Deciding how to set homemaking goals can be a challenging task.

A homemaker can wear many hats. Mother. Wife. Interior designer. Chef. Gardener. Seamstress. You get the idea. It can be difficult to decide what truly matters to your purpose in the home, which is why setting homemaking goals is so incredibly important. If we aren’t careful we can fall into the trap of simply managing the tasks of the home rather than actively progressing towards a result. I’m here today to help you get clear about what you want out of your time at home and figure out how you want to best serve your family this year. Below you’ll find a breakdown of 5 actionable steps on how to set homemaking goals for the new year.

Tools for Goal Setting

• Laurel Denise planner (I highly recommend, It’s my absolute favorite.)
• Google Calendar (optional)

Read: The Best Homemaking Planner for 2025

How to Set Homemaking Goals

Step 1: Reflect on your wins and challenges

If you’re anything like me your filled with excitement and anticipation for the year to come and eager to start working on projects to achieve your goal. However, the best place to start to go forward is to look back. You can learn so much from what you were able to or not able to accomplish last year. So this step is a simple exercise. Divide a piece of paper in half. One side label positive and the other negatives.

Action: Go month by month through last years planner or digital calendar. Look for events or memories that brought you lots of joy and the challenges you faced. Write them down in either your. positive or negative column. If you are not a consistent user of a planner or calendar, going through your photos can be helpful in jogging your memory as well.

Step 2: Get Clear on Your Why

Now that you’ve reflected on your previous year, you’ll want to take that information to help you decide how you will create more positives and less negatives for the year to come. Why do I even need to learn how to make homemaking goals? As homemakers it can be difficult to see ourselves as working mothers but we are! Making homemaking goals tells yourself and the world that this job is one of the most important in the world and it requires the same, if not more, effort as a job outside of the home.

Without getting clear on your why, you run the risk of falling into old habits or simply managing your household tasks vs truly creating a home. When things get busy or motivation dies, you need to remember your why.

Action: Ask yourself the following questions.

• What feeling do I want to evoke in my home?
• How can I best serve my family?
• What values do I want to instill in my home?

Step 3: Write down your areas of focus

Okay this is the fun part for me. Categories! As I said earlier homemakers wear many hats. Now is the time to decide what areas of your homemaking do you want to focus on this year. It can be easy to get a little carried away here and want to work on all the things but I’d suggest with starting with a 1-2 per quarter. You can always add more if you choose.

Action: Write down the areas you’ll want to work on.

Remember that it isn’t always about the physical space. More often than not its the feeling you want to evoke and the creation of memories within your walls.

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Step 4: Get specific on what you want to achieve

Now that you’ve circled your top areas its time to get specific within your categories. What exactly do you want to accomplish? Make specific and actionable goals.

Action: Write down a specific goal; the what, when, how, how much/often.

For example, if your goal is to create more family memories. Write your goal down as ” Go on a special outing once a month as a family” or “Create a special night in family game night once a month.” Just make sure whatever you choose is specific and realistic to your family situation.

Step 5: Create habits to support your goals

The final step is to figure out how and when you will work on these. We want to set ourselves up for the best chance for success. So with the example above, if we know we want to do a monthly family day then first step is to schedule it in. Once you know the date then you know that you need to start planning the event a week or two prior. Which means we need to allot a time during the week to sit and figure out what family activity we are doing, what supplies are needed and all the other particulars. Blocking the time out to plan the activities is important.

Things to consider when learning how to set homemaking goals

What about goals that don’t necessarily have a natural deadline? Take note that homemaking goals tend to be an ongoing process which is another reason its difficult. It’s hard to not always have an end date but some things may actually be habits you’d like to create. Another example could be a cooking goal of replacing store bought bread with more homemade breads. There’s no natural deadline for something like that because it’s actually a habit you want to form. The same thing will apply, I want to replace store bought bread with homemade therefore the time will need to be blocked out to make the bread. What habit can you create to help you achieve your goals?

Remember progress is better than perfectly achieving your goals. We know life happens and sometimes we don’t always hit the mark, but with the steps above you will give yourself the best chance to succeed!

This post was all about how to set homemaking goals. Good luck with your homemaking endeavors!