Over a year ago, I sat down with my life coach and said: “I want to love my home life.”
I was working in sales and events for a big tech company at that time. I had moved six times over 5 years. Along the way I realized my heart was yearning for a home.
I grew up with parents who worked long hours in banking and my mom was working full-time my entire life. I was used to traveling a lot. I started traveling by myself at grade 7, on a week-long trip to Singapore with my classmate’s family. My mom had this vision of me becoming a global citizen, so here we are, many years later: I’ve traveled to 5 continents and have lived overseas for almost 8 years. I’ve worked in the biggest company in the world, am currently in grad school full time in Washington D.C., and am on track to fit 3 more countries and half of the United States into my list this year.
Yet anyone who knows me knows I have changed over the years, my heart yearning to make any place a home wherever I go.
When I was a senior in college, I started attending a women’s Bible study at a local church. Except for my friend Carter and I, every woman in the group was a stay-at-home mom. I felt completely outnumbered and out of place. If anything, I was graduating college and moving to a big city to start a big girl job. These women were talking about the joy and heartache of seeing their children grow up too fast, the pains and challenges of having family come stay with them all the time, the church events they were all volunteering for, the homes they were making.
Over the course of the year, I felt my heart soften in the best way possible, unexpectedly. I started seeing the many thoughts that go into making a home lovely and people feel cherished. I start seeing the art of homemaking, not only as a necessity of feeding and sheltering but also the practice of living whole.
So I started. I started where I was, in my dorm room as an RA, making all the corners lovely and livable. I baked my first quiche and served quiches to 30 of my friends the day after we all graduated from college. I bought $12 of groceries on Sunday afternoons and made my friends a big pot of soup during the colder months when we were all studying in someone’s house. Homemaking started simple, where I was, with what I was able to offer.
Now fast forwarding to this point when I was sitting down with my life coach and telling her that I needed to love this life again. I had moved to Washington D.C. after college and built an amazing group of friends and community. I became the host of Friendsgivings. I had many friends over for dinner. Yet I started finding myself being restless, missing the simple moments where I feel most at home, when I am tending to each corner of the home, feeling known and loved by my Maker.
I was feeling stuck. Wanting to do more than I was but also exhausted at the same time.
And life has a way of pushing you into a tight corner right when you feel like something is off. A couple months after this call with my health coach, I lost my job. All of a sudden, I didn’t know where home was going to be for the near future. What about my sourdough starter? What about my workout studio that I go to 3 days a week and my nightly routine of practicing Biblical Greek before going to bed at 10? What about my quilting project that I barely started?
This life event launched me into a world of unknowns.
In the year following, between that point in time and where I am now sitting to write this blog, I have traveled again. I went to 4 different continents in the span of 4 months and applied to graduate school. I climbed a mountain. I moved into an apartment where the oven doesn’t work and for the first time in many years I couldn’t bake whenever I wanted. I started running and walking instead of going to the workout studio, living far from the closest one. Life looks a lot different now.
And it launched me into a quest of simplified homemaking. I thought about the time when I had so little and felt so content learning to make any little place a little bit more lovely, functional, and welcoming to others. I have learned the possibility of it, through trial and error, through heartache and much laughter.
And I intend to share them all with you along with my journey of traveling the world, all at the same time.
This blog is made for those who want to see the world but also love every home they ever go to. It’s for the ones who desire the home to be a place to feed people and make them feel loved. It’s for the military wives, the consultants, the travelers, the missionaries, every single woman in transition – the ones who live life on the go but also want to grow as a homemaker at the same time.
I believe we can do it. I believe you can do it. I believe we can enjoy the world and our home, and being able to do the two things together makes for the most fulfilled life.
And I intend to share it all with you on this blog.
Still reading? Then you get to hear what’s coming next.
In the next 3 weeks, I am finishing up my MBA semester here in DC. In early May, I am traveling to Berlin, Germany for 2 weeks for a consulting project. The day after I come back from Germany, my friend Emily and I are driving down to Texas so that I can start my internship with an airline, which means I get to travel all over the United States for the summer. And then I’ll be spending a semester abroad in Switzerland, which is in central Europe, and that means I then get to travel all over Europe.
Can you believe it? I can’t either.
This blog is to share with you the different ways I travel places but also care for the people I love. It’s going to give you an insider’s view into how I decide to spend my time on things that matter, from the meals I cook to the things I learn along the way. It’s going to introduce you to the food, the books, the languages, the cultures I experience, and the God who made them all.
Last thing: I’m happy you are here. If you are reading this, you mean a lot to me. I hope you find a comfortable home in this space.
You’re welcome anytime.
Love,
Tram
simply homemaker 