In Defense Of A Home Life: Martha Stewart Vs. The FlyLady

Saturday’s Glimmer, Piotr Stachiewicz (1858–1938)

And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, 

and was subject to them. 

And his mother kept all these words in her heart.

And Jesus advanced in wisdom, and age, 

and grace with God and men.

LUKE 2:51 DRA

The above quotation from Luke is a brief summary of Jesus's childhood. It is a brief and modest report of the Savior of the world. I like to imagine all the moments they shared at home. It was a quiet life. 

I just read this article about Martha Stewart saying that work/life balance isn't possible and that people who do strive for that are boring people. It is disturbing that the most famous American homemaking icon doesn't believe that you can have a home life. It is tone deaf to call the fighters for more time outside of work "boring." Martha is 85 years old and revealing something that is so obvious to me now. Stewart has always been a snob and a perfectionist. She has had incredible success, and she is very rich. She has cooks, cleaners, gardeners and assistants. She is extraordinary, and she knows it. Here is what Martha Stewart thinks about the rest of us:

When asked how she juggles her personal life with her vast media and business empire, Stewart replied there is 'no such thing. "Just get that through your thick skulls. You can't balance it, it doesn't balance," said the lifestyle guru, who recently bragged that brands give her a $40k wardrobe budget to attend runway shows.

"This thing about balance, I don't know who thought about that, but it just doesn't work. Maybe infrequently, and I'm jealous of those people, but they're all so boring," Stewart said.

Martha Stewart has forgotten that her audience is ordinary, lower income, and trying to juggle the daily grind. A woman without a cleaner, cook, gardener, or personal assistant can never reach the heights or income to get it all done so well. Most of us are imperfect and boring. Most of us aren't living our dreams. Most of us are just trying to get the basics covered. 

There is a war against home life. One of the worst ways that home life is destroyed is by never actually being home. You have to be home to have rituals with your spouse and children. Rituals require a certain level of routine and a reliable schedule. We are talking about eating meals together and spending time together having a quiet life. 

There are other reasons one would not want to spend time at home. Homes can become places of stress when finances aren't managed well. Homes that aren't tidy can also make women feel overwhelmed. Lots of retail therapy is due to not wanting to be at home. The burden of a happy home life is often placed on the shoulders of a tired and drowning woman.

In my opinion, the real domestic queen is The FlyLady. We love her book, Sink Reflections. The FlyLady couldn't be more opposite from Martha Stewart. She is a regular person. She isn't wealthy or extraordinary. She teaches us to do little bites to get things done. She hates perfectionism, She believes you can do a pretty good job maintaining your home by yourself. I thank God for the FlyLady. She has helped me to keep a routine and keep my head above water. Most days, my house is a 7 out of 10. I will never be polishing silverware and preparing for a perfect dinner party. But you can always use my bathroom, and I won't feel weird about it.  

Walking into a tidy home, having a simple routine you don't have to think about, and getting the house in order can really change your life. Once the stress and To Do lists are settled down, you can enjoy your home more. I don't care what Martha Stewart says. A home life is worth fighting for. What Martha Stewart thinks is "boring," Mr. Peasant and I call "peace." There is peace in a small and simple life.

I pray we always look to real people for wisdom and never feel belittled by the perfectionists and their vanity. God bless you and thank you for reading. 

P.S. This is Diane in Denmark. She has a YouTube channel that helps guide you through the FlyLady routines. She is a beautiful soul.

Mr. Peasant On The Kinetic Nature Of Happiness

Robert Barnes (1840- 1895) Boy Tying a Girl's Shoe 

Dress to shoes.

THE FLYLADY

I am a fan of the Flylady and her housekeeping system because it isn't just a system for cleaning your home. It is also a strategy for life. The Flylady accidentally stumbled upon a secret for living a happy life. This secret is that happiness is kinetic.

The first thing we have to clear up is what we mean by happiness. I am in agreement with Aquinas that happiness can only be found in God in Heaven in what Catholics know as the Beatific Vision. This would be eternal happiness. On the mortal plane, the closest thing we can achieve is what I refer to as temporal happiness. This temporal happiness is not permanent nor is it entirely clear. We deduce this from the variety of things people do in this world to achieve happiness. They do not agree on what constitutes happiness or how to achieve it. Yet, they all want to be happy.

Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest Heaven, The Empyrean, Gustave Doré (1867) 

The second thing we have to clear up is that pleasure is not happiness. If it was, the drunk and the drug addict would be the happiest people we know. So many people fall into the trap of hedonism thinking that is the way to go. Materialism is an extension of that hedonism as the biggest pitfall to pleasure is running out of money and stuff. You end up having to work to pay for those pleasures, and hedonists do not find pleasure in work.

The third thing we have to clear up is that achievement is not happiness. People love to pursue degrees, trophies, awards, and other vanities to put on their resumes for life. But what about the people who lie on those resumes with fake degrees from diploma mills, jobs they never had, and cheating by various means? We know intuitively that the process matters even when the end result of that process is no recognition at all or if the result is failure.

What is happiness? Happiness is the process of working towards that ultimate end of the Beatific Vision. To put it more succinctly, happiness is work. It is an activity. It is movement towards a worthy end. It is not a static thing like being drunk or stoned but a kinetic thing.

My greatest evidence for this is to look at people who have been overcome by despair. This would be the depressed. This was the Flylady when she was overcome by the grief and sadness of her husband leaving her and found herself in a mental facility. What all depressed people have in common is that they have given up and stopped moving. The Flylady escaped this trap by telling herself to do the one thing she could do. She dressed to shoes. The other stuff would come later, but that simple act of changing from your jammies to being dressed to go out into the world was the way to prime the kinetic pump. From there, she added other things she had been neglecting like her housework. None of this solved her problem with being abandoned by her husband, but it did solve the problem of yielding to the tyranny of her feelings of being abandoned.

Scarlett: Where shall I go? What shall I do? Rhett: Frankly, My dear, I don't give a damn.
Clark Gable, Gone with the Wind 1961 re-issue trailer.

Men learn early in life to disregard their feelings and focus on facts and reason. Women do not learn this lesson which is why they are always miserable. They usually need a man to put his foot up their ass and get them moving again. The Flylady figured it out without a man doing that for her. The secret to fortitude is to ignore your feelings and do what needs to be done. This begins with dressing to shoes.

The genius of the Flylady comes with her accidental embrace of the Golden Mean. If despair and inactivity go together, activity and obsession can also go together. Goals should serve as directions for our labors, but they should not serve as masters. It is enough to be doing even if the end result doesn't amount to much. For the Flylady, the timer is what remedies the obsessive-compulsion tendencies that allows the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Remember, right reason is found in the mean and not extremes. Aquinas and Aristotle would concur. The Flylady system aims for the midpoint between the extremes of obsession and despair.

The golden mean. An allegorical depiction of prosperity between
prodigality (wastefulness, reckless extravagance in spending money
 or resources) and miserliness.  Wenceslas Hollar (1607–1677)

The kinetic nature of happiness can be found in the Bible. This is the dictum of Saint James that faith without works is dead. This is Jesus castigating the lazy servant in the parable who buried his talent in the ground. This is our Lord sending out his apostles to labor. God does not need our labor, but we need our labor.

FROM THE FRIDGE: The mission statement of the noble peasants

The saints concur with the kinetic nature of happiness. This is Saint Joseph the Worker who offered up his labor and care for the Holy Family. This is Saint Benedict with his dictum of ora et labora which means to pray and work. This is the Little Flower who didn't let her littleness prevent her from doing small acts of love for the Lord.

If you find yourself at the point of despair, think of the smallest thing you can do and do that thing. I would recommend praying which any conscious person can do even a paralytic in a wheelchair. Don't wait for the feeling to do something to come first. It never does. Feelings come after being dragged along by the doing.

If you find yourself at the point of obsession, take a break. This is the Sabbath rest in the Decalogue and good common sense. It is enough to do your daily tasks. Unfortunately, obsessives usually do not find this rest until everything goes to pieces in their drive to achieve something. They forget the process and focus only on the goal. Pleasure comes when we have earned a rest. Eat a meal. Take a nap. Go on a vacation. Watch a TV show. Listen to a song. These things are enjoyed in direct proportion to our labors.

I have personally been gripped by both despair and obsession at various points in my life. I have learned to keep it between the lines on the highway of life. The Flylady system is an excellent system for doing this. If you follow this program, you will not find happiness. Happiness will find you. Happiness is accidental. It is the byproduct of a life of doing and also moderation.

I pray that you discover this temporal happiness but also the eternal happiness found only in God. Thank you for reading!