My paternal grandparents, who were essentially ‘homeless people’, lived in a shed in our backyard until I was 4 and a half years old when I lost them both. Their shed had only a high frosted vent window, virtually no natural light. The walls were brown unpainted masonite, the floor was cement with lino over it and a thin rug.

They had a bed, a lamp, a kerosene heater, a collection of tins under the bed that stored simple food stuffs and craft materials and bits of wonderment and memories. My grandmother played spoons, a harmonica, a squeeze box and danced and sang like a jolly gypsy. My grandfather kept magnets, a small mirror, a matchbox with balls of mercury. My grandmother crotcheted everything from bits of wool she found, had a box of colored tin foil sweet wrappers, a box of colored bits of broken glass. Around her neck she wore camphor and the place smelled rustic, and of home. My room within the house itself was not a patch on the sense of home out in their shed. After my grandfather died and my grandmother was sent 100 miles away we moved to the big house with the huge garden, and my parents, rolling in dirty money filled it with decor, antiques, chandeliers, a swimming pool… and nothing could make it a home.

Homemaking is an art form. A home maker makes a house feel like a HOME.

.. whether its a shed, a tent, a cardboard box, a single room, a flat, or a house…. they work from the heart, they work from a sense of what is aesthetic but marry it with ambiance and grace and harmony. Their capacity as a home maker flows into their talent for making guests feel at home – hospitality. It flows into what relationship they accept to live in – one which harbors, supports, sustains, even contributes to and helps build that sense of home. It flows into the boundaries the homemaker has in place about friendships, about work, about life. A partner, children, pets, friends, belongings, or decor may help build a sense of home… obscure it, or disintegrate it so even their presence alone cannot make a house into a home. A housekeeper may keep a clean and tidy house, but without being a homemaker it will never be a home. A housewife (or any gender) may stay home and take care of the running of the house, but it will never make it a home unless that person is also a homemaker.

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist,and presenter.
http://www.donnawilliams.net

I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Owners of this country throughout Australia, and their connection to land and community.