Veil + Armour: Raising Kids Catholic Through the Feminine Genius and Courageous Christianity

15. From Stressed to Blessed in a Christian Home with Tessa Weenink

• Season 1 • Episode 15

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From Stressed to Blessed with Christian Homemaking Expert Tessa Weenink

How can integrating chores and cheerfulness transform your home life? This episode of Veil and Armour features Tessa Weenink from Aimed at the Heart, a homeschooling mother of six children, a dairy farmer and a Christian life coach who empowers mothers through faith-filled strategies. Tessa shares her remarkable transition from finance to motherhood, emphasizing the importance of daily routines that blend responsibility with Christian joy and purpose. Learn her invaluable tips for setting up effective systems at home and preventing burnout, all while letting Jesus' love guide your journey.

This interview was recorded on May 9, 2024, the time of "May-cember:" the busyness of the end of the school year. This busyness is also seen now as we return to back-to-school mode in September! Many lessons to be learned from Tessa, including the 3 C's: Chores and Cheerfulness in a Christian Home.

Key Takeaways

  • Incorporating Christ into the homemaking routine involves recognizing the home as a gift from God and serving others with love and gratitude.
  • Creating a family culture of teamwork and harmony is essential for a well-functioning home.
  • Teaching children homemaking skills builds their confidence and prepares them for independent living.
  • The Morning High Five routine: Free resource: https://products.aimedattheheart.com/highfive
  • Tessa offers a homemaking course and life coaching to support moms in creating systems and habits for a well-managed home.
  • Keeping toys out of children's bedrooms helps promote better sleep and prevents them from hiding out in their rooms all day.
  • Devices should be kept in public areas of the home

00:00:19  Empowering Christian Mothers Through Life Coaching

00:08:49  From Dairy Farming to Homemaking Systems

00:19:16  Teaching Kids Household Skills

00:29:39  "Tessa's Morning High Five" and Tessa's Guide to Homemaking

00:37:27  Household Organization and Parenting Strategies

00:41:52  Teach Kids Household Skills, Spring Cleaning

00:54:51  Exploring the Feminine Genius on the next episode

Connect with Tessa:
-Instagram: @aimedattheheart  Website: https://aimedattheheart.com
-Free: https://products.aimedattheheart.com/cleanyourhomechallenge
-Get Your Children to Do Chores: https://products.aimedattheheart.com/getchildrentodochores

Connect with Sheila:
- Instagram: @veilandarmour
- X / Twitter: @sheilanonato
-

Support the show

Sheila Nonato:

Hello and Welcome to the Veil + Armour podcast. This is your host, Sheila Nonato. I'm a stay-at-home mom and a freelance Catholic journalist. Seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I strive to tell stories that inspire, illminate and enrich the lives of Catholic women, to help them in living out our vocation of raising the next generation of leaders and saints.

Co-Host:

Please join us every week on the Veil and Armor podcast, where stories come alive through a journalist's lens and mother's heart.

Sheila Nonato:

Welcome to episode 15. We have Tessa from Aimed at the Heart today and it's back to school week the day after Labour Day in Canada. In addition to the three R's, Tessa wants us to also include the three C's chores and cheerfulness in a Christian home. Tessa makes the case for teaching chores to our children to alleviate the work of motherhood and teach responsibility so we can help to raise the next generation of leaders and saints. Let's hear from Tessa and her practical tips on that, on the way to a happy, Christian and orderly home.

Sheila Nonato:

Welcome to Veil and Armour. We are welcoming Tessa Weenink from Aimed at the Heart and I will just introduce you to Tessa. She is a life coach for Christian moms. She believes that the family is the foundation of society and because a mother sets the tone within her home, she needs to make sure she's serving from a place of abundance rather than depletion. This often begins from creating a family culture of teamwork and harmony in caring for the home and for each other. She's also a dairy farmer and a homeschooling mother of six. Amazing, where are you streaming from right now.

Tessa Weenink:

I am in Southern Alberta.

Sheila Nonato:

Okay, amazing

Tessa Weenink:

Just a few hours north of the Montana border for Americans.

Sheila Nonato:

Okay, that's amazing. Yeah, Tessa, if you can tell us how did your company start? What was the inspiration?

Tessa Weenink:

I think that the inspiration was really I just wanted to share my motherhood journey.

Tessa Weenink:

I was in finances before I had my first and had planned to go back to work and then, when I held him in my arms, I realized, no, that's, that's not okay.

Tessa Weenink:

I'm not okay with being away from this sweet little bundle. And so we set things up so that I could technically become a stay-at-home mom. But then I realized I needed to share my love for mothering with other women. So I really just started from a place of wanting to share the journey and through the time, like through the years, I realized that I had certain systems within my own family and my own life to deal with life in general, you know, adding more children, moving health issues, mental health issues, physical health issues, all that sort of stuff. Over the years I had to get all these systems to make motherhood easier for me, and I realized how rare it is to find people who can tell you how to make motherhood easier, Because I truly don't believe it should be as hard as we make it out to be. I think that we should look at our children and mostly see love and fun rather than work, and I know that that's not. It's easier said than done, but it is possible.

Sheila Nonato:

That's awesome and I'm sorry I forgot to do this in the beginning. I usually start with a prayer, just so we are all kind of centered upon a purpose. So yeah, if you don't mind, I'm going to say Hail Mary, In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us in this moment, the hour of our death. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sheila Nonato:

And thank you, Tessa, for letting me do that

Tessa Weenink:

Yeah, so my eldest is 16 now. I was able to expand my own skill set into older ages, able to expand my own skill set into older ages. So some of the things that we do with our babies like how much we, how we, pour love into them often expands into later years. But when you have older kids, the skills that you need and the way that you run your home changes. And so just over the years, I've been able to expand not only my own skill set but what I'm able to help women with. So at this point I help women with life coaching, and so when I speak about life coaching, I mean learning to allow the love of Jesus to pour into you.

