I’m loving the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder these days. I have always loved them, and my copies show it. The Little House in the Big Woods book is quite close to falling apart.
This time, I am reading them with my seven-year-old daughter. We tried this a couple of years ago, to very little interest. This time, she is enchanted, and it is lovely. No matter how tired we are before bed, we read an entire chapter.
The simplicity and do-it-yourselfness of life back then is what is enchanting about these books, as are the close family relationships. It’s a peek into a very different world than the world of fast moving extracurriculars, school five days a week, and parents who both work outside the home.
Yet I am a very Little House person myself, and I would be more so, particularly if we could shed some of the above and add in more of what’s below.
In addition to the work and the school and those trappings of modern and busy life, I spent some time in the last week sheet mulching a forty square foot garden bed so it can create soil over the winter. I harvested about fifteen pounds of green tomatoes and turned them into delicious mincemeat. I’ve been canning up a storm this year, with a seemingly endless number of pears and a lot of plum jam in the pantry.
It’s my dearest wish to focus more on these things and less on the business of modern society. Since I was a small child reading those Little House books, much has changed in the world. It has become more frenzied, more consumer-oriented, less home-oriented. Yet in my mind, there’s a little girl who loves animals and gardens and home. She loves a lot of other things too, and those make her busy, but what’s in her core is a love of home.
What housekeeping and homemaking books do you value? What childhood inspirations have you carried through to your current life?