February Flash ~ my reading this month

Blog At Home Mom by Christin Slade

46 pages

Read in one day on Feb 06, 2013

Reviewed on my blog. If you missed that review you can find it HERE.

Sell Your House In A Month! Home Staging On The Cheap by Cassandra Rios, 36 pages; Read in one day on Feb 14, 2013 


I have never sold a home and found this book to be very interesting. The author of the book and her husband have a business staging homes. This makes the information in the book more credible. Simplifying and putting away personal items would be very difficult. We have lived in this house for 15 years and have accumulated many things... especially because of homeschooling.

 Vitamin D Diet: Benefits of Vitamin D for Optimal Health by Peter Kornfeld, 64 pages; Read in one day on Feb 14, 2013 

Interesting reading. I have a Vitamin D deficit and was interested in what I could do as far as my diet goes, to aid in correcting this. There is no identification of the expertise of the author. I have no idea why he wrote this book. He is not labeled as a Dr. and the book gives no author information. But the information seemed correct. I have seen similar information on the Internet and since the book was free on Kindle at the time there was no harm done. I clearly need to spend more time outside and maybe take a vacation in a southern climate or move somewhere where the sun is stronger in the winter because I HATE most of the foods that are full of Vitamin D!!! I guess I will just have to keep taking my vitamin D capsules my Dr. gave me and eating foods with vitamin D added.

Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life by Margaret Kim Peterson, 175 pages; Started on Apr 29, 2012, Finished on Feb 20, 2013 

My only regret on this book is that it took me sooooo long to read it. Here are my status updates from Goodreads

04/30/2012 page 8
10/14/2012 page 33
01/25/2013 page 42
01/26/2013 page 57 
01/27/2013 page 62 

This book was very encouraging and also gave me the 'kick in the rear' that I needed. I have been very neglectful of my home this past year. I have gotten lazy about housekeeping and used the excuse of stress over our unemployment to keep from cleaning when I should. My home was not filthy but neither was I keeping up with things as I should have been.

The book covers all areas of keeping house. Sheltering, Clothes, Food, Cleaning, and our Christian responsibility and basis for even doing the work to keep house. Margaret gives us a biblical reason for why we should keep house and helps mold our attitudes towards chores that seem to never be finished.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book to illustrate my point.

"Housework is work, and as such it has characteristics typical of many other kinds of work, including God's work. ... work is creative,...  ...all of housework is creative, including the so-called janitorial part of it. When God created the heavens and the earth, he started with chaos and ended with a finely differentiated and beautiful universe. Housework is all about bringing order out of chaos." pg 37-38

"Housekeeping can provide a way of remembering, anticipating, and participating in the kind of home-providing work that God does. All the more is this so when our homes are not all we might wish them to be. God's world is not as he wishes it to be either. But God is present and active, even in the midst of continuing imperfection and brokenness." pg 40

"We might wish to have bigger or better-equipped kitchens than in fact we do, but what matters is the faithful production of dinner (and lunch and breakfast) in the kitchens we do have. The best kitchen tools, of course, are the ones that are genuinely suited to the task. These days, the fantasy of cooking is more visibly popular than cooking itself is,..." pg 135

"God has welcomed us into his household, despite - in fact, because of - our weaknesses and needs, and he invites us even in our not-yet-perfected condition to extend that same welcome to others, promising that as we do so, we will welcome God himself." pg 159

"Our aim in keeping house cannot therefore be to do so "perfectly," because that is someone else's job (namely, God's). Our aim is much more modest: to practice "good enough" housekeeping. ...we all need homes in which the housekeeping is good enough, in which basic needs are provided for rather than neglected and in which welcome and care are routinely and cheerfully extended to both members and guests of the household." pg 164

So... We need to create order out of the chaos of our lives and our families lives, do enough to keep house, but not try to be perfect; and remember that we are serving our Lord as we serve our families. For me housekeeping becomes drugery when my attitude about it is out of whack. Thanks to this book my attitude is back on track.

According to Goodreads I am one book behind in my goal of reading 55 books in 2013 since I have read 7 books so far in 2013. I hope to catch up soon. One thing I want and need to do is get off my computer earlier each evening and spend that time reading. That is my best opportunity for reading each day and if I don't do it I will never keep up.

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I will be joining up with the March of Books. I hope this will enspire me to read more in March. There will be talk about books and giveaways and information about authors. It sounds like a lot of fun. Thanks Chantel for introducing me to this. I am excited.

 

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