household gods

plural noun

1. (in ancient Rome) deities of the home; lares and penates
2. informal.
   the essentials of domestic life

Example Sentences

“All those household gods. Who can keep track? Listen, we’ve fallen on hard times, and as I was once brotherly with your uncle, I hope that you’ll find us some room for the night.”

From Literature

“The hypothesis has been put forward that these statuettes are cheap mass products, owned by poor people as household gods,” he wrote in the journal Antiquity.

From New York Times

“All in all, 13 figures of this type do not support the idea that the statuettes were cheap household gods,” he said.

From New York Times

I asked Sara Georgini, a historian who is series editor for the Papers of John Adams, part of the Adams Papers project at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and author of Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family, to talk about how presidents used the four-month-long transition period in early America.

From Slate

Finally, dessert was a rich, goaty libum, a kind of sacrificial cheesecake the Romans would offer to household gods.

From New York Times