Are You the Queen of Your House or Just a Lowly Servant?

Maybe I don’t have to serve my house all the time, maybe it is my house that exists to serve me.

Whoever said “the days are long, but the years are short” must have only had a single baby. Since my second was born, the days are short and the years are even shorter. This last one has gone for me in an eye blink, so fast I can’t think of a single thing I’ve actually accomplished last year.

I was so busy and yet I have so little to show for it

Most of my days went by doing thousand invisible tasks that hold the fabric of family life together. On making sure everyone has clean clothes in their current size that are fit for the weather, cooking fresh nutritious meals for us all to enjoy, or putting everyone’s things away so that they know where to find them. On packing lunchboxes and diaper bags for all day trips and picnics, researching new exciting places that we could visit, throwing kid-friendly parties, and coordinating play dates with other moms so that our children can hang out and have fun. On baking banana muffins together with my kids, on teaching them how to make paper snowflakes and tie their shoes, on answering their wildest questions about life and death. On reading the same board book and playing the same board game for the ten thousandth time.

It doesn’t seem like much but to my children it’s their everything.

When I quit my last job three years ago, the thought of putting all of my time and energy on things that were so small and inconsequential felt terrifying. My way to cope with it was starting this newsletter. I wasn’t just cooking and tidying, you see, I was learning in public about the value of making a home so that other people could learn along with me. There came a time however, when with a new baby in tow I only had enough time to make that home or introspect about it, but not both. I leaned all in on the immediate and the physical, hardly writing anything or even journaling for the first time in many years. I hate to admit that I actually started learning it all faster when half of my time wasn’t spent trying to gather my thoughts.

Less thinking, more doing. Less planning, more tending to whatever task there is at hand. For a chronic overthinker like me it was a much welcome and needed change. My little ones became the best teachers, helping me learn to live in and through my body, to notice how my immediate physical environment affects my wellbeing, to build a strong foundation of sleep, fitness, and nutrition, and to set the mood of my home through tiny gestures. I suppose this is what all my yoga and meditation teachers were trying to point at over all these years, but a few hours of weekly practice can’t compare to fully living it, day in and day out.

I no longer need convincing that homemaking is a good use of my time

I just wish that after pouring all of myself into it I would get more impressive results. The moms I follow online create real magic in their homes, it feels like I’m barely stringing my first few words together in a language they all speak fluently. I need to remind myself that the women I most admire have been practicing these skills for long before they had children of their own, I can’t expect to achieve the same level of mastery as someone with a few more decades of experience.

There are many reasons why I have not learned to run a home until my children forced me to, but a large part of it was witnessing how poorly the women in my family were treated while handling housework all by themselves. Their fitness, beauty, intellectual needs, hobbies, or even health and friendships were never a priority, it all had to be immediately dropped whenever someone needed something (which, given that they all had big families, happened pretty much all the time). Nobody valued or recognized this neverending sacrifice, it went without saying that a mother’s job was to give all of herself constantly and never expect anything in return. To this day my mom says she is too busy to do the things she always wanted to, even though her youngest son moved out many years ago already.

My parents did everything in their power to spare me from the same fate, investing a lot in my education so that I could have a well-paying job that other people would respect and would not be stuck forever between the laundry room and the kitchen. It worked, and I will be forever grateful for what they did, because I know they had to move mountains to get me to where I am now. Taking a step back from paid work to fully focus on motherhood felt in many ways like wasting their gift, especially now that my littlest one started daycare, and I still have not found a job, started a business, or even come up with a half-decent plan.

There’s nothing else I want more than another baby

But I know I can’t put my whole life on hold for another few years like this. Even though I’m barely getting the hang of the art of homemaking, there are so many other things I must do. I tremble thinking how much of my professional skills I’ve forgotten already, the job market for software developers isn’t nearly as luxurious as it was a few years ago when I left. We could definitely use extra income to finish house construction sooner rather than later. And even if we didn’t need the money, my soul is craving for a creative outlet that leaves a tangible result in the world. As much as I love baking gingerbread cookies with my kids, they’re usually gone long before I know it.

My friends think I’m insane for wanting to go back to the newborn stage again. Some of them considered a second kid and decided against it because of how much it would disrupt their life. They do have a point, I must admit, my second baby has indeed interfered with or postponed indefinitely so many of the things I hold dear. If I want this time to be different, I desperately need a mindset shift.

I want to have my cake and eat it too, to have another child and live a full life where raising my children is just one part of many. I know it’s normal to feel lost in motherhood at first, but after 5 years I should have a better idea of what I’m doing. I follow some superhero moms online with more tiny children than I ever dreamed of, who chase their wildest dreams and even have enough time to write about it. They might be much more skilled at this than me, or have decades more of experience (it’s likely both), but they give me a glimmer of hope that it’s not entirely unreasonable to want what I want.

