Radical Homemaker

Today I'm passing on to you an article about Radical Homemakers which I found through reading Shiny Red Houses, one of the queens of homemaking.

It's something I knew was going on but hadn't put a name to it. This is something I've obviously been doing if you've been reading me for awhile. Maybe my motives are different than other women in doing this. I get the whole being greener and stop being a consumerist, but it's something else...

Skills. I recently woke up in a midlife crisis. However, my crisis is realizing I'm...39 and don't know how to do some things. How could I reach this age and not know how to do some of life's most obvious things? You do not want to eat my gravy. I really suck at making it. But that is because I didn't learn how to make it. Jace had to teach me how to make mashed potatos.

That's part of the consumerist society thing. Buying it already done for you. But now I want to know how to do it all myself. I have a feeling it's going to get more important down the road...oh in about 6 months. There's some nasty little tax things that are going to happen. Something else a lot of people don't seem to know anything about. I figure if I know how to do a lot of this house stuff then maybe we won't be throwing a full time paycheck towards these taxes.

There's also a sense of fulfillment when you have skills. You don't feel like a bumbling idiot. You know more about starting a lawn mower than a tanning bed. You know how to pick a melon. You know that the chicken of the sea isn't really a chicken...

If you can, read the above mentioned article to know where you fit in, if not just to know the name of the movement going on. There's going to be a lot more radical homemakers popping up all around you. I'm going to keep on learning some "new" skills and I'll pass on those adventures to you. Because you know the first time I try to make bread it's going to end up looking like road kill. Plus, Rowan always spices up that homemaking equation into something resembling a complete disaster or total miracle.