a good reminder.

While I am definitely excited about taking better care of myself and making a daily effort to put my best foot forward, it's nice to have a reminder about what's truly important at the end of the day. Don't you just love the wisdom of Marjorie Pay Hinckley? 

 

"I don’t want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking the kids to scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor’s children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone’s garden. I want to be there with children’s sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived."

~Marjorie Pay Hinckley~

Inspiration.

Here's a little inspiration that I read whenever I just don't feel like housewifing....

I found what I thought to be a pretty hilarious homemaking book at D.I. It's from the 1960s, and some of it cracks me right up, but a lot of it is really well put. Here's a little snippet.

"Of course it is normal for every homemaker to have bad days when little is accomplished. At times she might be completely discouraged and depressed with her role in life. It is the purpose of this book {or this blog - yay!} to help you with those bad days and feelings of exasperation so that they will become infrequent and fleeting.

Let's begin by defining an ideal homemaker. An ideal is something for which we strive. It is our standard of perfection and excellence. An ideal, or goal, is like the North Star which guides the mariners at sea. Although they never reach the North Star, it keeps them charting their course in the right direction. We can't be ideal homemakers in every way at all times, but we do need a goal to be our North Star and to help us along in the right direction."

And later, she goes on to say:

"An ideal homemaker is ambitious and enthusiastic through application of the law that how one feels emotionally greatly determines how she feels physically."

and

"An ideal homemaker is devoted to the great career in which she is engaged. She is a professional in her field by being a homemaker every day and letting her devotion and sense of duty, rather than her moods, dominate her."

~Daryl V. Hoole

The Art of Homemaking~

I really love that last part. Because ideally, I don't want to have my life run by my moods. I "don't feel like it" way more often than I do, but that doesn't have to stand in the way of my desire to have a clean and happy home. I find that when I push past my feelings of laziness and go to work despite "not feeling like it," I shift into a better mood and pick up momentum in no time.

I have had SUCH a hilariously bad start this morning (more on that later tonight) that I needed a little motivation to keep going. 

Oh, and if you need a little pick me up on the "getting ready every morning" aspect, Daryl Hoole also says: "BEAUTY IS A DUTY."

So do it!

Ha ha!

 

The best inspiration for me? Remembering who I am working for. They are SO worth it.