"How do you spend your day?" the trouble explaining homemaking

It happened again: another person asked me a variation of the question "what do you you do all day?/ how do you spend your time at home? / how can you stand so much time at home? etc. etc." This time the question truly was asked in the nicest possible manner, with absolutely no judgement or meanness.

I remain baffled and shaken up by it, though, because it was asked by a pretty good friend with whom I have a great deal in common. We're both Christians, about the same age, we have the same number of children (who are even the same age), and we live in the same city. We have been getting together each Tuesday morning at the park for a play date with one other family and have been having a picnic snack mid-morning.

And today conversation amongst us three mothers led to lunch food ideas - "what do you usually give your kids for lunch?" she asked, looking for ideas for her own routine, no doubt. I mentioned that yesterday we had leftover dinner food at lunch: fish, broccoli and baked potato. Boring, balanced, tasty, easy enough to just reheat and eat. Trying to keep the conversation going I politely asked how she usually handles lunch. She pointed at the picnic spread of portable sandwiches, fruit, crackers and water and said that they have this every day, that they never have lunch at home, they are always out and always have something pretty similar to what she had packed. I was stunned. "You never eat lunch at home?"

Never. Eat. Lunch. At. Home. The picnic lunches she packs are perfectly healthy, that wasn't what stunned me, it is just baffling to me that she can prefer to be out of the house so much on a regular-like-clockwork sort of basis.

Conversation progressed and we sort of compared (in a very friendly way, no animosity or argument that I sensed) how we each function.

My house and life would be a wreck if I were not home most mornings and afternoons - the continual cycles of household cleanliness, food preparation, child care rhythms all keep me utterly occupied. Rarely in my life now do I get to indulge in the lovely sewing projects or recipe experiments that I used to do, and that in a future season I will once again do. Right now, with my about-to-turn-3 yr old and my 11 month old my life is a lot more about keeping my head above water and keeping things fairly clean, so that we can just get ourselves happily to the next meal, the next bath, the next outing, the next nap time. I don't mean to express those thoughts in a desperate way.

But! I was stunned when my friend said that after they do their morning routine of getting dressed, breakfasted, and getting the kitchen cleaned up, she and the kids are completely bored by 8 or 8:30am. So they pack a lunch and go out - to a different playgroup, children's museum, library story time, Bible study group or park for each day of the week!

Curious about our routine and about how we do not live like that, she posed that dreaded question which i already mentioned. I then felt my brain seize up and my words refused to flow at first. I thought of my online homemaker blog friends (bless you, fellow happy homemakers! I am so encouraged by you and wish we all lived in the same neighborhood!) and wanted to phrase my words/explanations to her in a loving, inspiring way that would help her.

And I hope I did help, though I suspect I didn't. I mentioned that my girls play well independently, even Baby Madeline, and are always busy with something, and that I feel that my homemaking activities are never really done, so I am always busy, too. I shared all of what I just shared with you, readers, and I also mentioned that as a Christian I think of homemaking as a calling, and I mentioned Titus 2's admonition for women to be keepers at home. This is an important job, and if we don't do it, it will not get done. However, we were more focused on the question of how to fill the day, rather than whether to be homemakers or not, so bringing up Titus 2 felt a little off-subject.

So here we are back home from our morning out and now the little girls are napping. Although I have 5,000 things I need to see to instead (see note) I just had to blog about this, because i have no other outlet for such an ordinary-yet-extraordinary conversation.

Note:

Things I need to do:

defrost meat for dinner

clean both high chairs

Take dry diapers out of the dryer

Empty dishwasher

scrub the bathtub

take a stack of cardboard boxes to the garage

sweep the dining room

carpet sweep the living room

mail 2 letters

update the grocery list, while finalizing next week's menu in anticipation of house guests

prepare 2 loads of laundry for 7pm when I can once again use the washing machine

get to the filing my husband asked me to do

do the ironing

and if I were to go on and write out all my other tasks that need doing, goodness gracious, we would all be here forever. When someone asks me what I do all day, or if I am bored with things (who has time to be bored? and who can get bored with 2 adorable little girls to care for?), I get rattled inside and don't quite know how to unrattle myself.

How do you respond to such questions? And how do you share, in a loving manner, how to become content at home? I would looooove to hear how other homemakers handle such things, or how you stay/become unrattled.

Update, on Wednesday morning:

Ok, so I shared my concerns with my husband last night. And he listened. But he just calmly asked me why I was so dismayed by that conversation, and continued to ask me variations of "why" until I began to feel .... like maybe I'm just crazy? Are there other homemakers out there who understand me here, or am I the problem? I could really use a little encouragement.