Tessa Weenink:

I always say our job as a mother is to pour as much love, much of Jesus love into our children as we can, so that it can't help it overflow. But in order to do that, we need to find ways that we can accept Jesus love into our own. It overflow, but in order to do that, we need to find ways that we can accept Jesus' love into our own lives, and that comes with identifying our self-worth and it comes with creating systems within our home so that we're not always run ragged Now, it's funny I'm saying this today not always run ragged because I feel like my last few days I have been putting out out fires. It has been crazy. It is planting season on the farm and we are in homeschool facilitator meeting like wrapping up our homeschool stuff, so there's just so much extra. Right now we also I'm helping head up a local concert for our choir and I look at my plate and I'm not going to lie, it's a little bit daunting when I look at my to-do list. But at the same time, because I am able to prioritize really well and I'm not coming at this season of busyness from being burnt out and exhausted, I think, okay, I can jump into this full force. I can handle this for a couple of months until you know, summer vacation. I don't know that summer vacation is slower, necessarily, but it's different, right, it's a different kind of thing, but when you are able to be able to be filled up with the love of Jesus, know that that is where your worth comes from, and then have your home set up in such a way your home and your family.

Tessa Weenink:

You mentioned family teamwork. That is so important to me as I'm looking at my list of things to do and I'm not doing it alone. I don't feel like I'm doing everything by myself. I have the support of my family, even if I don't have the virtual assistant to run my business. I actually do have somebody coming in the last couple of weeks to assist a little bit with housework, but that's the first time in 20 years I've had that. For the most part, we're doing this all on our own. We're juggling it all on our own. So let's make it easier on ourselves by, you know, reducing laundry, reducing dishes, reducing toy mess and then teaching our kids the skills to be able to live really honestly. We do our children a disservice if we're not teaching them how to run a household. If you're doing all of that as a mom, you're doing too much. We're not meant to do it all and it's so much easier to enter into these kinds of. I've been seeing the term May-cember. Have you seen that term at all, Sheila?

Tessa Weenink:

No, so you know, I haven't okay so December is full of like Christmas craziness. People are talking about May-cember, where it's like the end of school year craziness. And I didn't realize it until literally this morning as I was brain dumping my to-do list that oh, I think that I might be in a season of May-cember where all of the things are happening and coming to a close, wrapping up spring, and then we throw on the farm where running a dairy farm is a full-time career. I don't do a lot of the physical labor anymore but I'm still running the whole administrative side of the business, so the finances and things like that. And now my husband is around even less. He works full-time on the farm but he's around even less now because he is in the fields. So May-cember makes sense to me now.

Sheila Nonato:

Wow, please tell me about you know, I've always wanted to know what it's like to live on a farm. Like what is it? Can you tell us the highs and the lows when the farmers give us the food? What is the work behind that? Please give us a glimpse of that what is the work behind that?

Sheila Nonato:

Please let us give us a glimpse of that

Tessa Weenink:

. Ah see, there is. My husband has a background in pig farming and I had always said I wanted to marry a dairy farmer. So I like to say that I converted him to dairy farming. But dairy farming is very, very labour intense because cows need to be milked at least twice a day and we do have milk robots, which is a super fun thing. The tech we utilize in farming is kind of outrageous, but it's still a lot of hours. It is a lot of commitment because we're on the farm.

Tessa Weenink:

My husband is on- call 24/7, so if the robots break down in the middle of the night, he's crawling out of bed. So it's I joke about I am in bed nursing the baby and on a minus 40 night, like minus 40 degrees, in the middle of the night, he's crawling out of bed. So it's I joke about I am in bed nursing the baby and on a minus 40 night, like minus 40 degrees in the middle of winter, I just roll over and I nurse the baby and then I go back to sleep. So I'm up during the middle of the night, but so is my husband and the difference is he has to walk across the yard to the barn and has to, like, get in his snow gear. I don't envy that at all. I can wake up with the baby. I don't mind doing that. It's better than going across the freezing cold yard in the middle of the night.

Tessa Weenink:

So it is really intense, labor intense. But at the same time my older boys, my older two are well, I guess my older three at this point. They have been blessed with the privilege of working on the farm because they have shown their competence in the house. So when we do farm chores it's because the kids have graduated. If I can trust them with chores in the house, like emptying the dishwasher, folding laundry, that kind of stuff, then I can trust them with chores with the animals.

Tessa Weenink:

So the 16, 13 and 10 year old do a lot of the physical labor. Actually my 16 year old does more than I had ever done, but that's the reason why I don't have to work as much physically on the farm anymore, which is such a blessing. So it's intense, but at the same time it's a family business. It truly is. My kids are out there working with my husband. We do have a hired man that provides extra labor, and he happens to be my husband's best friend, and so our kids have grown up together. It's intense, it's busy, but it's family and it's a blessing.

Sheila Nonato:

Wow, amazing. So yeah, the next time I'm buying a bag of milk, I'm going to be thinking about all the hard work that went into doing this. How do you? You know this is what some of one of the things I've been working on with my kids is how do you motivate them to do chores without complaining?

Tessa Weenink:

Yeah, because we're not supposed to be part of it. I'm gonna say right away and I don't know if it's your heart, but my heart had to do a, I had to do a really big heart evaluation over it is I cannot expect my children to not complain about housework. If I'm complaining about housework, and when I realized that I am leading by example when it comes to my attitude towards housework, oh man, that was a kick in the pants. I, if I could have my ideal day, I would be like reading quietly, with with no sound. I'd be like you know, out in the sunshine in the middle of a field with a good book for 10 hours a day. That would be my ideal quiet in my head. Or like practicing a difficult, difficult piece of music and just being more like in my head rather than the hands on physical stuff. So things like dishes and laundry don't come easy to me. So I always find it kind of interesting that I ended up being in this realm of. I have a homemaking course where I teach women how to manage their homes, and I have so many coaching calls with women where one of the primary things is how do I get my children to cooperate? And the huge one comes from adjusting our own attitude. That is probably the biggest.

