This week was one for the record books in terms of watching news come across the wires and wondering not once, not twice, but, well…a lot more times than that if we are, in fact, all still living in reality.
The Virginia governor who suggested keeping resuscitated hypothetical newborns comfortable until “doctors and parents” decide whether or not to….what, kill it? Literally we’re discussing after birth abortion now. Aka murder.But massage that language enough and you’ll get fascinating mind benders like “post-birth abortion” and “4th trimester abortion” and “newborn fetus.” Anyway, seems like he was a great guy in high school, too.
But wait, that’s not all! During President Trump’s SOTU address he made a few impassioned pleas for unity around the idea of not killing babies who accidentally survive abortions. Unsurprisingly, by this point in the week, these were not pleas that enjoyed bipartisan support.
But you know, it’s not all bad news. This episode of CNA Newsroom was one of the more beautiful things I’ve listened to in a long time. The comment towards the end of the second segment where the mother speaks about “emotional closure” is a profoundly edifying concept to meditate on, particularly in light of our culture’s desperate, clawing fear of suffering. We’ll do anything to avoid it, crush whatever innocent thing stands in our way, and yet the true path to serenity and long term emotional wellbeing is often found cutting directly down the middle of that suffering.
This is the real poverty of nihilism and atheism: To be alone, to be made to suffer alone and without meaning. For this reason I can think of almost nothing more devastating than abortion, separating mother from child, severing a most fundamental human relationship, and leaving a child to suffer terribly, and alone. Abortion is never the answer. Yes, even when it’s “medically necessary.”
Ashley’s ode to her oldest on his 9th birthday had me thinking how crazy fast things are starting to go. Especially as I did the math and realized I’m half a year away from having my own 9 year old. That’s wild to me. I must be getting older, because those “blink and you’ll miss it” statements used to make my eyes roll. Now they make them water:
“With a blink, it will be gone and ghosts of Lego messes and dance parties past will haunt me with such longing—uncaring that I spent every waking moment with them. It won’t ever be enough..”
Should Catholic politicians who publicly endorse – even clamor for – abortion be excommunicated? Perhaps. But I think it’s unlikely to happen, and even less likely to accomplish anything meaningful in the life of the excommunicated, as per the intention of the censure. Better to withhold and restrict reception of the Holy Eucharist which is the public affirmation we make as Catholics that we are united in practice and in belief with the Catholic Church and all that She professes.
Tearing through this book, “Cozy Minimalist Home” – Myquillen Smith’s follow up to her runaway bestseller “The Nesting Place” – and guys, I AM HERE FOR IT. I rearranged my entire main floor this morning and it looks like I spent a grand at Home Goods. (Husband: I did not. I spent nothing.)
(First in a series of essays this month on minimalism and its particular relevance to family life.)
(Update 1/14/19: Once I got a few episodes into the show, they introduced storylines involving cohabitation and homosexuality, so consider this your content warning and get ready to skip over a couple episodes. Womp womp.)
I’ve been an armchair minimalist since before minimalism was a buzzword. 8 moves and 5 kids in less than 10 years of marriage means I’ve honed the fine art of “do we really need this?” to a science.
Netflix launched a new series this month, and it’s fantastic: Tidying Up with Marie Kondo (of Life Changing Magic fame) Kondo is warm and gracious and my kids get a kick out of hearing spoken Japanese. The families she works with – at least so far – have been anxious to cooperate with her process and seem genuinely happier at the episode’s conclusion. There is no bootcamp style shaming or furtive confessional-style camerawork: the couples are taught Kondo’s signature method and timeline for tidying, and then seemingly left alone for days at a time to put her methods to work.
The footage of the process and of the interaction between the families has a distinctly different vibethan most reality shows; rather than encouraging strife and plot-driving tension, Kondo reminds the couples to focus on their own possessions rather than haranguing their spouses.
What I most appreciate about the show – and the process of tidying she espouses – is that it is custom fitted for each home, and for each family.
The first episode featured harried millennial parents of young toddlers and the requisite piles of laundry and dishes and toys – and chaos. When they’d completed their month long tidying endeavour, the couple were communicating better (their early scenes did seem a little overwrought with domestic tension, but the dishes! I get it!), enjoying their kids more, and seemingly more content with their already beautiful and perfectly serviceable home.
