Happy Monday, homemakers. Welcome to Monday Motivation, brought to you by the Art of Home Podcast, where we are exploring how homemakers cultivate a place to belong. I'm your host, Allison Weeks. I'm a wife, a mom, a granny, and I've been practicing the Art of Home for over 30 years. Thank you so much for joining me for a little Monday motivation today. Every Monday, you can meet me here for homemaking tips, ideas, and encouragement in this short form episode. If you like what you hear today, be sure to check out our long form episodes that come out every Wednesday, where we feature stories of homemakers just like you and deep dives into topics related to homemaking. I'm back from my summer break and kicking off the Art of Homes summer season today with an article from our brand new Art of Home resource, Homemakers Journal. Homemakers Journal is a seasonal magazine, but so much more than a magazine. Filled with encouraging, inspirational articles from over a dozen homemakers, this publication is meant to be a tool to help you learn and grow as you practice your art of keeping home and also for you to keep a record of your own homemaking. Over the next five weeks, I will be highlighting some of the articles from our first issue, which came out this past May. If you like what you hear, be sure to grab a digital or print copy over at homemakersjournal.com. These are seasonal in nature but timeless in their content. So anytime is a good time to get your copy. Today's article is from homemaker, writer, and former guest, Krista Stirkin. In this beautifully written, thoughtful article, Krista shares how she has learned to celebrate the everyday in her homaking. The Gift of Small Joys. What to get done today, tomorrow, this week? Lying in bed, tired, but knowing there are things to tend to. Toss that load in the dryer, hope it isn't stinky from sitting overnight, get the little ones moving in the right direction, drag ourselves to the bathroom mirror only to feel slightly dismayed by the tired face looking back. Oh well, we pull our hair into a sloppy ponytail and think, let's do this. So much to get done, so little time. How can we feel this far behind before the day even starts? Same thing, different day. At least there's a birthday dinner to look forward to this week. Ordinary days are most of our life. What if the ordinary Tuesday we are pushing through is actually the one worth celebrating? The majority of motherhood and homemaking happens in the routine, ordinary days. Birthdays and holidays are so fun and often deeply meaningful, but they're spaced out and add up to just a few days a year. If the title of celebration belongs only to the big events, much of our life goes uncommemorated, unnoticed. Yet with each new day, we are extended an invitation to see the everyday as worthy of tending, with delight, with curiosity, with a deep breath of thankfulness. What if the smallest things, almost generic in their frequency, are the micro joys most worth celebrating? A jumping off point for a refreshed outlook on homemaking. Stopping to notice the small details and keeping a record helps change the way we view our homemaking. For me, it changed monotony into humbly receiving the gift of tending my home. But it wasn't always like this. When circumstances feel heavy, the kitchen counter is mostly cleared. I thought I'd wiped it all, but the sun is reflecting off the spots I missed. I fold the dish towel and step back to survey the scene. Again. Right now, a subtle, sweet scent of honeycomb drifts from a small candle, artfully shaped like a tiny log, the handiwork of another homemaker who built something beautiful and blessed me with it across the miles. The breeze is picking up, flicking the edges of the curtains, and I find myself quietly thankful for curtains, for a candle, for a sink and a towel and soap to wash up. Out the window, a hummingbird flies to and fro from the feeder, remarkably curious about me and my movements. The wind chimes sing gently, marking the cadence of a peaceful afternoon. All of it keeping time, all of it a gift. There were many seasons, though, when I leaned toward discouragement or worse, despair. Loss of jobs, frequent moves, homeschooling while dealing with invisible and always present illness, wondering how to stretch grocery dollars while keeping the lights on. These trials felt heavy indeed in the midst of them. There was a temptation to compare, to look at what other families with more expendable income could do, could provide. That is a slippery slope, that smudged lens of comparison. Joy doesn't require a big bank account, perfect health, or any other temporal contributor. The conscious choice to make the most of what we have means there are countless opportunities for celebrating our lives. Creating memory-making fun through themed dinners, silly holiday celebrations, and games around the table all became practices of noticing the small things and making them worthy markers of joy. Elevating the simple joys. Start with easy wins. Get the family on board with a brainstorming session. The fun of celebrating the small stuff is that whatever is unique to your home and the people who dwell in it is what makes it original and delightful. Pick something unique to your heritage and mark the day with cultural fun. Honor the changing of the seasons. Give big props to small accomplishments, potty training wins, a child's first independent steps, a parent's finished project. Kids love to celebrate the grown-ups too. And don't overlook the nearly 2,000 obscure, silly holidays like Go Fly a Kite Day or Love Your Librarian Day. A themed mini celebration just for fun on a Tuesday can become the memory everyone talks about for years. Elevate the ordinary. We are busy and our lives can be very full, so we tend to aim for efficiency and ease in our daily routines. However, may I encourage you to let the ordinary be lovely? When we choose a pretty dress over a sloppy t-shirt, for example, we feel different and it can have a powerful effect on our whole day. When we put out a pretty garage sale saucer for our afternoon tea, it feels special, even though the ordinary routine has not changed. When we fold paper napkins even on pizza night, we honor the gift of that meal. The fruit of choosing joy. The celebration of small things leads to a powerful shift in perspective. There is no room for feeling diminished by influence or culture. There is a purposeful slowness that rejects hustle culture. And importantly, there is a freedom in embracing the life we already have right this minute that allows us to celebrate the supposed mundane. The chores don't change. The responsibility is still ours. But choosing to celebrate microjoys shores up our ability to see the work differently, to faithfully live out 1 Corinthians 15, 58. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless. We model this for our people in hard times and in plentiful ones, and our lens shifts from finding drudgery in our daily routines to finding delight. The homemaker's influence. The atmosphere of a home often reflects the perspective of the one tending it. How a mother's posture toward ordinary days shapes her children's memories is a quiet and profound thing. What we celebrate and take note of today may become the stories and traditions our children treasure tomorrow. One tiny thing. You are doing far more than you realize, and your offerings matter so much. Celebrating the ordinary does not require more money. It only requires more noticing. This week, elevate one tiny thing. Light the candle, fold the napkin, celebrate the obscure, gather these moments like sweet blossoms in a bouquet, and take the deepest breath of gratitude. There is no such thing as an ordinary day. Let it be lovely. Isaiah 32 18. Find her at KristaStirkin.com or on Substack. Thank you for listening to this Monday motivation about celebrating the everyday at home. I want to thank Krista Stirkin for contributing this beautiful article to the first issue of Homemaker's Journal. I know she would love it if you would hop over to her website or her Substack and let her know how this article encouraged or challenged you to consider the gift of small joys in your homemaking. I will put her links in the show notes. If you like what you heard today, there are over a dozen more articles waiting for you in the first issue of Homemakers Journal. You can purchase a digital copy or a physical copy or both. When you buy the physical copy, you get the digital for just $1.99. Click the link in the show notes or go to homemakersjournal.com and get your copy. That's all for this Monday motivation. I will be back on Wednesday with my summer ramble with Jessica Fisher. Until then, keep practicing your art of making a home.