What do you think?
Rate this book
The Intentional Household: Living as if People Matter
The household is the center of daily life, where relationships thrive through shared work and leisure. Yet for decades, we have not lived as though this were true. The Widespread unhappiness, isolation, and meaninglessness.Philosopher John Cuddeback invokes timeless wisdom to help breathe new life into our homes. Focusing on eight simple principles, The Intentional Household gives profound directions for crafting the shared life we naturally crave for ourselves and our loved ones. Our souls were made for a living community at every phase of life.Building this community, however, takes time and focus. More and more people are discovering that good work and edifying leisure in the home are a key not only to healthy family, but a flourishing society. Cuddeback explains how and why. Utilizing great thinkers from all ages―from Plato and Aristotle, to Cato and Cicero, to Wendell Berry and Leonard Sax―he deftly reveals the inner workings of a vibrant home. With care and clarity, he grounds the practical cornerstones of shared life in the perennial principles of human nature and ethics. Today’s household must be an intentional household, carefully crafted in view of what really true happiness. We cannot do this alone.
- GenresNonfiction
167 pages, Paperback
Published April 13, 2026
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 12, 2026
Love the overt wink to Schumacher in the subtitle
A helpful book for reorienting one's heart and mind to what really matters - rather, who really matters - and 8 principles (i.e., starting places) for cultivating household life that centers the love and good of the human persons in your life.
I read this because while I was out of town for a week with the kids, Matthew read this book. I returned to find our TV disconnected from streaming services, a spouse eager to include our kids in his bread-baking and yardwork, and an earnest appeal that I read this book. So, here I am.
The art of household-making often finds itself restricted to conversations for or among women. I appreciate Dr. Cuddeback's capacity to write from his perspective as the father of his household, and the anecdotes he provides are typically things HE has done to contribute to the person-centric orientation of his household. In a cultural climate rife with loud voices on both extremes of the spectrum regarding how women and men ought (or ought not) contribute to the making of their households, this book provides a much-needed voice of sanity to remind us that this is a SHARED task between spouses and among the whole family, rather than the sole responsibility of one partner or the other.
I appreciated every practical examples and anecdote included and would have loved to have seen more of them - however, I know this book was meant to be an overview rather than a practical how-to guide.
Overall, we are challenged to examine our lives for instances where we have allowed passivity to supplant intentionality, where we are satisfied with being rather than becoming.
For my own sake as I religiously forget everything I have ever read, here are my key quotations and takeaways:
- "The marginalization of the young and the old, then, is less a deliberate choice than a by-product of seeing success or happiness in terms of accumulating external achievements rather than becoming a certain kind of person" (9).
- "Parenting is a unique context for wrestling with one's own identity while forming that of others" (25).
- The constant emphasis on priority of people over things and how this links with responsibility: "We care for things because we care for people" (44).
- "Do we really *live* as though what is most important is actually most important?" (46) - emphasis on choice, consistency, and intentionality in our lives
- Contextualizing work as personal actualization, communal achievement, and opportunity for connection
- "Household life is itself work... not essentially defined or justified in terms of *producing* something... . Rather, it is about *becoming* something together" (72).
- I have to be HAPPY while doing an interminable series of dishes??? (Mother Teresa would agree RIP my attitude)
- Focus on household / communal leisure rather than a self-oriented pursuit of amusement
- Did Dr. Cuddeback get a sneak peek at Pope Leo's encyclical?? Because he hits many of the same points about careful examination and use of technology as a tool of enhancing the human-ness of our lives rather than as a tool for dehumanization focused on quantitive productivity.
- Ultimately home is "a place of intense focus and relationship building" (104).
- "Our households are the opposite of self-sufficient: They are now a place to consume what is produced elsewhere using money that has been earned elsewhere" (106) [absolute banger of a line imo]
- That the shared life of spouses is the first introduction for a child of what is means to be a human person. That seems... impactful
- Focus less on whether you ARE soulmates and more on BECOMING soulmates, which requires mutual and consistent choice
- "Creating a healthy context for children in whcih we prioritize rich relationships with them is perhaps the most direct path to enacting the life that most adults crave for themselves" (132).
- Parenting requires that same constant self-examination, adaptability, intentionality that all the other principles in this book mention
- The inevitability of being an example for your child is a two-sided coin. You have to be really conscious not to model bad behaviors but also how beautiful is it when your kid wants to be "just like you"?
- "Rather than assume our situation will never be what is should be, we might discover how we can move closer to what we could be" (146-7).