The next episode featured an older couple who were empty nesters and, frankly, hoarders. Their completed space still produced a mild panic reaction by my standards, but they did a ton of work in only 6 weeks, undoing decades of neglect and recreational shopping habits as they worked together to sort through their belongings.
Both families had clearly different styles and spaces and were in totally different stages of life; both benefited from learning that stuff, however little or much you have, won’t make you happy.
Minimalism, to me, is the idea that less is more, and that stuff can’t make you happy.
That stuff is actually value neutral, and that the space we inhabit and the things we bring into that space should be working together in harmony to increase the value in day to day living, not competing to suck it away.
A bigger family like mine is going to have a greater variation of sizes of clothing, but not necessarily own more clothing overall.
I’d venture to say that our family of 7 owns fewer total items of clothing than the average American family of 4. Because that’s what works for us. I’m the main launderer in the family, and just by the numbers, I can’t keep on top of 15 pairs of pants and 20 shirts for each family member. As our family size has increased, our net number of items of clothing per member has dropped. Seems counterintuitive, until you remember that even with more kids, you still only get 24 hours in a day. Once I figured out that I didn’t have to live normally, i.e. surrounded by mountains of toys and bins and bins of extra clothing, it was a huge relief.
Having more stuff doesn’t increase happiness beyond a certain point. At some point, you hit peak satisfaction. Peak satisfaction is probably closer to sustainability than we realize. Once you have your basic needs for food, shelter and clothing met, happiness actually levels off fairly soon thereafter. A family living in a 4,000 square foot house is not appreciably happier than a family living in 1,200 square feet, at least not in ways that can be directly correlated with square footage.
So what does this look like, practically speaking? But first, a caveat. Minimalism treads on privileged ground. It’s not just for the rich or upper middle class – I believe that almost anyone can benefit from it – but it does presuppose a level of security. Self-reflection is a luxury. I give thanks for the stability that enables me to calmly assess our circumstances and adjust as necessary. Not everybody lives in this kind of privilege. I also want to avoid falling prey to the false morality trap. You know what I’m talking about, right? Organized people are not “better” than disorganized people. Clean and well dressed people are not superior to dirty and disheveled people. People who eat conventionally grown produce are not inferior to people who buy organic. In a society that is becoming increasingly untethered from objective moral values, pseudo values have swept in to fill the vacuum, and they’re pretty whack. And minimalism, while it can compliment your values, is not itself a value.
Minimalism begets time:
I read a lot of books. I also write a lot. I also cook at least two, sometimes three meals each day for seven people. I can’t – I don’t want to – spend hours every day picking up toys and books and throw pillows and dirty underwear. An hour or two of that each day is more than enough for me. As such, we don’t have all that many of any of those items, dirty underwear exempted.
There are five throw pillows in our house. Two on each of our couches and one on a chair. I guess if we have a sixth child we might…I kid, I kid. I don’t know why we have so few. I just know that the ones we have, I mostly like, and I don’t mind picking up five pillows off the floor every day. Five feels like a manageable number of pillows to me.
We have 16 dinner plates. About half that many bowls, because I guess my kids can break anything, even Corelle. We use a dozen mason jars for drinks, have a cupboard of 10 coffee cups, all of which I actually like, and there is a shelf of glass barware for fancier stuff than water. Down below we have a single kid’s drawer: 10 plastic plates, 6 stainless steel cups, 6 water bottles (all missing lids), and 2 of those magic silicone toppers that make any cup a sippy cup. Zelie still drinks bottles, and we have 4 of those, and 4 nipples.
Our kitchen is small, a 70s-style galley layout. I’ve had friends comment on how small, but honestly, I don’t really mind it now. I wish I had more counter space sometimes, but for ordinary life, it’s actually fine.
Obviously if we were hosting dinner parties for the high school track team every Thursday night we’d need to own more dishes, and I’m sure as my kids age, we will! But right now? 16 dinner plates is enough. And it means the sink is never overly full of dishes, and that I have time to do stuff besides dishes. Like pick up dirty underwear.
