I have two very strange hobbies.
The first is I like to try to do something different just to see if it works.
Usually, I do this on a small scale…nothing huge, nothing particularly shocking, and nothing that doesn’t get a reaction from people beyond raising a few eyebrows.
For instance, a few weeks ago I made my own laundry soap…not because I am an environmentalist, and not because I couldn’t afford to buy it, but because I wanted to see how it worked. I was curious. It worked, it was easy, and it saved me $39…plus I had a topic for a blog post.
When we made our ten-day family-dream-vacation-trip to Disney World many years ago, I called the airline and asked what the largest and heaviest piece of baggage I could check was. It turned out to be a two-cubed moving box at seventy pounds. The hotel had a microwave and refrigerator in the room, so into a box I packed instant oatmeal, peanut butter, jelly, Styrofoam bowls, plastic cutlery, juice boxes, crackers, granola bars, and anything else I could cram into it without going over the weight limit. Instead of spending time in a restaurant buying breakfast, we ate in the room, grabbed some snacks, and hit the parks. Our traveling companions thought we were nuts when they saw us lug a moving box into the terminal; they didn’t think we were nuts when they visited our hotel room to grab a snack, or would see us getting in line for a ride instead of in line for over-priced food. I used the Walt Disney Passporter to book dinner reservations at discounted prices and to make sure we saw everything we wanted to before we left; for the money we were spending, I didn’t want to neglect one single thing.
My second strange hobby is I love the process of doing research, especially research involving how to do anything better or get something I want.
Okay, it's not a hobby. It's an addiction. There, I said it.
Growing up and in the early years of my marriage I had a dream of owning a hobby farm… a fixer-upper place that was bought for a song with plenty of room for a garden and animals, out in the middle of nowhere, where I would raise my children and write in (relative) peace. Ten years ago, my husband wanted to change jobs and we wanted to settle the family down; so, as he spoke with job recruiters and businesses across the nation, I started researching the areas where the jobs were…everything from state taxes, property values, homeschool laws, utility rates, insurance rates, and the cost of living, to name just a few things. My husband would tell me he had a job interview in North Carolina, and the next night over dinner I’d be able to tell him things like if the area had houses like we wanted, if we could afford one, how our auto insurance rates would be impacted, and traffic data for the commute to work. When he accepted a job in our current area, we told the company-assigned realtor what we were interested in for a home. She produced three properties, stating there were not many homes in our price range with the criteria we desired; I gave her a list of over fifteen I found on my own, and kept up a steady supply of more homes I wanted to inspect over two weeks. The entire process of moving and house-hunting was a sport; I was going to get my dream house for the best price with every perk imaginable. Ten years later I still love my house, even though we are still fixing it up. (Okay, that part is a little old now, but I don’t regret doing this at all.)
When I was raising farm animals, I didn’t just go down to the local feed store and buy off the shelf; I had to find a farmer making custom-blended feeds geared to the nutritional needs of the animal and grown without pesticides and containing only whole foods. I had to work with Cornell University’s cooperative extension and find out the latest methods of crop rotation, pasture fencing, and grazing management. I knew the best places to get laying hen chicks and turkey pullets.
I don’t make major purchases on a whim; I research everything. No, I’m not a control freak or anal-retentive…I just truly find the whole process fun.
Some people play sports…I research.
Yes, I am a nerd…and proud of it.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking of my next research project. You see, my life is in a strange place at the moment. I do not have any extended family, and my husband works out-of-state; this means I am “it” for anything my children need and for taking care of the house. I do freelance work, but could earn more if I devoted more hours to working or switched to a job outside of the home; however, if a child becomes sick or needs to be someplace, I do not have any backup to support me, and living in a rural area means there are few resources for hiring that kind of help—and I’d need to make a huge salary to afford the few resources there are here. While I am grateful that my husband is employed and I have freelance work, maintaining two households is hurting us financially. (My “research” demonstrated that moving to him would actually cost us more than doing things the way we are doing them now.) My kids need me, our finances need me, my house needs me, and my husband needs me.
Oh, yeah…I need me, too.
I want to spend more time on my writing, to develop myself professionally, to increase our family’s overall income, to finish fixing up our house, to increase our standard of living while holding true to my values of frugal and simple living, and find personal satisfaction in living each day of my life.
I don’t ask for much, do I?
So, then, this morning, as I’m waiting at the vet’s office for someone to come give my rambunctious puppy his boosters so I can rush home and take care of the sick kid I left laying on the couch hacking up goodness-knows-what, an idea hits me:
What if I devoted one year to working as a Professional Family Manager…
as a real career?
What if, instead of writing about how motherhood is a career and mothers should respect themselves as career women and mothers should approach the lives they lead with the same attitude as running a small business…
what if I actually did it, not just by doing it because I already do it, but deliberately approaching running the household as transforming a struggling small business with great potential?
What if I made it a goal to earn money for the family not by going out into the world and holding a traditional job, but by managing the household in such a way that I don’t need to?
What if I took on family management as a project the same way as taking on writing a book or losing weight or body building or house remodeling or career development or rebuilding a car?
What if I spent one year devoting myself to the principles of which I write on this blog?
Hmmmm....what if?
I think I just found myself my new research project.
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