Tessa Weenink:

Biggest change is when I started. So for perspective, we used to live in a hundred year old falling down farmhouse to the point that like frost was coming inside my electrical sockets. It was dangerous. I we couldn't take baths anymore because there was a giant hole in the bottom of the tub that we had to duct tape up and there was like mold and my roof was leaking. I hated this house. I truly did. It was not big. We had in the at the time five kids. Well, we had. When we moved in we had two and then we had another three within that house and I felt cramped and it was old and it was dark. There were almost no windows. It was so dark I hated it and I realized me hating my house was dishonoring the Lord who blessed me with it. And again, when I realized that that was one of those like gut punches and so I realized if I want to actually progress at all with being a homemaker and having a good, healthy culture within my home, I had to change my attitude. So I started saying one of my favorite scripts is home. I had to change my attitude. So I started saying one of my favorite scripts is our home is a gift from God and I we honor him as a family by taking care of it. And as soon as I started looking at it like that, it was like light bulbs went off into my head and and then my children started getting that attitude.

Tessa Weenink:

They'd have friends come over who were complaining about tidying up the toys and my kids bless their little hearts. They were like toddlers at the time. You know, five and two or a little bit. Like that was when we started with this change. And they would say to their friends like, yeah, but I love my toys and I want to take good care of them. And it's amazing. Now, if you're starting with older kids, it takes time. I mean, I've coached moms who have had just teenagers and they didn't build this culture up when they're toddlers. When they're toddlers, they're pretty impressionable. And if you tell them, wow, isn't this an amazing toy, let's take really good care of it by putting it on this shelf here, in this bin here. Wow, isn't that so great? God is so good to us that we have all these toys.

Tessa Weenink:

And the same thing with laundry and dishes and you can start using those kinds of scripts with your kids when they're very little. If you're coming at it from, everybody's been grumbling about housework for 15 years, it's going to take more time, but it's not impossible and you'll find, even if your children take longer to follow suit, we set the tone in our homes and if we are looking at our dishes and saying, wow, thank you, Lord, that I could have friends over and we've got these extra dishes, that was such a fun time and you're focusing on the blessings in your life rather than the actual oh, my goodness, I have to do the dishwasher. I have to wash all these dishes. I got to scrub these pots. If you focus on the drudgery of it, don't get me wrong. I still don't like doing dishes and laundry, but if you're focusing on the blessing that you are able to do this, there was a season in my life where I physically was not able to sweep my floor because I had broke my back, which is, if you know anything about broken backs, it's very difficult to heal properly, and I also had my screaming baby at the time, so like I would be bouncing my baby with my broken back because otherwise he would not be content.

Tessa Weenink:

So it's never healed right, and there was literally a time I couldn't sweep my floor and so now I grabbed the broom and I think I could go get one of the kids to do it and a lot of times I do just because it's their job. But if it's this mess that I see, and I think you know what I can actually do this motion now, this is such a blessing. Or I've learned how to sweep with a baby on my hip and I think, wow, this is pretty awesome, I can do life with a baby on my hip. You kind of get used to that, I think how many children do you have?

Tessa Weenink:

Sheila?

Sheila Nonato:

I have three.

Sheila Nonato:

Okay, you get used to life with a baby on your hip right. Oh, yes, I the first one. I, I didn't know what to do, so I literally carried her everywhere, I and I didn't. It's terrible. I didn't want to take a shower because I was afraid of leaving her and her crying, and anyway, I mean now I do, obviously,

Tessa Weenink:

But I think this is one of the struggles of moms is like how to take a shower with a baby.

Tessa Weenink:

But anyway, yeah, I always joke about how I can do everything with a baby, but for some reason showering is really difficult. That for me, is like once or twice a week, I'm lucky, and my kid is like one now. I really could at this age just put him in the back of like in the side of the tub and he could just sit there while I shower. But yeah, no, I'm with you on that one. But I want to challenge you. It's not a bad thing to want to carry your kids everywhere and to want to hug them and be with them and to like that, I think, biologically wired into us, and so we need to stop judging ourselves for wanting to do life with the baby on our hip. That's a good thing, it's a blessing. We are literally designed to respond to our babies in that way. That being said, obviously you do need to find a way to shower eventually.

Tessa Weenink:

And people say six kids is a lot and especially I am not in an area where large families are huge. That not not within my culture here and they say how do you manage six? And I say six is easier than three or four, because when I do want to shower at this point, like even right now for this call. My one-year-old is playing outside with the 13-year-old. I have built-in babysitters. It's so different when you have extra hands. I haven't. I don't have like a village necessarily around me that does that sort of stuff. I've never had somebody come into my home and help me with the kids, so I've had to raise my kids to help, so I've had to raise my kids to help.

Tessa Weenink:

I had no choice, really

Sheila Nonato:

Amazing. So I mean, it sounds like teaching skills is building resilience and building leaders. Really. Can you tell me about the time you was looking through Instagram so you're talking about management skills and teaching your kids management skills and you were giving an example of when you were in the hospital with your baby. Can you tell us about that please?

Tessa Weenink:

Yeah. So I will first say I started really really working with my children when my eldest was five and he's now 16. So that's 11 years now and we started with a really really simple five-step morning routine. It's called a high five and when they do their five steps then they get a high five. So there's that physical. This was part of my sales training when I was in finances.