Minimalism begets contentment:
About that galley kitchen. I don’t love it. When we moved in it was a dark brown cave with mustard linoleum accents. I’d love to blow out and rip down and bust through all the walls and surfaces, but the budget won’t permit it, maybe for twenty years or maybe ever. In the meantime, I’m a domestic engineer who spends 90% of her life working at home, and I want to feel good in my space. So month by month, one $30 can of paint at a time, we’ve changed the way it looks and feels.
Slapping a coat of paint on something isn’t minimalism, per se, but slapping a coat of paint on something in order to make it work better for you rather than trying to shop your way into contentment? Totally. I rarely bring new non-consumables into my kitchen, because there isn’t space for much, but also because I like the way it looks now. A cupboard shelf with matching (and allegedly indestructible) white dishes is actually really attractive, even when the shelf they’re sitting on is dated wood, and the countertops cheap composite.
Don’t misunderstand me here, I’m not saying that you have to have plain white everything in your kitchen, lined up in uniform columns like a control freak (raises hand), just that when you are intentional about what bring into, or keep, in your daily environment, it makes you happier.
You’ll be less tempted by what you see on Instagram or the aisles of wherever, not because you have achieved monastic temporal detachment, but because you are content. It’s easier to forgive my kitchen for its other shortcomings when I’m not opening drawers that are exploding with logo-tatted water bottles from our insurance company or whatever.
And listen, if your closet floor is invisible beneath layers of rejected or dirty or wrong size clothes and there are bent wire hangers crammed on the rods, holding stuff you haven’t worn since college, then of course you’re going to feel like you need – want – to go shopping.
Set yourself up for contentment by only hanging onto what you love. That’s my version of “sparks joy.” And yes, I love our NoseFrida, for reasons that are less aesthetic and more functional.
Minimalism begets domestic tranquility
Marriage – ay, there’s the rub. “But my husband collects x,” or “my wife wants to have a two year supply of y on hand, at all times!” you may be thinking.
Fine, great! An intentional, curated collection of just about anything can be beautiful in its own way. If he has a garage full of ski gear or a shed full of tools, why not line everything up and mount some hooks to store stuff vertically, and make the space look more like a nicely merchandised end cap at REI and not the scary multi-neighbor garage sale? And recycle the old and broken stuff while you’re at it. You are not going to hit the jackpot on antique road show or one day coach an amateur ice hockey team, half the members of which will have nothing to use but your old dirty gear from 1998, so it’s a good thing you held onto it.
Try sitting down with your spouse and making a list of things that you already own that bring you joy. I can imagine for me it really would be a few pairs of Kendra Scott earrings I love that I’ve received as gifts. For Dave, it would probably be camping gear and some of his barware.
There’s nothing wrong with owning stuff, especially when you’re hanging onto it because it serves your family and makes you happy.
But those garbage bags full of used baby clothes that may or may not come in handy down the road? Those aren’t serving your family right now. And they could, in fact, be serving another family at this very moment. Same with old equipment for sports you don’t play anymore. Books you’ve read and don’t plan – realistically – to re-read in the future. Clothes that probably aren’t going to fit again or, if they do, will be aged beyond usefulness or stylishness.
One of the best places to start with a spouse who’s less inclined to letting things go is to start with the positives: what having, say, an emptier garage or basement or unstuffed dresser drawers or kitchen cabinets could help provide for your family. More space to play and grow. Maybe room to carve out a spare sleeping space (in the basement, probably not the garage but YOU DO YOU) for an introverted child who is currently sharing a room or for hosting overnight guests.
(I’m going to cover the marriage dynamic extensively in an entire future post, so stay tuned.)
I’m not going to pretend like this concept is super intuitive for everyone to apply. I really think some people are just born collectors (cough cough my eldest son’s horrifying top bunk), and others are more prone to frequent Goodwill . How you were raised factors in, too. How much money your family makes. Whether or not you travel a lot, move frequently, host regularly, etc.
Kondo, while not preaching minimalism in her method, per se, seems to have a tremendous grasp on how to help different personalities embrace and apply her method (which does tend towards minimalism in its essence, I think, because I think most of us hit our hedonistic threshold with stuff much sooner than our linen closets would have us believe) no matter whether they want to have a whole room stuffed full of crafting supplies and musical instruments or if they prefer to live in more austere quarters.
