Home Management: Meaning, Scope and Process
Home management is the purposeful use of a family's resources to reach the goals the family values. The paper tests the definition, the scope of management in the home and the stages of the management process, not housework alone.
Core concepts
- Definition: home management is planning, organising, controlling and evaluating the use of human and non-human resources so that family goals are achieved with least waste.
- The process has four linked stages: planning (what, when, how, by whom), organising (arranging resources and dividing work), controlling (carrying out, supervising and adjusting) and evaluating (comparing results with the plan).
- Decision-making and communication run through all four stages; some textbook lists place directing alongside controlling.
- Scope: management of money, time, energy, work, household equipment, housing, consumer choices and family relationships. It applies in every home, whatever the income.
- Characteristics: universal, goal-directed, continuous, dynamic and situational. The same family changes its plans as needs change.
Worked example
A family of four plans Diwali cleaning. Planning: list rooms, days and people. Organising: adults take cupboards and kitchen, children take dusting, and a vacuum cleaner is borrowed. Controlling: a guest arrives on day two, so the kitchen task is shifted and heavy work is done in the morning. Evaluating: the family compares time and fatigue with last year and notes that pre-soaking curtains saved an hour. The reasoning is that each stage uses the previous plan and feeds the next plan.
Traps
Writing only planning and calling it the process; confusing resources with process steps; treating home management as cleaning; omitting evaluation; listing money as a human resource.