Tessa Weenink:

Was you anchor that success with something exciting? And so for my kids, we anchor it with a high five. So they get that. What is it? A dopamine rush when they finish their morning routines. And then we've built upon that over the years, and a year ago or just over a year ago I guess my current baby who's? I can't believe he's over one already.

Tessa Weenink:

He came a little earlier than anticipated and significantly smaller than we expected, so he was born at 36 weeks. We had planned to have him at home in an unassisted home birth, but I realized at 36 weeks I wasn't equipped to deal with typically it's lung issues, so I wasn't equipped to deal with that at home. So we went into the hospital, had the baby and everybody started panicking because he came out at four pounds, which is the typical size of a 32 week old four pounds, which is the typical size of a 32 week old and he, I knew he was. I knew he was 36 weeks at that point and the doctors and the nurses were all doubting me until finally I had one doctor come in and say, oh yeah, no, he's developmentally definitely 36 weeks, but because he was so small with a 36 week or typically there'll be in the hospital for about three days. We were in the hospital for three weeks and we live in a rural community. The hospital that we got transferred to they put him in this little box and put him in an airplane. That was probably one of the hardest, almost the hardest moments of my life was seeing him get whisked away. We had to drive two hours to this hospital. It was a two-hour drive away, so there was no going back and forth to visit him. I and I I feel so blessed that they had beds in the NICU rooms at the hospital, so I didn't leave that hospital for three weeks. I didn't set foot in my house for 20.

Tessa Weenink:

It was on day 21 that we finally got checked out of the hospital and at that point we had just started attending a new church, so they did a meal train for us, which I was flabbergasted by. I had never experienced that kind of service before in my life, other than from like one or two friends who did, you know, bring me a couple of meals with my other kids, but for the whole entire three weeks they brought, I think, four meals a week, complete with snacks and enough for leftovers. So at least my kids didn't have to worry about cooking meals. Now my eldest would have been almost 15. So they were 15, 12, and then, about three years apart, all my five kids. It was the first time I'd ever been away from them, because I love my kids and I don't leave them. The first time I'd ever been away from them because I love my kids and I don't leave them. And they did all of their stair charts and learning cards. My husband would go to work at 730 in the morning on the farm, so he was nearby and he would come in and have like an hour and a half for lunch and then he'd go out again all afternoon and my kids ran the house and I knew that they were capable. So I didn't as much as I missed them. It is so hard being away from your kids. I'm so thankful for Zoom calls. We did Zoom calls every night so that they were able to you know, see me and see their baby brother, because they only got to meet him for like a couple of minutes before we got transferred.

Tessa Weenink:

I walked into my house after the three weeks with my brand new baby, who was still on home oxygen and really medically fragile at that point and I knew I was not going to be able to do much of anything. I walked into my house and I looked around and it looked pretty much the exact same as when I had left. So all the laundry was done, all the dishes were done, the toys were tidied, the floors were like mopped, and it was because I had all of my checklists and systems and I had taught my kids how to run it. So they didn't have to get creative, they didn't have to try to figure out well what needs to be done next. They just looked at the list on the wall and said, okay, what's next on the list? And I was a big believer in homemaking systems before that, because I had another incident about seven years ago where I ended up in the hospital for two nights and my husband was grateful that he knew exactly what to do with the kids and when they were supposed to do all their things.

Tessa Weenink:

But that was just such an indicator to me that kids are so, so capable. And when my kids leave home, I have four sons and then I have a daughter and then I have another son. So people often like you kind of sort of think that your kids, your boys, need to know how to cook and clean. But my sons know how to run a household, they can move out on their own and they'll know exactly what needs to be done and kind of how often to do it. It's kind of amazing and I wonder why more women not teaching their children these kinds of things. Your kids are so capable.

Tessa Weenink:

And not only that, but we do our kids a disservice when we don't give them these skills, because I don't want anything to happen to anybody, but if something were to happen to you, are your kids going to flounder? Are they going to know how to keep on going? And again, worst case scenario, I really truly pray that never happens to anybody. But that is. We live in a broken world. Bad things happen Mom's not always available, as well as when our kids grow up. I don't need to worry about what they're going to do when they move out. And I do very little housework. I have six kids. I do almost no laundry at this point. So why are we putting ourselves through this punishment of doing it all ourselves? It's it's not good for us and it's not good for our kids.

Sheila Nonato:

You know, I feel like this is.

Sheila Nonato:

You know, I grew up in the Philippines where we, you know, it's kind of a I don't know if it's a cultural thing, but you know, when there are relatives who are able to help, they come and they live with the family, sometimes as nannies.

Sheila Nonato:

So I kind of grew up with that and we came to Canada and we had to do all this stuff on our own. But I feel like there's this I don't know if it's like an unspoken thing where, you know, women are so full of generosity and, I guess, self-sacrificial love for their family that they sometimes feel, well, this is I'm talking about myself, I guess is that I feel like I have to do, I have to do everything myself. Sometimes it's because it's faster, to be honest. Yeah, sometimes it's just like I don't know I have this burden, like I put this burden on my back really, of I had to do everything myself, and you know, and they'll just play, but like, how do we switch this mindset that you know the kids are not supposed to really help so much? How do we switch this mindset?