The biggest sell for our family to start – and keep – living this way for so long has been the time freedom. I can clean my entire house in under an hour, no joke. And by clean I mean stuff is organized, de-loused, and re-homed, not that it’s scrubbed and shined. My floors, baseboards and shower tiles will tell you the real story of how “clean” things really are around here. Tidy, though? Anyone can do tidy, I promise.
Our Italian living room/dining room/guest room/play room. Rome was the true birthplace of my minimalism. I owned 4 dresses, 3 pairs of jeans, 10 shirts, and 4 sweaters. The kids had 2 pairs of shoes each. We had a single canvas bin of toys. It was totally crazy and totally liberating at the same time.
It has been tough to string more than couple of words together the past few weeks. The days are going by quickly and I’m shocked that we’re edging in on August, but around 3 pm every weekday, time seems to stand still, and there aren’t enough Otter Pops in the universe to hasten the coming of bedtime.
I am looking forward to a new school year, but my inner teenager shudders at store end-caps already filled with college ruled spiral notebooks and crayons. I wish for a carefree end to summer for my children’s sake, and I wish for a return to normalcy in schedule for my sake.
Both older boys have asked me in all earnestness at some point during the summer to homeschool them, and then reneged on the request when I explained that school at home would still, in fact, involve schoolwork.
I did consider the possibility for about 2 hours; I even got so far as to text a couple homeschooling friends, asking what their discernment process had been. Then Dave went out of town for the weekend and all thoughts of teaching my little darlings math and Latin were ejected from my brain by 48 hours of solo parenting.
We’ve had a good summer, and I’m glad we’ve been able to spend so much time together. I’m also glad I am not responsible for their mathematical development.
I’m trying to implement some better time management strategies to help realize some of my perennially-deferred goals. I’ve been waking up earlier than the kids most mornings and forcing myself to produce for 30 minutes or 1,000 words – whichever comes first. I’ve also strapped the trusty old FitBit back on to hit that 10k step count each day. All of the swimming and early morning gym-haunting has yet to result in any visible results to my postpartum return of form, but I do feel better when I move.
Oddly enough, my body seems to be responding better to gentler workouts. I think I am probably so depleted from back to back pregnancies that strenuous workouts were further taxing an already stressed system.
Gentle walking and stretching seem to be what my body craves, so I’m trying to honor that. The physical therapist I’ve been working with has indefinitely ruled out running, which I’m going to be honest, is actually a huge relief! It’s great to just let go of that part of my identity, for now, and embrace what is rather than lamenting for what once was. Not by slipping into depressed inactivity or anything, but by really embracing a period of physical recovery and rebuilding. And by spending a small fortune on vitamin and mineral supplements.
I’ve come to realize that I usually exert a lot of time and energy in the postpartum period beating myself up – mentally and physically – straining to “undo” something that can’t actually be undone. Whether from sheer exhaustion or just experienced maturity, I haven’t been able to cow my body into submission this time around. When I hit the wall, instead of redoubling my efforts and crashing through it, I curled up at the base of it and took a nap.
It has been pretty eye opening to be honest with myself about what my body needs, and about the tremendous personal cost of having a baby. I don’t “bounce back” physically, though when I was younger I could grit my teeth and sort of fake it.
At 35 I don’t seem to have that same resilience. But I do have a little more wisdom and lots more experience, which seems to me to be a fair tradeoff. So when the baby sleeps, I sit on the couch with a toddler and read a book, or stare vacantly into space, or sometimes do some dinner prep.
Mostly though, I’m sitting down a lot (always with intentional and improved posture!).
Stretching. Going for walks around the block with the bigger kids and not gritting my teeth in frustration that I can’t run the laps we’re making. Spending a decent amount of time and money going to therapy, and just generally investing in myself. It feels decadent. It also feels almost disastrously overdue. It feels a bit like I’m backing away from the edge of an abyss, step by faltering step, and reclaiming some ground that was (necessarily) ceded during the chaos of the past two years of home buying and selling and baby growing.
