Ambiance

We at The (real) Stepford Wives Association completely understand the importance of ambiance to setting the mood and we find it matters little the occasion. A clean home, free of clutter sets the stage, but the small details add the needed flair. Candles, soft lights and music can be as important as the quality of food. Children and adults who listen to classical music while eating dinner tend to eat slower than those watching television.

In the evening, we walk through our home closing curtains and window coverings and we light candles in the rooms we expect to be in. This sets a mood for the evening and we've found it's relaxing. When lighting numerous candles, do try to choose unscented ones or two scents that compliment each other without being overwhelming. Right now a favorite is a green apple and creme brûlée scented candles. The combination is just amazing like the best apple pie you've never made. The rest of the candles are simply unscented and don't compete.

If you have seasonal luminaries, try looking for LCD voltive or tea flameless candles. Using them in any sort of display where the candle is visible is not advisable due to their tacky apperarence, but if it's somewhat enclosed they are more safe than traditional tea lights. Remember shooting can cause fires.

They're also wonderful for Jack O Lanturns, especially during Halloween when the weather is less than perfect.

Our Routine Part 2

After spending 1-2 hours preparing the meal, we freshen up before our husbands return home from work. We take a few moments to tidy and get children to set the table. We will also prepare a cocktail or refreshing beverage for our husbands to enjoy while we put together a quick appetizer of hummus, maybe some cucumber or tomato. Just a bite or two while we place the food into proper serving dishes.

Our husbands determine how much food goes on each plate. After the plates are cleaned, then the children can ask for a second helping. After dinner we clear the table and begin cleaning up. It might surprise many that often our husbands help out with directing the children to help out and some even assist in loading the dishwasher. We accept their help graciously.

After the little children and those with us who have babies, get them bathed and settled for the night, we begin to plan future meals. We make certain the next days meal is planned, and the meals for the next several days. We check progress on items that are defrosting and make certain it's progressing properly. After dark we light candles. Toss clutter. Make sure out husbands are happy.

When all is quiet we read. Cookbooks, cleaning books and decorating books. Our husbands decide when it's time for us to go to bed.

 

 

Our Routine

Each morning each of us in The Stepford Wives Association begin each day an hour before our families wake. We go downstairs and begin emptying the dishwasher and set the table for breakfast. If we have bread to bake, we will get the yeast started.

We make coffee and begin waking the family, beginning usually with our husbands and we each have our own personal ways of setting their day off on the right foot. Our children and babies are next, older children do have alarm clocks but sometimes neglect to set them, so taking a moment to check on them is a good thing.

After assuring all are beginning their morning routines, we begin cooking breakfast, setting out coffee and juice, and doing whatever is needed. Yesterday in our home the breakfast menu was a whole grain pancake, fresh fruit and warmed berry preserves as topping. Everything made from scratch naturally.

Lunch boxes were prepared and filled with carrot sticks, a small apple or other fruit. Petite sandwiches, with goat cheese, turkey and arugula with a drizzle of cranberry. Sandwiches for our are sliced into fun shapes filled with their favorite ingriedients.

When our children are safely on the bus and our husbands are out the door, it's time to begin our cleaning rituals. We call them rituals because everything is accomplished in a proper way. We scrub our bathrooms, wash down the showers and dust the floors. As we leave we wipe the door handles. We go through each room with a dust cloth, make beds and fluff pillows. We vacuum high traffic areas.

We keep meticulous lists and plan errands to conserve gasoline. Too many marketing trips lead to overspending. Our husbands lay out a budget. We dress sharply when we run those errands. We walk slowly through the stores and never toss items haphazardly into our carts. It isn't easy, the slow purposeful walk we do. We mustn't rush through the store, since rushing can lead to overlooking items we need.

Upon returning home, we put away the items methodically.

We do often take a few moments to go through the mail, removing junk mail into the recycle bin, the rest goes onto our husband's desk. We might also check email also. We will send a text message to our husbands to let them know we are home safely. That brings to mind another thing we always do, or rather will not do; we never leave our homes without our husband's permission.

We begin to get ready for our children's return from school, we offer them a snack and assist with homework. During this time it's also useful to begin dinner.

Look for part two tomorrow.

Point of Order

Recently, our members got together for a nice brunch on Sunday. We are happy to report everyone is pleased with our blog and everyone has signed up for the email delivery. We also welcomed our latest Stepford wife and extended an initiation to another who lives out of state. The raves and thanks went out to all involved with the actual blog writing.

