Home Management and Resource Management
Home Management and Resource Management is about using what a family has (time, energy, money, skills, space) to reach the goals it values. The exam tests the management process, decision making, resource classification, work simplification, fatigue, budgets and income types.
Resources
Human resources are time, energy, knowledge, skill, attitude and interest; non-human resources are money, goods, space and community facilities. All resources are limited, usable in more than one way, interchangeable and manageable.
The management process
Planning (setting goals and choosing means), organising (arranging resources and work), implementing or controlling (doing and checking) and evaluating (comparing results with goals). Decision making is a smaller loop inside it: define the problem, list alternatives, weigh costs and returns, choose, act, then evaluate.
Work simplification and fatigue
Mundel's classes of change cover change in body position and motion, change in equipment and tools, change in product, change in sequence, and change in place or materials at point of use. Fatigue may be physiological, muscular or psychological; good arrangement of the work centre removes much of it.
Income and budget
Money income is cash; real income is goods and services produced at home; psychic income is satisfaction and prestige. A budget may be balanced, surplus or deficit. Savings are a resource created by planning.
Worked example
A homemaker walks twelve times a day between sink and stove. Applying the class called change in place, the counter is shifted beside the sink so vegetables are washed and cut in one spot. Reasoning: task and equipment are unchanged, only the location of materials relative to use, so the change belongs to Mundel's place class.
Traps
Real and psychic income are not cash; a surplus budget is not automatically good if it starves nutrition or health spending; evaluation is not the first step; interchangeability means money can buy time-saving equipment.