The real sign that I’m recovering and starting to get my head above water? My urge to paint has been restored.
Last weekend when Dave was gone I pulled the trigger on a long-desired flooring update and painted the linoleum in the kitchen and downstairs bathroom. I’d put the kids to bed and then creep downstairs each evening to tape and paint and after about 4 nights worth of effort (and 4 overnight drying periods) I’m just about finished with the whole project.
For around $60 bucks our lower level looks like a different house altogether, and I no longer feel like I’m peering bleakly into the mists of time while mopping spaghetti sauce off of hideous yellow linoleum. Time will tell how sturdy the “porch and floor” paint proves to be in an indoor application, but anything is better than our before pictures.
I’ll try to whip up a full tutorial one of these days for all my curious Instagram friends, but it was really one of the easier DIYs I’ve attempted.
For now, feast your eyes on the improvement:
What is the rest of your summer shaping up to look like? Are you eager for back to school time, or relishing in the last month of summer? My kids go back relatively late, as I understand, not resuming full classes until August 27th. I’ll have a second grader, a first grader, and a three day a week pre-K this year, which means I’ll be backing 13! lunches! a week! Come to think of it, summer can go ahead and stick around for a couple more weeks…
For most of our still-young marriage we’ve had a steady stream of ugly, hand-me-down tables holding court as sort of placeholders in our kitchen or dining room, marking the spot where “someday” we’d put a real farmhouse table, a beautiful piece of furniture large enough to accommodate our growing collection of backsides plus a couple guests. We’ve had the 400 pound, everyone’s-mom-has-one-somewhere-in-the-house 90’s extendable oak pedestal table painted in multiple colors, the hideous but breathtakingly play-doh resistant farmhouse table with inlaid blue 80’s ceramic tile surface, and the tiny 3-person IKEA bistro table wedged into our triangular sailboat kitchen in a 5th floor Roman walkup apartment, only useable due to the presence of double IKEA plastic high chairs flanking either end.
When we moved this past summer we only budgeted for two new pieces of furniture: a kitchen table and a set of bunk beds for our boys. I found a set of those I loved at Walmart of all places, and they were remarkably affordable (though after my saintly father spent 5+ hours assembling them, we discovered why…) but the table was a little trickier.
I knew with baby number 5 on the way and a dedicated, honest-to-goodness dining room in our new house I wanted a real table we could gather around for years to come, one we wouldn’t break or outgrow in a year or three. But then there was the small matter of not having a Pottery Barn budget or much luck at the thrift shops that have delivered up so much bounty over the years. I looked and looked and just could not find something that fit the bill, so I resigned myself mentally to spending $700(!!!) on something disposable from IKEA that fit the length requirement, and that was going to be that.
It probably seems silly that I was fixated on a stupid table, but for me it represented more than just a piece of furniture. I am pretty detached from home furnishings, truth be told. Our entire house is a mishmash of Goodwill finds and hand-me-downs from friends and Craigslist scores, and I’m pretty chill about my kids destroying each and every single piece of it, but a table was something different.
Growing up with my 6 siblings, the table was the real centerpiece of our home. We had most of our dinners together and it was the school in which we were educated in the fine art of debate (often times heated), politics, theology, philosophy, and what Katy so-and-so said in the lunch room that day. We had a huge, long table, and there was always room for at least a friend or a neighbor kid or two. We were all expected to take place in the (occasionally) robust discussion which, to be honest, sometimes included raised voices and blood pressures.
I longed for my kids to have the same experience, and I felt strongly that the thing needed to be at least 7 feet long for our purposes. Would a smaller table work? Sure, and we’ve been making it work for 7+ years. But I wanted to have a longer term solution in place so that we could start early, schooling them in the fine art of dinnertime banter. And with 5 little butts in seats, it was getting pretty cramped around a table built for 6, particularly when any of our plentiful extended family were present.
Towards the end of the summer, after our 5th? 6th? house contract had fallen through and I was beginning to doubt we’d ever actually be living in a house we’d need to furnish, I attended a baby shower for a friend and I’m telling you, when I walked into her beautiful home, I laid eyes on the most gorgeous three dimensional platform for supporting dinner plates and elbows that the world has ever seen.
