10 Ways A Homeschooling Mom Can Better Love Her Husband

Homeschooling can strengthen your family — or slowly starve your marriage. No one signs up for the second option. But it happens more often than we want to admit.

When your days revolve around lesson plans, laundry, and little people, it’s dangerously easy to give your husband the leftovers — your leftover energy, your leftover patience, your leftover affection.

And that’s not God’s design.

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Last month, my husband and I celebrated our 27th anniversary — over half of those years spent homeschooling. I’ve made mistakes along the way. But I’ve also learned some important lessons. And now that our homeschooling chapter has closed, I can honestly say, “We made it.”

The Homeschool Vortex Is Real

Homeschooling is all-consuming. It fills your days, your conversations, and sometimes your thoughts long after the school books are put away.

I once heard it described as the “homeschool vortex” — that place where you become “all homeschool mom, all the time,” and everything revolves around children, curriculum, and crock pots. (I’ve upgraded to an Instant Pot, but you get the idea.)

The vortex isn’t bad — it’s just absorbing. And when you live there too long, romance quietly drifts to the edges.

I believe God designed women to be keepers at home. But sometimes we get so busy “keeping” and “teaching” that we unintentionally neglect the very relationships that should come first:

First, our relationship with God.
Second, our relationship with our husband.
Then, our children.

“Your success as a homeschool mom and as a family depends on two things: Your relationship with the Lord and with your husband.”

The Busy Homeschool Mom’s Guide to Romance – Heidi St. John

When those first two suffer, everything else eventually feels harder — even homeschooling. And here’s the subtle danger of the vortex: when you lose yourself in it, you also lose the version of you your husband fell in love with.

Whatever Happened to “That Girl”?

That thought made me revisit someone I hadn’t thought about in years…“That Girl.”

She was head-over-heels for a long-haired guy with a loud car. She looked forward to Friday night Pizza Hut like it was fine dining. She wrote love letters. She flirted. She dressed to impress.

Life has changed since then. She’s older. She homeschools. She manages a home. But she isn’t gone. She’s just buried under lesson plans and laundry baskets — and every now and then, she needs to come back out.

So let me share ten simple ways you can love your husband well during the homeschool years.

10 Tips for Homeschooling Moms

Over the years, I’ve learned that loving your husband well during the homeschool season doesn’t usually require grand gestures. It’s the small, intentional choices that make the biggest difference – most of which take ten minutes or less!

1. Ten-minute tidy: Take just a few minutes to pick up toys, school books, and have things generally tidy before he gets home. Don’t forget to include the kids! You want your home to look welcoming, not like a war-zone.
2. Two-minute tidy: Take just a couple of minutes to run a brush through your hair, and swipe on some lipgloss, and a clean shirt. Don’t look like you’ve been in a war-zone (although you may have). You want to be the prettiest thing he’s seen all day.
3. First-ten-minutes magic: Smile and listen when he arrives home. Don’t unload your day immediately — hear about his first. Men can usually say what they need in less time than that!
4. Wait on him: He’s been at work all day. Get the man some tea… or ice cream!
5. Keep the bedroom sacred: Keep papers and school projects out of the bedroom. I know most of us “school” all over the house, but make that one area free of clutter, especially school clutter. Your room should whisper, “relax”, not “do your homework.”
6. Flirt. It will make him happy and gross out the kids.
7. Make time to be alone: Yes, it’s harder with older kids. But older kids also mean built-in babysitters. Use them.
8. Say it out loud: Appreciate what he does away from home, so you can do what you do in the home. I remember a conversation a homeschooling mom shared with me. She was telling her husband about the lousy day she and the kids had as soon as he came home. I also remember her husband’s reply – “at least you get to work with people you love all day”. To this day, I have not forgotten it.
9. Keep your eye on the finish line: Homeschooling years fly. One day it’s just the two of you again — make sure he’s still your favorite person.
10. Respect him. Love him. Because the Bible tells us to.

This Season Is Shaping More Than Academics

Homeschool mamas, this season is demanding — but it’s also shaping more than lesson plans. When we stay rooted in God’s Word and intentional in our marriages, everything else feels steadier. And remember, little eyes are watching. We are setting the tone for the generation behind us.