- When discussing the place of aging in the home... "what is the weakening of the body actually; unlocks or fosters the strengthening of goods that otherwise tend to remain only possibilities?" (150) - this hit me a lot because that was a huge takeaway of mine from This Is Happiness, the capacity of suffering to make us more accessible either in a physical, emotional, or spiritual way
- "O fortunate beyond measure, if they know the good they have" - courtesy of Virgil, a wonderful injunction to gratitude for what we have and hope for what we can be.
A helpful book for reorienting one's heart and mind to what really matters - rather, who really matters - and 8 principles (i.e., starting places) for cultivating household life that centers the love and good of the human persons in your life.
I read this because while I was out of town for a week with the kids, Matthew read this book. I returned to find our TV disconnected from streaming services, a spouse eager to include our kids in his bread-baking and yardwork, and an earnest appeal that I read this book. So, here I am.
The art of household-making often finds itself restricted to conversations for or among women. I appreciate Dr. Cuddeback's capacity to write from his perspective as the father of his household, and the anecdotes he provides are typically things HE has done to contribute to the person-centric orientation of his household. In a cultural climate rife with loud voices on both extremes of the spectrum regarding how women and men ought (or ought not) contribute to the making of their households, this book provides a much-needed voice of sanity to remind us that this is a SHARED task between spouses and among the whole family, rather than the sole responsibility of one partner or the other.
I appreciated every practical examples and anecdote included and would have loved to have seen more of them - however, I know this book was meant to be an overview rather than a practical how-to guide.
Overall, we are challenged to examine our lives for instances where we have allowed passivity to supplant intentionality, where we are satisfied with being rather than becoming.
For my own sake as I religiously forget everything I have ever read, here are my key quotations and takeaways:
- "The marginalization of the young and the old, then, is less a deliberate choice than a by-product of seeing success or happiness in terms of accumulating external achievements rather than becoming a certain kind of person" (9).
- "Parenting is a unique context for wrestling with one's own identity while forming that of others" (25).
- The constant emphasis on priority of people over things and how this links with responsibility: "We care for things because we care for people" (44).
- "Do we really *live* as though what is most important is actually most important?" (46) - emphasis on choice, consistency, and intentionality in our lives
- Contextualizing work as personal actualization, communal achievement, and opportunity for connection
- "Household life is itself work... not essentially defined or justified in terms of *producing* something... . Rather, it is about *becoming* something together" (72).
- I have to be HAPPY while doing an interminable series of dishes??? (Mother Teresa would agree RIP my attitude)
- Focus on household / communal leisure rather than a self-oriented pursuit of amusement
- Did Dr. Cuddeback get a sneak peek at Pope Leo's encyclical?? Because he hits many of the same points about careful examination and use of technology as a tool of enhancing the human-ness of our lives rather than as a tool for dehumanization focused on quantitive productivity.
- Ultimately home is "a place of intense focus and relationship building" (104).
- "Our households are the opposite of self-sufficient: They are now a place to consume what is produced elsewhere using money that has been earned elsewhere" (106) [absolute banger of a line imo]
- That the shared life of spouses is the first introduction for a child of what is means to be a human person. That seems... impactful
- Focus less on whether you ARE soulmates and more on BECOMING soulmates, which requires mutual and consistent choice
- "Creating a healthy context for children in whcih we prioritize rich relationships with them is perhaps the most direct path to enacting the life that most adults crave for themselves" (132).
- Parenting requires that same constant self-examination, adaptability, intentionality that all the other principles in this book mention
- The inevitability of being an example for your child is a two-sided coin. You have to be really conscious not to model bad behaviors but also how beautiful is it when your kid wants to be "just like you"?
- "Rather than assume our situation will never be what is should be, we might discover how we can move closer to what we could be" (146-7).
- When discussing the place of aging in the home... "what is the weakening of the body actually; unlocks or fosters the strengthening of goods that otherwise tend to remain only possibilities?" (150) - this hit me a lot because that was a huge takeaway of mine from This Is Happiness, the capacity of suffering to make us more accessible either in a physical, emotional, or spiritual way
- "O fortunate beyond measure, if they know the good they have" - courtesy of Virgil, a wonderful injunction to gratitude for what we have and hope for what we can be.
October 10, 2026
I read “True Friendship” by the author last year and it was just SO GOOD that I think I had very high expectations for this book. The book was good, I just found it lacking. I wish it was longer and more detailed- I would’ve loved to hear more from him on the principles. However, it did have a lot of content that gave me a lot to think about and I’m thankful to have read it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews