Even though she’s been in the entertainment industry for several decades now, it seems as though we really don’t know much about Melissa Joan Hart. Sure, she became a household name thanks to her massively popular television hits Clarissa Explains It All and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. But these days, Melissa prefers to stay at home with her family than work tiresome long days on the television set (with the exception of the Lifetime Movies that she still stars in). With that being said though, she’s still someone who makes headlines, especially when it comes to the way she parents, her opinions, and some of her pop culture observations.

For a lot of fans, Melissa Joan Hart can do no wrong. She will always have her followers and her fans, despite some of the things she says that irks her critics. For Melissa, it doesn’t really matter. Her main focus is her home life with her husband, Mark Wilkerson, and her three children, Tucker, Braydon, and Mason, who see sometimes brings on the red carpet with her for promotional events.

Here are 20 things that moms should know about Melissa Joan Hart’s home life.

20 Life In The Suburbs

These days, Melissa Joan Hart prefers to live in the suburbs outside of New York City than closer to the entertainment industry in Hollywood. That’s because she wants her boys – Tucker, Braydon, and Mason – to have a life that is as normal as possible, despite the fact that their mother is a huge television star. Together with her husband Mark Wilkerson, they live a happy life in Westport, Connecticut, which is only a short drive from the Big Apple. If Melissa has a project that she is working on, she often makes the long commute to California and flies back it forth until filming is all wrapped up.

19 She’s A City Kid Herself

One of the reasons why Melissa Joan Hart likes to stay close to the city is because she grew up in the Big Apple herself. She was one of few kids who managed to juggle her school work with some very interesting after school activities, which included television commercials, small parts in some television films and even a stint on Broadway. In 1989, she became an understudy in a Broadway production of The Crucible starring the one and only Martin Sheen. Despite her hectic schedule, the actress managed to do it all with ease as she kept up her grades at school.

18 Her Kids Aren’t On Social Media

Even though Melissa Joan Hart is very active herself on social media, she refuses to allow her three sons to have their own accounts. After all, if there is one person who knows just how ugly the social media world can be (with all of the critics, the comments and yes, the trolls), it’s Melissa. That’s why she wants to protect her children and keep them away from it, especially because of her fame. With that being said though, there will be a time that she will have to loosen up a bit, especially when they start asking her again in their teenage years.

17 She Worries About Her Family’s Opinion

Even though she is one of the most successful actresses in the television world, Melissa Joan Hart still worries about what others think of her, and especially those in her own family. The actress says that she used to pick out projects based on whether or not they were appropriate enough for her family to see her in. In other words, she never did anything that was deemed too risky or too controversial. She always wanted an open audience, regardless of age. Melissa once said, “My career has always revolved around what I do and don't want my sisters and brothers seeing me doing.”

16 Keeping Things Family-Friendly

These days Melissa Joan Hart’s catalog includes a list full of Lifetime films. She also starred in Melissa & Joey with her good friend, Joey Lawrence from 2010 to 2015. Even with her Lifetime films, Melissa still makes sure that the material is appropriate enough for her family to see her in. If it’s not, then she makes sure that the lights are out and her boys go to sleep before it’s on! The celebrity mom once said, “If I'm going to do something a little bit more adult, I'll do it if it's going to be on at a different time slot or if it's going to be something that kids won't be able to get their hands on.”

15 Her Faith Helps Her Parenting

As many of her fans know, Melissa Joan Hart is a person with strong faith and she says it’s something that helps her in her everyday life, and especially with her parenting. Every parent will agree that we all need something to keep us going day after day, right? Melissa is no different. “I feel like right now I might be just as anxiety-ridden over certain things as I was as an angsty teenager, but now I have this understanding of it’s gonna be okay and this calm and peace that people don’t have if they don’t have faith,” she said.

14 She Teachers Her Kids To Respect Other Beliefs

Melissa also does her best to teach her children to respect others and their religious beliefs, even if they don’t align to what they are used to at home. But it’s not always easy. “When the mom [of the child] called me with a problem in sixth grade I was like well, ‘Do I regret telling my son that we don’t know if people believe in Jesus, so we don’t know their character?’” the Clarissa Explains It All star asked. “‘Is that a wrong thing to say? Did I set my son on the wrong path or was that the right thing to say and I should defend that?'”

13 Master Chefs At Home

Believe it or not, Melissa has a few master chefs in the making at home! The family loves to cook together and she enjoys the fact that her boys are very busy bodies in the kitchen. So does this mean that she is raising a celebrity chef in the making? Perhaps so! Melissa told She Knows in an interview, “My oldest one got really into Master Chef when my stepfather was on one of the seasons, so now he wants to be a chef! He’s really interested in the cooking process, and that makes him try new things, which is awesome.”

12 Her Vacation Post

As mentioned about, Melissa has said a few things in the past that have irked her fans and her critics. One of the times was back in 2017 when she was supposedly upset that her family’s vacation plans had to be postponed because of Hurricane Maria. It was a storm that caused havoc for most parts of the Caribbean. She wrote on social media, “And just like that, our family vacation is canceled. Such a bummer but we plan to hit the @nickresortpuntacana resort another time this year.” Melissa later deleted the post after realizing how insensitive it was to the residents of Punta Cana.

11 Controlled Chaos

Melissa Joan Hart lives in a constant state of what can be best described as ‘controlled chaos.’ In other words, the house might look like a mess, but mama knows where everything is, at all times, too. For Melissa, she wouldn’t have it any other way. “I have a sign in my house that says ‘please pardon the mess, my children are making memories. I think that’s important to remember. They’re only little once, and there’ll be some day where I’m not picking up Legos and Silly Putty isn’t stuck to my couch and I can actually have a clean house. But those are the days that I’ll miss my kids.”

10 On Getting Her Kids To Open Up

It’s not always easy to get your kids to open up, especially as they enter their teen years. But Melissa Joan Hart is one mother who always tries. For her, communication at home and with her three boys is very important. She told She Knows, “I find if I ask my kids how their day was, they say, ‘Good.’ If I ask what they learned, they say, ‘Nothing.’ But if I ask, ‘Who was bad at school today?’ it opens up the door to conversation like you wouldn’t believe! That’s always my way in — they like to tattle on their friends!”

9 Dealing With Mom Guilt

There’s no denying that a lot of moms out there have dealt with, or at least felt, mom guilt. With all of the things that we do for our children, we often feel as though it’s never enough. “I have mom guilt that I’m here right now and I didn’t put my kids on the school bus … I didn’t spend enough time with this one… didn’t pack a healthy-enough lunch. I threw away some toys that they love,” the former Melissa & Joey actress admitted. “You really have this guilt every single day, and it eats away at you that you’re not a good person and you can’t do it right.”

8 The Back To School Rush

One of the reasons why Melissa Joan Hart is so popular with her mom followers is because she is very relatable. She knows how stressful things can get, especially during the back to school rush. She told She Knows, “I set some things aside for lunch so that the lunchboxes are a little bit easier, because that always seems to be the thing I put off until last. So if I have that done the night before, it’s easier. The same thing with laying out their clothes the night before. When I’m going in to check on them, pull the covers up and kiss them when they’re already asleep, I lay out all their clothes so when I go up to their room, I know that it’s handled. The only thing I need to worry about is whether they brush their teeth!”

7 Her Biggest Critics: The Mommy Bloggers

Believe it or not, Melissa Joan Hart’s biggest critics happen to be all of the mommy critics out there who like to dissect each and every pic she posts on her social media accounts. And for Melissa, she’s had enough of it. Even though it did hurt at one point, she doesn’t pay attention to what they have to say. "I've learned that I just have to be me. It's my page — if you don't like it, go away!" Hart, 38, told HuffPost Live in an interview back in 2015. "Make your comments if you want, but I'm not going to look at them, or care."

6 She Doesn’t Want To Spoil Her Kids

Even though Melissa wants her children to have a comfortable life, full of love and security, she doesn’t want them to be too spoiled. "We try. [My husband Mark Wilkerson and I] try, and we fail miserably every year," she told Pop Sugar in an interview about her annual holiday shopping for her family. "It's kind of embarrassing. One of my friends asked me this morning, 'Are you doing the gazillion presents under the tree again?' And I was like, 'No. We're trying to keep it to 10 gifts each.' But that includes some gifts from Santa and then one from mom and dad. We're trying to keep it to that, but because we're not together that much, we go a little crazy by ourselves."

5 The Work Life Balance

Melissa is like so many other moms out there, especially when it comes to finding the work and life balance or even scheduling one-on-one time with her husband. "We do day dates, we do lunches, we work out together a lot," Melissa told People of how the couple keeps the romance alive. "Right now, I'm living in LA because I'm shooting a new Netflix show, and he's raising our kids in Tahoe, so I'm back and forth on the weekends. This year has been challenging so far because we're not together that much. It's a lot of phone calls, texting, and sending each other dirty gifs."

4 Her Personal Ups And Downs

Melissa says that there have been a lot of events in her life that have helped shape her into the person that she is today, but it hasn’t all been rainbows and unicorns. As a matter of fact, she’s had to let go of a lot of people that she loved during her life so far. Melissa says that with their passing, she managed to find strength to carry on. She said, “Without my grandmother passing away when I was 12 years old, and without my friend dying at 32, and without some of the struggles that I’ve gone through in my life, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.”

3 Finding Time For Herself

Melissa says that she often has a hard time being away from her kids, even though she has to work, but at the same time she wants to be a good role model for them. Melissa has said, “I’m trying to find better ways to spend time by myself and fit in my workouts and learn how to cook, read a book and binge watch TV shows I have been on my list for a long time, visit with old friends and make new ones but really it’s just masking the mom guilt I feel not being there for my little ones on a daily basis. The silver lining is that I’m showing my children that work ethic should be a priority in life but the real benefit is that when I leave Hollywood for the weekends or when the show goes on hiatus, I am 100 percent full time mom.”

2 Life Resolutions and Changes

The actress has some very interesting New Year resolutions and changes she wants to make at home. Melissa wrote on social media, “One of my resolutions is to get our home to one trash bag a week. It won’t be easy and we will have to make sacrifices. I’m reading books and articles, following certain pages and researching as much as I can to make a difference in how we consume and waste. Any ideas are welcome in the comments below!! I’ll share my finds and best ideas for how to live as close to a #zerowastelife as possible. As a family, we travel a lot and rely on easy, disposable things too often. It will probably take a lifetime to figure out, but what’s the saying.... don’t look at the staircase, just take the first step.”

1 What’s Next For Melissa Joan Hart

Right now it looks like Melissa Joan Hart is focusing on her family life at home and raising three boys that will hopefully one day become caring and compassionate men. She’s also got a new project that she’s been working on, a television series called No Good Nick. She plays a character by the name of Liz. Say what you will about Melissa Joan Hart, but if there is one thing that’s for certain, it’s that she is not going anywhere, anytime soon. Watch this space. We have a feeling that there is so much more to come from Melissa Joan Hart in the future.