Stay At Home Mom's

Grandma Donna wrote, this room is for stay at home mom's to have conversations and share ideas with one another.  I was a stay at home mom for many years, I did go to work outside the home when the children got older so my perspective is what we did many years ago.  I hope you all find this room helpful to give you a place to connect with others with similar situations.

Hi there! I am FINALLY a stay at home mom! When I first started following Gdonna, I was a single mom going through a divorce. My two young boys and I had just spent 2.5 months in a women's shelter before getting into a home of our "own" (it was rented and very expensive). I then spent a little over ten years as a single mom...working fully time, over time, any time really, just trying to make it. I had to go to food banks sometimes and get reduced lunches for my kids at their school. Fast forward to now....I have been remarried two years now. My husband, kids and I live on about 20 acres in an old farmhouse built in the 1890s we have a huge garden, chickens, ducks, goats, rabbits, dogs and cats. I homeschool my boys in an effort to spend as much time with them as I can since I missed so much of their young lives. I do home canning and preserving. Trying to find a routine that is best for our household has been a journey. You'd think, having two teenage boys, I would have got this down by now but I didn't have the luxury of being a stay at home mom until only the last few years so I'm fairly new to this. I do know my stress level has come WAY down. I have fibromyalgia so stress makes me hurt more. I don't hurt as much now that I don't work outside of the home. Times get tight around here sometimes and I am tempted to go get a job to help but my husband and I both know how much more peaceful it is to have one parent stay at home while the other works outside of the home. So I do everything I can to stretch our money as far as it will go. This forum topic excites me. I hope a lot of stay at home moms meet up here! 

Grandma Donna wrote, Hi Kieva, thank you for kicking off the first post in this new topic. For those reading this, Kieva and I go back many years now with her reading my blog and she and I emailing back and forth. Her life was so interesting I started a folder for our emails and pictures. There were times I did worry about her but I can tell you this young lady does not give up on anything!  She wanted a better life for her children and she did anything she could to make that happen.  She realized if she could get herself somewhere that she could grow food she would do all she could to provide food and she did, each year she grew a bigger garden and canned and preserved her food and worked on this old farmhouse to turn it into a real home.  She met someone, fell in love and got married as she said above two years ago now. :)  She has a wonderful story of never giving up.

kieva, your story is very inspiring. So glad you get to stay home now and be with your boys! I am a stay-at-home mom also but have been since my boys were born. I have twin 11 year olds and my baby turns 5 next week. 
So neat that you have 20 acres! We only have 1 acre and I would love more, but I am thankful for 1. We are not allowed to even have chickens on our land! I’m hoping we can figure something out with those rules. Our neighbors have a wonderful farm that we get those things from and I have a No Dig garden that I attempt. I am still fairly new to gardening, I feel. I haven’t ever canned anything of my own but we have gone and picked peaches at an orchard and have canned jam/syrup/slices. My husband loves the food from the garden but is not really “into” it himself. So it’s my thing and sometimes I get discouraged. Last fall when school started, I had a whole fall garden planned..and I just couldn’t do it and start the school year. I felt like I couldn’t do both. It felt like teaching and planning was like a full time job..but I would like to do both. And part of my kids’ homeschool education, I feel, is just our little land/garden stewardship. It’s easy to get in the mindset of textbooks and “finishing” the grade for me. Hope to have more balance this next growing season(s). 
okay I am just somewhat rambling now. 

I am a stay-at-home mom/wife and was able to be one from before pregnancy all the way 'til now, although my two children are now young adults attending university (one living at home, one out of state but graduating in May and coming back home to live while attending grad school).  We homeschooled all the way through the high school years.  I have been so fortunate to be able to learn and practice many skills relating to home and hearth.

We have a minuscule 7f00 square foot lot (.17 of an acre) for our house and yard.  We gardened when my children were younger, but right now we just have a few fruit trees.  Anna G, I can certainly relate to your husband not being "into" the garden -- my husband has made it clear that he has no interest in gardening whatsoever.  Even though I don't love gardening, I've been wanting to get back to it for the security and economics of growing some of our own food.  But in 2022 my husband said he really thought I should choose between raising a puppy or starting a garden, and I chose the puppy and not the garden.  Now that he is an adolescent I can see that I won't be growing a 2023 garden either.  But I do have grand plans for 2024!

Kieva, my husband agrees with yours on how much more peaceful it is to have one person at home as the full time homemaker!  Indeed, once my youngest started community college everyone kept asking me if I was going to go back to work.  I even briefly considered it when I learned that a local bank was hiring (I used to be  bank manager), but my husband thought it was a terrible idea, and he was so right!  It is better for my physical and mental health to be home, and better for our family too.

Thank you Grandma Donna! I'm so glad I found your blog. You have helped me get to where I am now and I am so grateful for that :)  I have no solid record of all the emails we have exchanged because I have been on many devices throughout the years. I bet it does tell a story! 

Anna G, it can be very discouraging trying to do it all. I do want to clarify that we rent these 20 acres but our landlord treats it as if its ours. It's a unique arrangement. He's really happy to find someone who cares for his late grandparent house as much as they did. But I hear thar it's hard to do it all from all homesteaders I know really and a lot of them aren't homeschooling too! Last year was rough for us. The garden still looks horrible because it just went crazy with weeds by the end of the year and we were so exhausted from the year that we just left it. It's going to be fun cleaning it up here soon. I have come to homeschool pretty much year round now. There are 8 subjects we have to cover. Some, I cover extensively like the main subject...math, language arts, social studies, and science. The rest (art, music, health, and PE) we do when we can really. I try to tie them into life. I do prioritize what I feel they will use the most in their life also. For example, my youngest son wanted to go help his step brother work on a car but he was worried he'd get "behind" on schooling. I told him I'll worry about that and I just want him to go learn to work on a car. Getting a bit out of the public school rules and into "this is my school now" rules is hard sometimes. I might look at a subject he is working on and realize I'm about to do a life skill that I believe he needs to know more so I might decide to take him from the book work and work on the skill instead. But, like I mentioned earlier, I now homeschool all year so that we can spread the work out and have time for real life lessons all throughout the year. I would suggest you start out with a 4 x 4 foot garden for you and maybe one for your sons to work on if you want to start a garden this year. See how you all do this year with that and then, maybe next year, add a little more. Start small and master that small space before adding more. If you start too big you'll probably burn out and won't enjoy it. Maybe the next year you could do one 4x4 foot garden for each of you and do a competition...see how much each can grow in one plot. Leave all the planning, maintaining and harvesting to each family member. Weigh out the produce , keep a log, and see who managed their plot the most efficient! You might be surprised how much can be grown in one 4x4 square foot garden. Also, don't worry about the rambling lol I'm horrible at it! I don't know how many times I've apologized to Grandma Donna for that same thing lol. 

Kimberly F, it just doesn't seem natural to have everyone in the household gone all day anymore. I do miss work outside of the home sometimes though. I was actually in the Navy for 8.5 years (I count ever minute of it!). Being at sea and just having that bit of time away had its perks but its just not worth it to miss so much. I'd still chose home any day!