Tessa Weenink:

I think that is something that is really prevalent in faith communities because we believe, as mothers, we are to serve our families. Right, and I 100% agree Jesus came on earth to serve, not to be served, and as mothers, we are called to serve our families. However, the mindset shift is that we are not serving our children by not teaching them these skills. My mom was the one who did everything Well, not everything, but she did a huge bulk of things and so when I moved out and got married, I floundered, and my husband as well. We kind of had basic skills, like he knew how to run a washing machine, I knew how to properly wash dishes and vacuum floors, so we had like the gist of it. But to figure out how to manage cooking dinner every night I mean, did you know that these kids need to be fed every single day, several times a day? That's crazy, right. But to navigate cooking dinner every day, to navigate the groceries, to navigate, you know, laundry, washing sheets, making sure that you can still see through your windows, all of these random little things that we have to learn as women when we move out and get married. Most of us were not trained and we feel like that that was a hard adjustment for me. I don't know about you. You're nodding yeah To figure out how to run all this household and do all of these things, while you know, meeting our kids needs, while meeting our husband's needs, while serving other people outside of motherhood through the work that we do why would we deny our children those skills? Right, we do not do our children any service by not teaching them these skills, and so that's part of it is. We're denying our children the opportunity to succeed when they move out if we're not teaching them how to succeed in this department as well. The other one is that kids actually crave meaningful contribution, and I'm going to use a sports analogy and I'm not a sportsy person at all, but imagine you join the basketball team and you're so excited to be part of this team and the people are amazing and you love it, and then the coach benches you all year and you never get to set foot on court. Could you imagine how devastating that is? Now you think of our children is. They are part of our family and we love having them around. Oh, but you're not actually allowed to contribute. Right, kids crave meaningful contribution. They want to be part of the team and, yes, even teenagers, who might roll their eyes at you or grumble a little bit my kids mostly don't. I don't have to fight and nag them a ton, but I mean, they're still kids. You're going to have your moments but at the same time they know that they are not just valued for who they are, they're absolutely 100% valued for who they are. Like I said, I pour them full of so much love that and I tell them in all of these other ways right, the five love languages I dump all of those onto my children so they know that they are loved for who they are, not what they do. But at the same time they also know that what they contribute to this family is important and it matters, so that their work matters too, and that makes such a difference for our kids' confidence. It allows them to then go out and serve others. So we're teaching our children how to serve their family.

Tessa Weenink:

Can we talk about sibling relationships? I read a statistic that siblings fight an average of six times an hour. That is like mind boggling to me. All six of my children are running around the house and outside playing right now and they're not fighting. I think fighting doesn't need to be the norm, and one of the reasons is because our kids, my kids, serve each other in the home. You just there's.

Tessa Weenink:

There's a Bible verse that says love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Now, I don't think siblings are enemies necessarily, but they're not always the best of friends. So how do you deal with that? Well, you teach them to love each other and serve each other. So if one of my kids is folding their sibling's laundry and putting it in their closet, that is an act of service to their sibling. You can't help but love the people that you are serving. So it's great for family relationship. It's the practical side of them having the skills to run their own household, and it's also that it builds their confidence, and not just their confidence in their work capabilities, but in who they are as people and how they can contribute to the family. There are just so many benefits, so we are not serving our children by doing it all for them. That is not what service is.

Sheila Nonato:

Wow, just when you were talking, I'm just thinking about, like you were mentioning Jesus, example of servant leadership, that it seems like this systems model that you were talking about. Is this what what you're teaching moms? Can you give us a glimpse of you know what? What can moms expect when they work with you learning about homemaking? And I guess your systems approach work with you learning about homemaking and I guess your systems approach

Tessa Weenink:

Okay.

Tessa Weenink:

So the very first thing is I actually have a free printable that is the Morning High Five, and in this Morning High Five it is effective enough for even me to do every single morning and my teenagers do it every single morning, but it's simple enough for my toddlers to do so. The first one is to get dressed, and that might not be as big a deal in some other households, but we homeschool. So there were days when the kids wouldn't get dressed and I was like you know what? We're going to get dressed, we're going to start our day. Get dressed, they make their bed, and there's a very practical reason because it's much easier to put children to bed at night if you're not looking for stuffed animals and pillows and rearranging blankets. So that was a really practical addition for me. So they make their bed and then they eat breakfast, and this one's kind of flexible I have one kid who doesn't really like to eat breakfast, so he doesn't, but my kids feed themselves breakfast. That's why it's on their chart is even like a two-year-old is capable of grabbing a piece of bread and one of the older kids will help put butter or peanut butter on it. You know they do teamwork breakfast, so I don't navigate breakfast.

Tessa Weenink:

The kids do that all by themselves. Then they gather their dirty laundry from their room and bring it straight to the laundry room and the laundry hampers. So therefore, we have no dirty laundry in our bedrooms, or minimal. They're, again, not perfect, but we have minimal dirty laundry in the bedroom, which makes it way easier to clean their bedrooms. We also don't keep toys in the bedrooms. It is strictly for sleeping and for clothes.

Tessa Weenink:

And then the last one is a kitchen task, and kitchen task looks different based on different ages. So my little ones will like, sort cutlery from the dishwasher we run our dishwasher every night and, yeah, typically the first one is that they will sort cutlery or put plates on the pile. And then, as they get older, they get bigger jobs, like putting away things. That are higher up, or my older three, so my 16, 13, and 10-year-old their kitchen task is really just finish cleaning up the kitchen, whatever that looks like, and sometimes that means they're wiping up spills off the floor, sweeping up crumbs, whatever needs to be done in the kitchen. So with just that and it can take seriously less than 10 minutes when kids are actually on the ball. If they do it, it can take less than 10 minutes to do all of that. And then all of a sudden, your laundry is like ready to run and your kitchen is clean so you can make lunch or supper in it, and it is set up in such a way.

