5 Money Saving Tips and Ideas for Stay at Home Moms and Dads

By Ann Neal
I have always been a stay-at-home-mom. It seems that the role suits me to a great extent and from tending to a garden with dexterity and knowing where to shop for the best groceries, I enjoy every single bit of it! The only bit that bothers me is the one when family members and friends have certain misconceptions regarding my choice. More often than not, I am greeted with raised eyebrows and advice by the dozen, “you know you could have done better for yourself as a career-oriented woman!”. Or the shocker, “you don’t venture much outside, do you?”. Imagine these ‘pearls of wisdom’ coming from your near and dear ones!

The Home-Maker by Juliet Kego [Poetry]

My thoughts when I first read this poem by Juliet Kego (pictured above) was this is absolutely beautiful! The Home Maker by Juliet Kego is so touching and yet so strong. The poem, which Juliet calls Floetry, gives a voice to the woman at home toiling to make her home and feeling unsatisfied and underappreciated. The woman in the poem knows when she's had all she can carry, and what she needs to do in order to find herself. Enjoy the poem below...

6 Things You Can Do To Ensure Your Home Is Burglary Proof

By Keisha Diamond

Travel to any modern city in the world today and you will be amazed at the sophisticated security measures in place, even in the most common of all places – home. Why the alarm? Burglary occurs so often that in some countries, burglary is committed every 16 seconds.

Try out this exercise: Imagine arriving at your doorstep without a key, how are you going to get into the house? Think outside the box. Would you break the windows? Would you go through a back door? After brainstorming, you will likely find out a weak spot around your home that you may need to secure.

3 Easy to Use Household Cleaning Schedules

I am a housewife, or a stay at home wife when I want to be tush. But the fact is that I work from home blogging and writing. And blogging can be such a hard task master that if I'm not careful, the other chores I have to do around the house get overlooked.

I don't generally like domestic duties, especially cleaning. But I like the space around me clean and neat so I know it has to be done. Time for me to get a plan.

Here are few sample schedules I found for cleaning around the house. Hope one of these help any of you who are in the same boat with me.

Let me know if you have any other suggestions. I like the last one best.

Viral Video - Moms Have the World’s Toughest Job

A mother’s impact is endless, and so is her job description. Moms have the world’s toughest job – they take care of practically everything – and they deserve to be recognized for it. Cardstore wanted to show this with the release of their Mother’s Day video last month and it certainly worked.

House Wife or Home Manager - The Work and Status of Stay at Home Mothers

The term here in the United States is Stay at Home Mother but the title more common in Nigeria is housewife. This denotes any married woman that chooses or happens to not have a career outside the home or not at all.

Must Read - What Does The Housewife and Stay at Home Mother Do All Day?

A man came home from work and found his 5 children outside, still in their pyjamas, playing in the mud, with empty food boxes and wrappers strewn around garden. The door of his wife's car was open, as was the front door to the house and no sign of the dog, walking in the door, he found ...an even bigger mess.

5 Things to Consider Before Becoming a Housewife

I'll use my personal experience here. I wrote about changing careers after marriage and how I had to move from the UK to the US to join Atala. Making that step was not a simple, light-hearted decision, or one that we took for granted. And that was why I said at the beginning of this article that contrary to most other women, I planned to be a housewife.

We had several conversations about the issue, and contemplated several scenarios, which apart from the option of living in the US together, included Atala moving back to the UK, both of us moving back to Nigeria, only me moving back, or remaining in the UK. None made as much sense as the one we finally went with, moving here and being a stay at home wife.

And though we didn't think it would take this long, a stay at home wife is what I've been for the past few years, and that is the easy part. For the stay home mom, the workload increases exponentially with each child. Add child care to the housework, and you may be working round the clock, especially if you decide to home-school the children. So what should you consider before you jump in?

How to be a Stay at Home Wife or Mother

Did you see how I used the stylish name and not the one most of us are used  to put up our noses at. Yeah, the H-word. I mean housewife. Another way to describe staying at home as a wife or mother is as a Homemaker, this I think is the best description. But whichever way it is put, a housewife usually does not have an external income, or she just does not earn as much as she would if she worked outside the home.

For this reason, a lot of stay at home wives and mothers will tell you, "I did not plan to be a housewife", but in my case I actually did. I mean we did, Atala and I. Let me start from the beginning. I am one of those never say never kind of people, I try to remain adaptable, and not to think in absolutes. For instance, it was never taboo in my mind for a woman to choose to be a housewife, the key word being choice. If a woman gets married and decides to stay home, either for the husband or the children, who was I to judge? Especially if it is working for their family?

Having a career or not is one of those topics that can get educated and socially-aware women up in arms, the debate being whether career women can be good mothers, and how much housewives contribute to the economy. I remember when Michelle Obama said at the DNC last year, “... my most important title is still ‘mom-in-chief.’” Some people were not happy about that, and feel that with all her degrees she should be out building on her career and not staying home.

Pictures of Some Foods I Cook

Sometimes I cook. I usually cook enough to last a couple of meals or more. Sometimes I remember to take pictures, but usually at the end of everything. And having thought about blogging about home cooking, I have found that I may never like to take pictures step by step. I don't think I'll make a good tutorial blogger, but I'm working on better camera skills to back up recipe posts, coming your way soon. Below are some so-so pictures of food I cook. The bigger images are below these small ones:)

Should Husbands Pay Wives For Managing The Home?

This is one question that keeps cropping up again and again. I was single when I read something along the same lines after an American survey some years ago and now I'm reading it as a housewife. This time, the Union Women and Child Development Ministry in India is preparing a draft Bill that would entitle housewives a monthly income from their husbands. Of course, all the debaters are out again in force.