Practicing the Art of Contentment as Homeschool Moms

It’s easy for homeschool moms to fall into the discontentment trap because we are bombarded with marketing on all sides, telling us that our life would be better, “only if” we had some special thing that we don’t have.

Before I was a stay-at-home homeschooling mom, I had everything that our society tells us that we should have in order to be “fulfilled”.

I had a master’s degree, a professional job that was actually a lot of fun, a husband who supported me in every endeavor, two kids in daycare/preschool and a fancy house in the best part of town in the very best school district. And I was absolutely miserable. Actually, all four of us were miserable. Life was a daily logistical nightmare of getting people where they needed to be, on time, with full tummies and clean clothes.

Then, three things happened right around the same time that kicked me in the rear end and made me wake up to the fact that society had lied to me about “having it all”.

First, when I picked my youngest daughter (at a different daycare than the older one went to because no one had openings for both) I noticed she was having an asthma attack. When I mentioned it to the worker, she casually said, “Oh yeah, she’s been like that all day.” After an ER visit, we decided she would not be returning to that day care.

The next week was Sept. 11, 2001 which shook us all to the core and made us re-evaluate all of our priorities.

Then, we started becoming more and more concerned about our older daughter’s unwillingness to go to kindergarten. She absolutely hated it and I spent hours volunteering in her classroom, talking to the teacher, the counselor, and the principal, only to eventually pull her out of school to homeschool her for the remainder of the school year.

We didn’t know anything about homeschooling, didn’t know anyone in real life who homeschooled, but since I’d quit my job by this point to stay home with our younger daughter we couldn’t afford a private school.

It was a massive life style change in a very short amount of time.

We sold the fancy house and minivan and moved to a smaller house where we first encountered contentment with the many blessings we’d been given.

And in the twenty-plus years since I have learned a few lessons about contentment that I hope to share with you.

Tips for Finding Contentment in Your Life

Contentment is easier if you have a goal to work toward.

Maybe you want to pay off all your debts, buy a bigger house, or be able to pay for your children’s college.

If you have a written goal and are taking active steps to reach it, it makes it much easier to not buy that newer car or go on a shopping spree for a short-lived dopamine hit.

I’ve found that many marketing ads promise to save you time if you purchase their product. So you are in essence trading your money for more of your time.

For example, early on in our homeschooling journey, I was convinced that one of those “all in one box” homeschooling curriculums would be worth the very large price tag because it would save me so much time. Except that a lot of it didn’t work well for my kids, and some of it, I didn’t like, so we didn’t do those parts of it either. It ended up being a waste of money because we didn’t really utilize it all.

My lesson in that was that as a homeschool mom living on one income, I have more time than money, and it’s okay to spend the time putting together a curriculum that we’ll actually like and use.

Contentment is a decision.

It sounds simple to just decide to be content.

However, it can be tricky if you don’t change your behavior.

You have to know what activities cause you to want more than you can have.

For example, if you love new clothes, don’t go to the mall, take the shopping apps off of your phone, and pour the time you would have spent shopping into a new, productive hobby like gardening and canning, or sourdough, or embroidery.

You also have to remember that other people’s situations that look fantastic from the outside are never what they seem. Everyone is struggling with something, I guarantee, no matter how put together they appear.

I’ve personally found that the less time I spend with my phone in my hand, the more content I feel.

When I’m mindlessly scrolling through reels on facebook, I’m getting better at recognizing content that is designed to make me either want to buy something, or even worse, to make me think that I NEED that something. That if I buy it, my life will be soo much better.

It’s very easy to fall into the mind set that if I just had (fill in the blank) everything else in my life would just fall into place, everything will be magically wonderful.

For example, we live in a 50+ year old farmhouse and the kitchen had never been updated since it was built. We lived with it for about 10 years and made do with the way it was. Then C0V1D hit and we were stuck at home. A friend had taken all of her kitchen cabinets out to redo her kitchen and gave them to us, so we decided since we were at home anyway, we’d start on our remodel.

It took us over eight months, but we did all of the work ourselves and paid for it as we went. I had this strange mindset (that I blame on Pinterest and Instagram) beforehand that remodeling our kitchen would somehow magically transform our whole lives. Did it? No, we still dump all of our stuff on the island when we come in the door. Does it look as fancy/cost as much as my friend’s remodel? No. Do I like my kitchen better? Absolutely (You can learn more about how we incorporated the remodel into our teenage son’s education here).

We have decided to be content with (and grateful for) what we have.

Being content with your current situation doesn’t mean it will never change.

As you reach your goals, you will be able to live differently and give more generously.

If you have no debts or have purchased that new house, you might decide it is time to do things differently, but I think you will discover that you are quite happy and content with the things you already have.

You will realize that as long as something is working, you don’t need to replace it with the latest model. Our TV is more than 10 years old, but it still works just fine.

And when things do quit working, there is almost always a YouTube video showing you how to get the $30 part and fix it instead of buying a new item altogether.

I think one of the things that helps me to be content with what I have right now, is knowing that with patience and over time, we can change things and that it’s actually better to do it slowly over time, instead of getting it all right now even though we can’t afford it.

For example, one of my daughters wanted to start a collection, but she wanted dozens of the item all at once. I explained to her that the joy of a collection is finding the different pieces at different places through the years. Having the patience to wait for it instead of having it all at once makes it all the more precious.

My family is almost through a “no-spend” January.

Have you ever done a month like that? Where you don’t buy anything and just live off of what is already in your house?

Our deep freezers were so full this fall from our garden this year and it didn’t seem like they were getting any less full because we kept buying more groceries.

So we decided we would only buy milk for the month. No eating out, either.

And of course, we still paid our bills.

We did have to buy a part for our generator right before the big snow storm/blizzard, which we thought was pretty important.

And we did go ahead and order seeds for the garden because the ones we wanted were selling out quickly.

But otherwise, we’ve stuck to it.

The first few days of January, there were several things that I thought of, that I’d like to have, so I put them in my Amazon cart for later, ie. February. Now, I don’t even remember what they were, and I obviously didn’t really need them.

Really, the only thing that has been “hard” has been gluten free bread. Back when I only had 3 kids, I used to make all of our whole wheat bread from scratch. Then the overnight addition of three more kids who needed a gluten free diet made me turn to the convenience of store-bought. We’ve discovered that gluten-free bread-making is very different from baking freshly milled whole wheat bread, but GF biscuits, banana bread, and cornbread are totally do-able, so that’s what they’ve happily been eating.

And so far, we’ve been able to save a surprising amount of money, which we’re going to use towards a new fence around the garden this spring.

I’ve discovered that “use it up, make it do, or do without” is really quite easy once you make up your mind that you aren’t denying yourself, you are just practicing delayed gratification. And it doesn’t feel like doing without. It feels like abundance when you choose to be content.

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