Tessa Weenink:

The reason why I have it that way is because, even if the rest of the day goes off the rails and, let's face it, with life, with children, with work, all these kinds of things we don't always know what the rest of the day is going to hold. The biggest tasks are already done. So even if you only do the high five, even if, like if you're in a newborn season, you can't do anything other than just the high five, most of your work's already done first thing in the morning in a 10 minute slot. Um, so that is like that's my free printable and we'll share the link, sheila will share the link and you guys can go download that and it's cute, easy enough for kids to. It's got like little pictures so the little ones can read it and you you walk through them with it and then you'll find, as your kids start doing it, they teach the younger ones. I never taught my seven and four year old how to make a bed. I never taught them how to empty the dishwasher, because their siblings take them and I will say like, hey, 10 year old, take the four-year-old as your partner and go do this task, and they teach each other. So as you run this for I've been doing it for 11 years now it's still effective. So that's the first way. Is that pre-printable?

Tessa Weenink:

The second one is I have a course on homemaking where we, where I, help you, walk through exactly why it's important to you to have a clean home and what kind of atmosphere you want to create in your home. Because as soon as you figure out what you want for your home, what kind of standards you want for your home, then you can start looking at what are the actual tasks that need to be done how often do you need to run your washing machine? How often do you need to mop your floors or clean your bathroom? So the really practical, hands-on stuff. And there's also a huge chunk in there, a whole module dedicated to the process to teach your children how to do these tasks in a way that's mom approved. So, yes, there is a right way to fill the dishwasher and it's whatever mom says, so you can teach your kids those kinds of things. There's a right way to fold laundry and it's however mom teaches you. So I walk you through a four-step process to teach your children all of these as a skill.

Tessa Weenink:

And then also communication tips, so scripts that you can use with your kids and scriptures that you can use with your kids to get them involved in contributing to the home while maintaining an attitude of love and service and trying to shift away from that. There's also stuff in there about I'm not a marriage therapist by any means. I'm never going to claim to be one, but after 20 years of marriage I have learned certain communication tips to speak to your spouse, how to get your spouse on board with these homemaking lists and how to get them in a way that they can support you in this journey, rather than a lot of times dad comes home and everything feels like it's gone off the rails. Right, let's get on the same page with our spouse when it comes to homemaking and to family culture. So it's kind of a whole package.

Tessa Weenink:

And then I do offer life coaching where we can start with the homemaking side and branch out into things like let's take better care of your health, create some systems and habits to take care of your physical and your mental and spiritual health, and so there's home, there's health, there's friendships. Let's find ways to communicate our needs and set boundaries with friends and with marriage. So there's different levels that you can work with me in that, and there's a whole work with me section on my website that kind of walks through each of those that you can work with me in that. There's a whole work with me section on my website that walks through each of those. Or you can just message me on Instagram or send me an email. We can figure out something to meet you where you're at.

Sheila Nonato:

Just to go back a couple of things. The toys that in your Instagram you were mentioning. This might be controversial. No toys in the bedroom to keep it clean and tidy.

Tessa Weenink:

Yeah, part of part of it is to keep it clean and tidy, but part of it also is my teenagers don't hide themselves in their bedroom all day because there's nothing to do there. So there's keeping the family together so that the kids are playing with each other. There's also the very practical aspect of I remember I think this is like I'm Dutch, so it's very much a Dutch thing to just sleep in your bedroom and have your clothes there. So when I was speaking to moms early on when I became a mom, they would say oh, my kids are always hopping out of bed to play. And I thought well, my kids always played underfoot. They were always playing in the middle of my living room. That's where our playroom was. And I thought what do you mean? How do they do that without you knowing they're right there? And then I realized moms are keeping toys in their kid's room and then wondering why their children are not sleeping. Well, it's because they've got all their toys there and they want to play. It makes sense.

Tessa Weenink:

So having the bedroom as this we don't play in bedrooms that is not a play zone, because then at night your body is going to shift into play mode rather than sleep mode. My kids go into their bedroom at night and they know it's sleep time. There's A, nothing to play with, so it's super boring. And B, their body just knows that this is a calm zone, not a play zone. So there's the physiological aspect of it as well. And yeah, if I tell my kids to clean their rooms, it's really just they got to pick up today's dirty laundry and maybe refold some of their shelves and then vacuum and that's it. It's super easy and because the toys are in a general area of our house, they play together more frequently. Because it's not, hey, I'm going to shut the room, shut the door to my bedroom and you're not allowed in here. There's none of that. So it again helps with sibling bonding as well as allows me to keep more of a close eye on it At this point.

Tessa Weenink:

We do have a separate play area. I have a bonus room above my garage where my kids play, but it's still in an area that I can supervise and navigate. So we need to do some decluttering. We've had some birthdays, so we need to get rid of some stuff. And I can see it right away rather than at night when I'm exhausted, putting the kids to bed and I just want them to go to sleep. All of a sudden I'm dealing with all the toy mess. I can't even imagine how frustrating. Actually, I do know how frustrating that is because I have kids and they're not always perfect, and tripping over Lego in a bedroom is not what you want to be doing when you're trying to put your kids to bed. So yeah, it is a little controversial, but I truly believe that is a cultural thing in Canada and in the United States to have kids playing in their bedrooms. And then we're wondering why our teens are disconnecting from us, where they've got all of their screens or whatever they just hide out in their bedrooms all day.

Tessa Weenink:

Why would we encourage our children to hide out in their bedrooms?

Sheila Nonato:

Wow, so no devices in the bedroom either.

Tessa Weenink:

No, no, I mean, that's like a sleep thing, right, the blue light in their room, and especially with when you think of some of the things that kids have access to on the internet. I've got teen boys so I'm very aware of some of the stuff that they could be exposed to. So all of our devices are in public areas. They never go to the bedrooms because it's not fair to allow the devil to seep in. They never go to the bedrooms because it's not fair to allow allow the devil to seep in through that kind of stuff Really Right.

Sheila Nonato:

Yeah, I can see your point. I mean stepping on a Lego piece in the middle of the night, it's not fun.