One of our founding members did have a couple points of order to address the former having to do with our name and the latter having to do with comments. The action was raised that we aren't really a formal club, but more like an association of women, sharing ideas. We quite unanimously decided that we should change our name to The (real) Stepford Wives's Association.

The latter was couched in more a delicate way about allowing comments to the blog. Many members said they would like to leave comments. A few members did voice concerns that such action could leave us open to disparaging remarks on how we live from the general public and open us up to ridicule. We could simply add everyone to our blogroll as an author, however that required everyone to have an account with our host site. Suggestions were proffered that remarks could be moderated, but as still another pointed out someone still must read them an approve. If the remark is rude -- the damage is already done.

That action was tabled until our next meeting.

The final point of order was to add a note that we support and have the utmost respect for all women, including those who work outside the home. While we have made the choice to make our hushands and families our career, we do appreciate those who are bereft of this vocation by circumstance or nessesity. We understand that we are blessed that our husbands supportive of this decision. We simply do not turn our nose up or frown upon working women. We are not wealthy by any means, we are mostly middle class. We sacrificed having a career outside the home, which earns money, for a career inside our homes that gives us a fantastic amount of personal satisfaction.

Down Time?

We at The (real) Stepford Wives Club have established that a clean home is a happy home. We have shared some of our cleaning regiments and routines. In the future we will discuss individual cleaning or housekeeping practices. For this time, however, we would like to discuss how we spend our down-time, or rather how we do not spend our time.

We do not idly watch television, the television is generally reserved for sporting events our husbands enjoy. We do not wind away the afternoon watching soap operas, Oprah Winfrey or Jenny Jones (really are any of those people still on the air?). We don't watch the latest Hollywood gossip, nor do we care who got arrested, caught cheating, or the latest marriage, birth or divorce. These are all people we do not know in real life, why should we need to know their intimate details?

We don't watch the news either. If we want to know about something that's going on in the world, we talk to our husbands and ask for their thoughts. Very often they will say that we shouldn't concern ourselves with it. Again, the view we are most concerned with comes from our kitchen window and our own backyard.

Our time, when we are not cleaning, cooking, or tending to our families are spent mostly reading or engaging in a hobby. Some of us enjoy sewing, scrapbooking and even making our own cards for special occasions and holidays. We enjoy reading, especially books on cleaning. We recommend Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendleson. She covers everything you need to know about properly cleaning your home. We very much consider that book to be like the Holy Grail of cleaning!

We at The (real) Stepford Wives also spend time reading various cookbooks. We take great pride in planning healthful meals that are eye pleasing as well as tasty. We'll talk more about this another time.

In the Bedroom for a Different Reason

We at The (real) Stepford Wives believe in giving our husband's complete control in the bedroom.  They are our leaders in all things and that includes what goes on between the (high-quality) sheets.  We don't initiate sex, unless we feel they need it.  We always place our personal needs well below those of our husbands.  

As women we wear many hats in our lives, we are wives, mothers, daughters, sisters and each is carefully juggled.  We are responsible for the smooth running of our homes; we do not run out of things.  By the same token, we do not horde or store copious amounts of anything.  We pay attention to details and buy what we need to replenish supplies.   While we might not be prepared for every situation, we do pride ourselves in trying to be.  

For us, in the bedroom romance begins in our minds.  Yes, while it's true our husbands control us sexually (and this is hopelessly embarrassing to even write about) our minds need to feel romance.  Men are very visual creatures and women are more cerebral.  We can think ourselves to tingles and if we concentrate hard enough to orgasm. When our men come to us we gleefully submit and dutifully give them our full attention.  We believe strongly our husband's needs come far before our own and selflessly give them what they need.  If orgasm for us happens during the act, wonderful, if not we finish ourselves off quietly later after they have gone to sleep as to not disturb them.  They work hard all day for us, we believe it is the 

In the Bedroom

Here at The (real) Stepford Wives, we believe that our bedrooms are the true sanctuary from our daily lives. It's the place to set the tone be it for sleeping, intimacy, or relaxing -- it should be a serene place.

relaxing?

While considering this we wondered if there was indeed a link between clutter and depression. We began digging a little and after just a few moments we found this article from The New York Times published in 2008. While it's not the final word on the subject, it certainly gave us all the idea that too much clutter in your life, too much chaos would be damaging to your psyche and to those around you.

A clean home can have a calming effect on children.

Inside the bedroom a clutter free zone can feel like an oasis. You certainly don't need expensive furnishings or top-of-the-line fabrics; our rule is always get the highest thread count you can afford. Keeping in mind, the higher the count the longer your bedding will last. Keep your eye out on sales.

