Alternate title: Home is what you make.

Background

I am a 24F married to a 25M. We've been together roughly 3.5 years, living together roughly 2 years, married since the first of this month. He works as a programmer in a local hospital system, I am getting a doula business off of the ground, am slotted to start a nanny position in roughly February, and manage the household aspect of our lives nearly completely. (That is, the cooking and cleaning, emotional labor of managing extended family relationships, holidays, etc.)

Theory

With our recent wedding, the phrase "happy wife, happy life" was thrown at me and my husband a lot. In general, the people giving this advice meant it in the following context: "If you do the "right" things to make your wife happy regardless of your opinion on the topic, your life will be easier and more pleasant [mostly because an unhappy woman will actively make your life more unpleasant]." The refrain that my husband should now be bending to my will thanks to our nuptials was a theme repeated at us blaring from every direction: well meaning relatives, jokes about the "ball and chain" of marriage, and wedding tchotchkes bearing epithets like, "Mr. Right and Mrs. Always Right".

I propose that there is some merit to the phrase "happy wife, happy life", but that it is generally taken to mean the opposite of it's actual meaning. For those who are Biblically inclined, Proverbs 21:19 sums it up best with the following:

Better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and nagging wife.

Regardless of whether you take on the role actively or let it be something that happens passively, your attitude and actions set the tone for your home. If you dedicate time to making it feel homey in the ways that matter to both of you, if you provide consistent, healthy, tasty meals, if you approach your spouse and your home life with an upbeat, optimistic, positive, pragmatic attitude, the entire emotional barometer of your life will change for the better.

Practice

Set the rhythm.

Regardless of whether you mark it or not, days, weeks, and seasons all have rhythm. I think as a culture we've stepped away from marking time in significant ways, and I think this contributes a lot to that adult-onset feeling of everything blurring together. On a large scale, most people appreciate the changes that the seasons bring. Everyone gets keyed up for feelings that they associate with the change of seasons: in fall, we want it to be cool to dig into our cozy sweaters, to drink hot, pumpkin spice lattes, to feel cozy and at home with a hearty stew and a horror movie. What makes Christmas so special is what we do for Christmas. Obviously your associations with the seasons are going to be personal to you: the smell of onions cooking in margarine makes the house feel like Christmas to my husband, because his mother makes pierogi for Christmas Eve, and the first ingredient in 2/3s of the kinds of fillings she makes start with minced onion simmering in margarine on the stove.

Tapping into these feelings intentionally--with the food, sights, smells, and media that I bring into my home--makes it feel more like home. It also gives you the opportunity to bring in things that you appreciated about "home" growing up and to build your own, new traditions. Some of these are big and obvious (celebrating anniversaries), some of them include extended family (every Christmas, we make a special night out of watching It's A Wonderful Life with his parents), and some of them are the smaller routines that you build into your life (we read every night before bed, I make waffles and bacon on Sunday mornings). These routines are the things that will keep home feeling like home in the midst of the chaos, and they help us mark the change of seasons and important things. Generally I find that doing so helps me live with more intention, which keeps me feeling more fulfilled and creates a space for my husband to come home and feel like he has a refuge to really dig into his projects and appreciate home life.

The trope of the frazzled, hot mess of a wife might be cute and funny on TV, but the freedom that comes with some discipline opens up your life significantly more to bigger and better things. Your stress level affects your partner's stress level. In general, I find that focusing on the logistics of our day-to-day functioning leaves space for my partner to a) focus on bigger-term plans and dealing with actual problems as they arise, instead of constantly putting out small-scale fires, and b) makes the overall tone much more peaceful.

In general, planning is everything: it is much easier to accomplish all of the things that are important to you if you break them down into smaller, manageable tasks. My monthly routine is supported by my weekly routine, which is supported by my various daily routines. Being able to roll with the punches on a day-to-day basis is key, but having a plan of what needs to happen at any given time will keep the entire home more on course so that emergencies and unexpected circumstances (and additional obligations) don't throw everything out the window. Spending my time more productively has also left significantly more room for me to accomplish more; if I'm not struggling to stay above water on the most important tasks, I get more done overall. It's not really rocket science, but even something as routine as a meal plan is the difference between well balanced meals that make my partner happy and excited to come home over the stress and mediocrity of dropping $100 in a single week on takeout that wasn't good for us and gets very boring, very quickly. At this point my weekly routine is set up for success on the touchstones that make my partner feel the most loved:

  • breakfast and lunch planned and prepped for his workweek. I usually complete this task on Sunday, so that the rest of the week his breakfast/lunch is easy to throw together the night before. I've invested in a decent rotation of tupperware so that I have easy ways to send a variety of things with him. Chilis and soups, pasta salads, build-your-own-wraps, grownup lunchables--all cheap and awesome lunch ideas, if you put the time into preparing them. Mini frittatas, breakfast sandwiches, breakfast tacos, and smoothies have all been decent breakfast hits so far.

  • dinner planned and executed--this one's pretty obvious, but cooking in from scratch is ultimately cheaper (and so much easier to balance!). Eating out all of the time is one of the best ways to guarantee that I'm going to feel physically drained and crummy, and the extra weight isn't necessary. Nail down a few key cooking techniques and experiment. Have at least one meal you can make that seems impressive for when you have company. I'm really biased in that cooking has become one of my very favorite hobbies, but I think it's an underestimated skill that really brings things together.

  • send him off and welcome him home. Stop what you're doing long enough to, at the very least, say goodbye or greet him. I like to put out his after-work clothes (he wears the same rotation of things and really isn't picky) and something to drink for him, but you don't have to go that far. (And this might not even be something that matters to your partner...but mine appreciates it.)

Ultimately the touchstones you choose are going to be the things that you remember and rely on. We are what we repeatedly do, and the space we create in our homes and our relationships can either bring out the best in us and our partners or can leave us burnt out and emotionally exhausted. What looks like more work in the beginning eventually becomes the joy.