Tessa Weenink:

No, and if all the toys are underfoot, like in your living room. In my old house we had, like where I raised most, we've just moved into a new house a few years ago we had like a there's probably like eight by six feet section in our living room and that was where the kids would play. So in the evening I thought this is going to be my peace zone. I can't be stepping on Lego. After all, the kids are in bed. So I we had our five o'clock tidy time for my sanity, so the Lego could taking care of every evening. So you're like and that's where that awareness comes Whereas if it's in the bedroom, you walk in there and you're putting the kids about. Oh, I should have done this, I should have got them to tidy, but you don't because it's kind of out of sight, out of mind, Right, but yeah, Lego in the middle of the night, oh man, it's dangerous.

Sheila Nonato:

Oh yes, happened quite a few times. And the other thing I wanted to touch upon is I think it was also on your Instagram age appropriate tasks. I actually have. I have a list here of age appropriate tasks for each of my kids, but yeah, what's?

Sheila Nonato:

of age appropriate tasks for each of my kids, but yeah, what's the better way to do it?

Tessa Weenink:

So I don't think that there's such a thing as age appropriate tasks, as there are as portions of tasks that your child is capable of, and that's going to vary depending on the child. Some kids are just better at the hands on stuff. I had one child who could handle knives at two, three years old. Oh, my word, the one day I came downstairs and he was sitting on the counter beside the stove making oatmeal on the stove at three years old and I just about had a heart attack. I was like you can't do this. But I looked and he says no, I'm being safe. And he walked me through it and I thought, wow, you can. His older brothers I still didn't trust them with the stove, but he just had that like kinesthetic kind of knowledge that he was able to do that.

Tessa Weenink:

So there's a vast difference between children and what they're capable of, and any task can be kid appropriate if you break it down small enough. So, yes, a child may not be able to do all of the laundry, but there's no reason why a two-year-old can't match socks. There's no reason why a two-year-old you can't teach them how much soap goes into the washing machine. There's no reason why even a two-year-old can't just here's the low, here's the basket of clothes, shove them all in there, right? And we think like a two-year-old doing laundry, they absolutely can. You just need to break it up into small enough pieces and basically any task, even something like helping in the kitchen and yes, it can be a pain to have children underfoot because you could do it faster yourself, but trust me, in the long run it is much faster to say, hey, 13 year old, you're on supper duty tonight. And because I was able to teach him like the little bite sized skills all along the way is that this is how you know when the water's ready for pasta, this is how you brown ground beef, and you teach them these kinds of things in really small increments that are age appropriate, but also skill appropriate and an interest. My 13 year old loves to be in the kitchen, so he does more in the kitchen. My 16 year old prefers to do laundry, so I let him do a little more laundry. Now they both know how to do each of those jobs, but if I am feeling frazzled after a long day, I know who I can call on and yeah, it took me a lot of time to train them to that point. But, man, a living, at this point it is so beneficial to be able to just say just do this job. So I don't believe there is like a strict list of age appropriate chores.

Tessa Weenink:

I think the way that I explained it to moms is what do you need the most help with? If it's laundry, teach your children those small steps for laundry. If you need help with cooking, if that's a real struggle for you, there's no reason why you can't teach your children hey, I need this ingredient, go get it from the cupboard. Or I need this utensil, go get it from the cupboard and start pulling them into that world. It might be a little bit more time consuming initially, but you will be so much more thankful when you can delegate your biggest sources of stress.

Tessa Weenink:

So there's two methods to teaching your kids, to knowing what to teach your kids. The first one is what is stressing you out the most? Get them to help you with that. Even though it might increase your stress temporarily, over the longterm it will decrease it significantly. And the second one is what is the lowest hanging fruit, what is the easiest thing that your kid could do right now. It might be something as simple as hey, five-year-old, go put all of the shoes on the machine, map right. There's no reason why a five-year-old can't do that. And you're not asking them to clean the front entry. You're being very specific. Pick that pair of shoes and put it over here. Pick that pair of shoes and put it over here. No-transcript.

Sheila Nonato:

Wow.

Sheila Nonato:

Amazing. How do you bring Christ into the homemaking routine with your children?

Tessa Weenink:

I think it all comes from a place of. This is our home. God has blessed us with this home and we are so, so grateful. And we built our home like I designed it, and we built it three and a half years ago. And people will say, oh yeah, but you've got this beautiful home that you've designed. No, no, no, I started this when I was living in that, falling down your 100 year old. I was like 120 year old farmhouse that was crumbling and moldy and leaky and I thought you know what? This is still our home and God has given us a roof over our head.

Tessa Weenink:

How do we show our love and gratitude? So when we get grumbly, we will say things like let us not become weary in doing good. For the proper time we'll reap a harvest. And one of my favorite verses to use with my children is Colossians, and it is whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for man. And I will say or mom, you're not doing this for mom, you're doing this because we are working hard for the Lord.

Tessa Weenink:

So it always comes down to the motivation of why we are doing this and the gratitude that we come at it with.

Tessa Weenink:

It really comes down to the heart of the matter is this is our home and then from that we have the ability to invite others into this home. And it doesn't matter if you have a large home or a small home. If you invite over families with 10 children or just the older couple that you know. Their kids all live away and they would love to be blessed with lunch after a Sunday service. You invite them into your home because your home is a gift from God to share and to serve. It's all just material things and we hold all the material things loosely, but we hold them with so much gratitude and we will appreciate whatever gifts God gives us for as long as he gives them to us. We will share these blessings and we will show love to not just our family, not just our siblings when we're folding their laundry, but we can then, once we get that, we can spread out into the community and share that. And it all comes down to that motivation and that gratitude.

Sheila Nonato:

Absolutely. And final question it's the beginning of spring. Do you have a mom hack? Or for people who, for moms who don't know where to start? There's so many things to tackle, right, when can we start with our spring cleaning?