Start with the bed. You should start with a comfortable mattress. A good quality mattress pad (protect your investment), everything else is dressing. We believe that while you might love your collection of cats, seeing them all on a shelf compressed together might be pleasing to you, but to others it will resemble a garage sale shelf! Same is true with an over abundance of family photos, or candles or too much of anything. Yet, take that same shelf, add one beloved cat, a few leather bound books, maybe a tall pillar candle and your eye is drawn to it. It invites you in. The same way an unmade bed and dirty clothing strewn across the floor screams get out!

Comforting without clutter

Many people will remark from time to time on how relaxed they felt on vacation. While just being away certainly might have something to do with it. What if the another reason was the lack of clutter surrounding their hotel room? Your clothing remains either stowed in your suitcase or tucked in drawers; toiletries neatly lined in those small bottles like a row of toy soldiers. You go out for the day and return to a made bed, the room is tidy and the trash emptied.

We at The (real) Stepford Wives believe the path to a great day begins with a made bed. In fact our personal credo is never leave the house with curlers in your hair or your bed unmade.

Our Breakfast Table

We at The (real) Stepford Wives Club firmly believe our breakfast tables are the most used tables in our homes. They are the tables we pretty up with flowers over breakfast, the places where we entertain our friends over coffee and where our children do their homework.

Not all of us have a dining table, so our simple multi-use table is transformed into a elegant dining table with the addition of a nice table cloth and some candles. Much like that table with all its uses, we also have many uses. We are mothers, housekeepers, and of course wives. We do not place our children above our husbands but rather equal to them.

Yes, sometimes it's a just a table set for two for an intimate dinner with our husbands to show them how much we truly appreciate them. One of our girls came up with a wonderful each day she does five special things for her husband. She says sometimes she does simple things like cooking his favorite foods, or having a martini waiting for him at the end of a trying day.

The whole thing has been so successful for her that we've all decided to give it a whirl.

We'll all discuss it at our next brunch.

Cleaning, Organizing and Entertaining

Here at The (real) Stepford Wives Club we don't spend every moment cleaning, but we sure do spend a good chunk of our week tending to our homes, gardens, planning and preparing healthy meals.

Here's what we know -- a happy home is a clean home. Cleaning our homes isn't a chore but a privilege and opportunity to show our families how much we care. A tidy home is a direct reflection on our husbands. There is nothing more humiliating than a good friend dropping by for coffee and seeing the house in shambles. When we have a guest enter our homes we don't continue folding our husbands boxer briefs, or prattle on while they help themselves to coffee as we shout above the vacuum cleaner. When a guest enters our home, we are always prepared.

It takes but a minute to set out the tea or coffee pot, arrange a few home-made cookies or whip up some tea sandwiches. Make your guests feel at home and they interrupted nothing -- is what we say. We even will drop in each other from time to time so we keep these skills at the ready.

Deli luncheon meats can placed on white or wheat home-made bread with dab of soften butter with lemon. Or a touch of Dijon mustard. Trim the crusts and slice into whatever shape you fancy, while you wait for the kettle to boil. Slice some fruit, maybe some carrot sticks with a festive dip (keep dip on hand for such occasions).

It might be old fashioned, but even peanut butter or cream cheese, on celery is a welcome treat, especially if served with whatever homemade goodies you have. All these can whipped up in jiffy.

We do have cleaning schedules, which we abide by. Tuesday's and Fridays traditionally are just for cleaning/ laundry and ironing. Monday's Wednesday's and Thursday's are for errands, appointments and shopping/meal preparations. This leaves our weekends completely free to spend time with our families and serve our husbands.

Shred shred shred!

Our homes are free of annoying clutter, because we go through the house daily with a garbage bag and throw it out! We don't hide it in the closet. When our husbands pay the bills we keep them until the next bill arrives, he checks it for errors and then we shred the previous months bill. While tax related items should be kept in an organized file, there's no need to keep the gas bill for years on end, Even bank statements are paperless nowadays, so you don't need to hang on to a mountain of paper work.

For items and documents that should be saved, a box will do the trick and stored with the years. When you keep your paper down to a minumin you will be amazed how many years it would take to fill a bankers box! We find Club Memebrs can easily hold 10 years of tax returns in one box, complete with receipts. When we put one into the box, at one end, we pull one from the opposite end and shred it, we divide by year for easy locating. It eliminates many headaches.