the resistance and they, too, join in.
Practicing, Not Mastering
Even though I’ve grown up working in the garden, I’ve tried to start my own the past few years, and each time it was a failure. The first year, it was overtaken by weeds. The second year, I started seeds only to have them wither and die inside. Last year, in an attempt to save money, I started seedlings. Everything was going well until my husband left the seedling table in the hot sun and didn’t bring them in. – And, again, everything withered and died.
It is truly easier to go by some tomatoes (or better – pasta sauce) from the store to dump in my pan without thought.
But it is in the doing that we are formed.
And the doing is rarely perfect.
The pursuit of the household arts is a lifelong project. It is seasonal, ebbing and flowing with the weather, babies, house moves, and homeschool. It is through the repetition and failure that the skills are gained. It is a hard-fought endeavor.
But that is what makes it worth it.
It is not something that can be spit out in 15 seconds by a word generator. It takes time and patience.
And through this, we cultivate a beautiful life.
Invitation Forward
Today, we’ve been considering why ordinary skills matter in a beautiful life. These embodied skills build our character, our virtue. They help to create a lovely life.
In the upcoming series, I’m going to be considering how to start building this lovely life.
Through baking bread, handicrafts, gardening, and more, we are working to pursue the good, true, and beautiful. In the coming weeks, we’ll talk about the skills that make a home not just functional, but faithful.
In the meantime, begin with one small, ordinary practice. Start to steward your mind, body, and soul well in your home, family, and community.
I’d love to hear how you’re choosing to practice the household arts in the comments below.
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Until next time, keep creating a life you love and cultivating your heart for God.
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