Tessa Weenink:

So okay, it's so funny because I'm going to say the exact same thing is, when it comes to teaching our children chores, pick the place that's causing you the most stress, or the lowest hanging fruit. Sometimes all you need are a whole bunch of really small wins. So, if you're, sometimes all you need are a whole bunch of really small wins. So if you're, I'm just like my windowsill right here is super dusty. We live on gravel roads and it's super dusty and it's starting to cause me stress. It would it's like two seconds for me to grab a rag and wipe it up and that'll feel good. That'll give you that little dopamine rush that will incentivize you to keep on moving forward. So start with some low-hanging fruit, get some really early wins and find areas that are causing you stress. Because, truthfully, if you go online and you print out somebody else's spring cleaning checklist, I always think back to one checklist that I printed out early on and it said they this person had on their weekly cleaning checklist to wipe down their baseboards every week and I thought you need to wipe baseboards. I don't think I've ever done that, so it was not something that was causing me stress unless, like I had spilled smoothie on it or something you know. The kitchen it's a little bit different. You get food splatter on it, but in the bedrooms I can't remember any time I've ever wiped my baseboards, because it's not something that causes me stress. Once it causes me stress, then maybe I'll do it. Or if I have everything else caught up which I mean caught up what a silly term. Right, that doesn't happen in housework. It's never done.

Tessa Weenink:

So start with what you actually see and what's causing you the most stress, and if it's not causing you stress, let it go. There are no housekeeping police. Nobody is coming to see if you have dusted your light fixtures this spring. If it's not bothering, you skip it. Check it again next spring if you really want to, or, you know, in the winter. There are no set rules other than what you make for yourself and when you get used to, when you have a good system that gets all of your basic maintenance stuff done, you can start adding in these deep cleaning things and it doesn't pile up. But if you're struggling with your everyday, you know, trying to get the laundry done, trying to get the dishes done, trying to get the dishes done, there are no spring cleaning police.

Tessa Weenink:

So if it's causing you stress, then make a plan to do it and do it in small increments. Or if you have the capabilities of some people, have the energy to do it. Say I'm just going to on one day do these three big projects in my house, right, you get somebody to watch the kids. And if that works for you, otherwise say I've got five minutes, what can I do with this five minutes? What will alleviate the most stress? Like I said, for me it was. I've been going through my house and cleaning my windowsills because they are, oh, the dust that is in my house. But then I look at my bookshelves and they've got dust on them that doesn't bother me, I'm not going to worry about it at this point. I might next year.

Tessa Weenink:

you know, give it another year to pile up and maybe at that point it will be causing me stress. But if it's not causing you stress, there are no housekeeping police.

Sheila Nonato:

Thank you for that. Yeah, thank you for sharing your strategies for creating a happy and christ-centered home. And, um, yeah, I am, I'm honored to be speaking with you and learning from you and all the wisdom that you've gained over the years, and I'm inspired by you that you're doing this amazing uh, you know, amazing mother, motherhood mission of creating leaders in your home and also running a farm. You know your family is doing a wonderful service to your own family and to the community around you. Thank you so much.

Tessa Weenink:

Yeah, it's kind of silly. I really love cows, and mostly.

Sheila Nonato:

I really love milk.

Tessa Weenink:

I drink so much milk. It's crazy. That's why we need to stay dairy-bound, so I can get the milk.

Sheila Nonato:

Amazing, amazing. And what church are you a part of? Again, what denomination?

Tessa Weenink:

I grew up Reformed and I'm actually currently attending a local Mennonite church, which is a new experience.

Sheila Nonato:

So just the community there has been such a blessing, and to my children.

Tessa Weenink:

So yeah, it's an interesting shift.

Tessa Weenink:

And doctrinally it's not all the same.

Tessa Weenink:

But what I've learned, especially being in a lot of Catholic communities over the last four years, three years, I have learned that there are so many more similarities and we are all just trying to love and serve Jesus to the best of our ability, even though we have, like different, some different theologies.

Tessa Weenink:

What I have found is that we're all just trying to serve Jesus to the best of our ability and with the best understanding of scripture that we know how, and I have decided I am not. It would be arrogant of me to think that I have all the right answers and I don't get to judge other people's hearts. So, yes, I have very different viewpoints than a lot of the Catholics, but I know and I see you trying to serve Jesus, just like I think that I've been told by many of my Catholic friends that they see me trying to serve Jesus as well, to the best of our abilities, and I am glad that we serve a God and not like a church, an earthly, or like a church on earth. Right, we are answerable to him, so it's been an interesting journey to switch to a different church.

Tessa Weenink:

But again, it was the community that my children needed and that we needed.

Sheila Nonato:

Amazing, amazing. Thank you for your time and thank you to your kids for giving us your time to speak with us. So this was fun. Thank you, bye, god bless.

Sheila Nonato:

Thank you to Tessa Weenink, from Aimed at the Heart. You can reach her aimedattheheartcom, also on Instagram, same handle. I'll put it in the show notes. Thank you, tessa, for teaching us about homemaking as a skill and as a "mom superpower, because can't we all use some time to have for ourselves while our kids are making dinner for us? Um, extra time for prayer, actually, that would be amazing. Um, and when our kids are off to college and, uh, they're making their own dinner and making their own bed, they're gonna thank you for teaching them that skill, those skills that are actually invaluable life skills. So we are helping them to become leaders and saints, and that is amazing. Thank you, tessa, and up next we will be continuing the conversation on the Feminine Genius with the pioneering podcaster, rachel Wong, who had a podcast for three years called the Feminine Genius Podcast. Stay tuned for that. Thank you, god bless. Thank you for listening to the Veil and Armor podcast.

Co-Host:

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