My role models growing up were martyr mothers who sacrificed everything for their kids. As much as I tried to avoid repeating this pattern, I often felt like I could either take care of their needs or mine but not both. If I want my daughter to feel like having children of her own will not be the end of everything fun in her life but rather the most exciting and enriching adventure, I’d better figure it out for myself.

Maybe I don’t have to serve my family like a lowly servant whose needs and desires don’t matter. Maybe I can do it like a queen serves her nation.

This is the spirit I’m channeling in 2026. We’re gonna be gonna be golden, my ladies.

How would that look like in practice?

I think my main blocker so far was always feeling behind with housework. I could spend every minute I was not with my children on cooking, cleaning, folding laundry, or grocery shopping, and still not be able to ever organize our closet, do something with all the clothes my children have outgrown, fix whatever was broken, or even clean our windows at least once a year. If I’m moving frantically all the time just to stay in one place, carving out time for a regular job would surely have our whole house descend into madness. I’ve been there before when I tried to balance motherhood with a demanding job, and don’t ever want to go back. There’s no amount of money, success, or creative fulfilment that would be worth losing our sanity.

Only when I heard my own mom say the same thing this Christmas—that she’s falling behind with all the housework and doesn’t have time for hobbies—it really struck me that I am never going to feel like I’m on top of it all. If even having 50 years of practice under her belt, with no children at home, and little paid work to do at this time of year she still can’t keep up with the demands of her house, there is no hope for me to ever get there either. All I can do is stop trying, and find a way to remain sane and happy even when so many things are left undone to make room for something even more important.

Maybe I don’t have to serve my house all the time, maybe it is my house that exists to serve me.

So how do I set it up to serve me well? I’m not sure yet, but here are some things I want to try:

• Breathe in, breathe out. You’ve officially made it, girl. All of your great-grandmothers would kill for the life you’re living now. The fight for survival is over, you have more than enough food to feed everybody, and so many beautiful outfits for your children that their closets are overflowing. Whatever you do or not do in your home, you’re not going to ruin that. Yes, you truly can afford to relax and live like a queen.

• Imagine the kind of a person you’d like to become in 5 years. Who is she? What does she do regularly? What skills that you admire does she have? Write down every single thing you might want to do in order to get there, and every single thing that you remember brought you joy at some point, plus every random idea that feels kinda crazy but makes you want to try it anyway. If you haven’t thought about it for a long time it might take a while to even remember all the things you used to enjoy once. Pick three, and block recurring time for them in your calendar while planning the housework around it. Your house is not going to be as tidy as you want even if you spend your every waking minute cleaning. You know nobody is going to put you in trouble for that.

• Now think about what kind of life you want to live as a family right now. How do you want to spend your days together? What kind of things do you do, or want to do more of? What do you wish came more easily to you and your kids? What are your top frustrations when trying to get these things done? Rearrange your home so that the most important routines go smoothly, making sure it’s functional instead of chasing perfection.

• Remember that as the queen of your house you are in charge of setting the tone and mood. Keep track of what cheers you up and brightens your day, what energises you, what calms you down when things get heated. If something isn’t working you have the power to fix it, but only if you take the time to regulate yourself first.

• Keep your dream activity list around you and come back to it often. See which ones can be made possible by including your kids somehow. Yes, watercolor painting with a toddler isn’t nearly as relaxing as doing it all by yourself, but it’s still so much better than never doing it at all.

• Establish a sweet and short daily routine that keeps your house somewhat in order, then put off everything else until a designated cleaning day. It’s easier to walk away from things left undone when you know when exactly they will be taken care of.

• Leave house at least once or twice a week to work on your computer in peace. You can’t get distracted by breadcrumbs on a dirty floor when they’re too far away.

• Romanticize the heck out of small moments. Find a way to make your daily routines delightful. Put cinnamon sticks and orange slices in your pot of tea. Turn off the overhead light and bring your favorite scented candle when you get in the bathtub. Get yourself and your daughter the cutest matching aprons. Thrift for vintage tea towels with themes for every season. Think of all the ways in which your home can embrace you and your loved ones like a warm hug.

• Remember that a queen doesn’t do it all by herself. Get help wherever you can and offer help in return. Think of what you can outsource, automate, or put on a back burner in this season of life. Your most important job is to decide what matters and choose what your family will focus on.

You heard it here first: 2026 is the Queen Mother era. Come join me in governing our lives with clarity and self-respect.