Monday, May 26, 2008

...a women's work

A well known proverb:

A man works from sun to sun, but a women's work is never done.

How true that is, especially a Mother's work.
However, saying this I am attempting to prepare to build and inhabit an ARC.

And in so doing, I will attempt to regulate more time to classic homestead work.
I am planning on 4 hours per day of physical labor, and 4 hours per day of mental labor (averages).

This being said, I am a women, and will be very surprised if 8 hours per day of labor is all I put in.

So I shall define the fields of labor of which I am speaking.

Physical Labor: active, moving labor that takes more brawn then brain. For me this includes cooking, gardening, housekeeping and active childcare. It also includes house, yard and orchard maintenance, and building. (ps, growing babies takes a lot of physical work)

Mental labor: reading, writing, planning and preparing. This can include bill paying, accounting, social networking and so on. They key element is that it does not include much physical labor. This can also include work on my other businesses and meetings of all sorts.

Days off: one must always define if they are talking every day, or if they allow themselves Sabbaths and holidays. I allow myself Sabbaths, a day to focus on and plan for spiritual things. A day of rest, repose, repentance and often long naps.

Major holidays are also days to skip traditional work patterns and spend it in work patterns of a very different nature. For a woman this means, more time in the kitchen, more time chasing children and more time trying to arrange everything.- and if you ever tried to find a baby sitter for my 4 kids, you'd know what I'd mean.

This blog will serve as a journal of sorts of the labors I am pursuing, and how well I am doing at it. I hope my husband will join me and add entries about his labors too.

1 comment:

Paul said...

Wonderful start.
Now, if Mike will join in and blog about his 4 hours per day of physical labor and 4 hours of mental work, we will be on a roll.