HOMEMAKING: A POWER CAREER

18 Responses to this article

1. katepickle February 21, 2012 Reply

    

    

   Oh I love Rhonda, and her blog!
   She is so inspiring in so many ways!

    
2. gardnerm February 21, 2012 Reply

    

    

   A good story and and idealic life, but I wonder if Rhonda has a mortgage. I chose to leave my job and care for my mother, not realizing how difficult it would be to live on less than $20,000.00 a year whilst still having a mortgage, lucky for me I have always been frugal and enjoy an organized well run home, I will certainly look up her blog.

    
   • Wendy Harmer February 21, 2012 Reply

      

      

     Hey Gardnerm…don’t look up Rhonda’s blog. I’m sure she’s had enough of that kind of thing!

      
3. jackie February 21, 2012 Reply

    

    

   I think a lot of us in our forties are finding ourselves in the position of not feeling quite as affluent as we used to feel. Our wages are not rising as fast as the cost of living. We’ve lived our twenties and thirties with a high disposable income so we haven’t developed the skills of being frugal and living simply. I will read Rhonda;s blog with much interest. Thanks for the article.

    
4. Anne @ Domesblissity February 21, 2012 Reply

    

    

   Rhonda’s blog is the first I ever read when I started following blogs. I don’t have time for the vegie garden nor do I think it’s viable for me. She deserves all the accolades that come her way.

    
5. Mary February 21, 2012 Reply

    

    

   I, like Jackie, am in my 40′s. I graduated from Uni in the mid ’80′s in finance at the time when movies like “Working Girl” and “Wall St” presented being a “career woman” as glamorous. If anyone had said to me then that it was fun to look after a home and be proud of it I would have scoffed at them and dare I say it, looked down on them. Now I am one of them though I can’t say as Megan does that i have the experience of enjoying a shiny floor much with two baby mess-ters. I went to my niece’s bridal shower recently and I was amazed at the gifts she got from her peers who like her are professional women. Frilly aprons to be worn in the kitchen not the bedroom (though I guess she could use them in the bedroom if she wanted), rolling pins, baking dishes, fluffy bath mats. It is so lovely to see this generation of women so comfortable and proud to acknowledge their role as wife and homemaker as well as money maker

    
   • Megan Kinninment February 21, 2012 Reply

      

      

     My floors are never shiny Mary! Not unless the 2-year-old has just spilled something on them…Yesterday she hosed the kitchen floor through the patio screen door – it was really shiny then

      
     • Sally February 21, 2012 Reply

        

        

       Megan, your comment just made me snort with laughter!

        
     • Mary February 21, 2012 Reply

        

        

       Megan…why did I think you had written that you loved looking at your shiny floors???? Brain burp on my part…I must have made that bit up…hahahaha…and I love your shiny floor story too

        
6. Janine Bryce February 21, 2012 Reply

    

    

   Fantastic read – all power to Rhonda for her new take on life. I too “climbed the ladder of success, only to find it was leaning against the wrong building”. I’m in my late 40′s and recently left a highly successful career, finding I was very unfulfilled and drained of any zest for life. It has been hard to start again, and three years on, life financially is a bit of a struggle, but I am so much happier than I was and enjoy the simple things such as looking after my family,rediscovering hobbies and taking my two dogs for walks on the beautiful Sunshine Coast!

    
7. Helen February 21, 2012 Reply

    

    

   I guess I did it back to front, when I was a very young married with children I made all our clothes, knitted, cooked meals out of nothing and never had a spare cent. Having got into the work force in my late thirties I am now getting rid of the accumulation money buys to scale back down to the grey nomad caravan.

    
8. Becci Sundberg February 21, 2012 Reply

    

    

   I have my copy of DTE here and I am loving every page. I want to go out and buy dozens of copies right now and give to everyone I know!

    
9. Joni64 February 21, 2012 Reply

    

    

   I started off as a professional in a very good career and left to have 4 children, one with special needs. We live on a large block which I converted to a semi permaculture garden with compost bins, free range chickens, vegetable garden beds, fruit trees and a worm farm. I reuse, recycle, re purpose, donate,. sell and buy second hand, trawl through kerbside clean ups, freecycle, gumtree, quicksales and eBay, use hand me downs, cook, sew bake etc. I walk all trips under 5 km to minimise fuel usage and get fit. It does end up being a big job but very satisfying.

    
10. Dayla February 22, 2012 Reply

     

     

    I started reading Rhondas blog a year or so ago.I found it liberating and strengthening of my own resolve. I was doing all this stuff she writes about but hid it for fear it was uncool. Now I am proud and don’t mind telling anyone who will listen of the delights of living what I call a true human existance.

     
    • Megan Kinninment February 22, 2012 Reply

       

       

      I love this comment Dayla – what you are doing (and the same with all the other comments here) IS cool!
      I remember a blog post of Rhonda’s a while back where she said Home is the New Cool… I think she’s spot-on.
      x

       
11. Christine Kent February 25, 2012 Reply

     

     

    I’ve just stumbled onto Rhonda’s blog! I was raised by a single parent who escaped Cabramatta and fled to the Sunshine Coast. My Mum’s desire was for us to live a better life and we had solar power, no mains water or electricity, a veggie garden and home made clothes for a long time (even into the 90′s). I then became a career woman, living the high life, travelling and working all over the world. Now I’ve come full circle. My husband and I bought a house we could afford on one income and we now have a 3yo. It’s a weatherboard with character and a lot of flaws, but we are really enjoying making it “our home”. We have pulled out the entire front garden, including the lawns, and we have started re-planting it with natives (phase by phase). We have had new fences installed after saving for 3 years for them so that our son can now run freely from the front to the back. We took out all the shrubs from the back garden and planted some fruit trees and herbs so we no longer buy herbs. Our son loves nothing more than picking his own ripe figs. We do a lot of the little things Rhonda suggests but which had actually come to me as second nature given my Mum’s early influence. When there are “leftover” fruits – they go into some kind of cake. We buy all our produce from the local market (which we get to by public transport as we do not own a car). We now all have bikes so we can travel locally a bit more easily. I free cycle things we no longer need and/or sell them for a bit of extra cash. We haven’t had a holiday in years because we can’t stretch that far, and we can’t make major changes to our house on one income, but we love being at home and making it a home and we have ideas about what we would like to do in the future (demolish the garage for veggie beds etc)…renovate the kitchen as my husband is a brilliant cook…get solar power…get water tanks. It’s just hard that many of the things you could do for your home, and for the environment, do require a substantial $ outlay with not much in the way of rebates…but we’ll get there. In the meantime, I say thank you to my Mum for the lessons she taught me growing up on the Sunshine Coast (in the 70′s) and I will strive to be prouder and more vocal of the choices we have made; instead of being a bit apologetic about it. Wishing Rhonda all the success in the world with her book.