I gasped and asked her where it was from. Arhaus? Pottery Barn? Crate and Barrel? DID SHE DRIVE TO WACO AND HAVE CHIP AND JOJO HAND CARVE IT THEMSELVES WHILE SINGING PRAISE AND WORSHIP SONGS?
Nope, her husband made it. And for a super reasonable amount of money. Like crummy pre-fab IKEA table money.
“He could make you one too, I’m sure.”
Dead. I was sold. I was so excited, and although our ridiculous house hunt pushed the delivery date back a few times, by September we had our very own dreamy, custom-built dining room table (and matching bench!) which comfortably seats ten for a fraction of what it would have cost in a fancy, built-overseas-in-poor-labor-conditions retail outlet. My girlfriend even texted me a couple pictures of the process as it came together in her husband’s workshop in their backyard.
I love it so much. I love that every time we sit down to a meal we’re adding to a string of linked experiences that will stretch across the next 20 years. I love that he shellacked the thing with a billion coats of polycrylic per my request and that I can clean it with diaper wipes. Man, this is living.
What I love the most though? That it was built with love, and that God answered my silly, insignificant desire for a beautiful piece of furniture to gather our family around three times a day (and to work from too, as it turns out.)
If you’re local to Colorado, I’d love to put you in touch with Ryan at Blue Nails Woodcraft (read the poem that inspired the name at the end of this post) and see about getting one of these pretties custom built for your family, too. He can go the gauntlet from sturdy and no frills to high end artisanal craftsmanship, and the thrill of custom designing your own piece of furniture is something that I imagine few people in my generation have gotten to experience.
Cheerios under table incorporated to enhance realistic feel. (Laundry pile in bay window not included with purchase.)
*For pricing and customization information, call Ryan at (720) 933-1974 or email [email protected]*
From our big ‘ol table and the whole Uebbing crew, a blessed and beautiful Thanksgiving to you and yours.
Joseph and Child Jesus
By Father Leonard Feeney
Whenever the bright blue nails would drop,
Down on the floor of his carpenter’s shop,
St. Joseph, prince of carpenter men,
Would stoop to gather them up again;
For he feared for two little sandals sweet
And very easy to pierce they were
As they pattered over the lumber there
And rode on two little sandals sweet.
But alas on a hill between earth and heaven,
One day-two nails into a cross were driven
And fastened it firm to the Sacred Feet
Where once rode two little sandals sweet.
And Christ and His Mother looked off in death,
Afar-to the valley of Nazareth
Where the carpenter shop was spread with dust
And the little blue nails all packed in rust
Slept in a box on a window sill;
And Joseph lay sleeping under the hill.
I was going to write one of those perennially popular and always vaguely intriguing “day in the life” posts but there it sits, languishing in my drafts folder, because do you have any idea how much time it takes to assemble one of those bad boys? Especially if there are any pictures, which are kind of crucial to making said piece enjoyable for the reader.
En ee way, I decided that since I’m obviously too busy living my glamorous life as a severely pregnant (don’t worry, I always talk like this for the last 7 weeks or so) woman with 4 kids under the age of reason and a mildly-demanding side hustle involving the written word, it might be helpful to pass along some of my best practices gleaned from 7+ years of parenting and mostly (MOSTLY) pestering older and wiser moms for their wisdom.
I mean, why maintain a robust Facebook following if not to poll the audience with the truly pressing questions about potty training and mini van recommendations?
Why indeed.
Anyway, here are some things that are saving my life lately. Maybe they’ll be helpful to you, or maybe you’ll laugh that these are things I ACTUALLY SPEND TIME THINKING ABOUT.
The dining room table (built by an amazing and talented local friend – post coming soon) must be cleared off between meals because voila, it’s also my home office.
1. The laundry. Oh sweet mercy, the laundry. Just kidding, because I love laundry (really, I do, but don’t click away!) I think because it affords me a real, concrete sense of accomplishment when it’s caught up.
But wait, you might be thinking, it’s never caught up.
Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong. Cackle. I have discovered the secret to happiness, and it’s doing laundry every single day. One or two loads (or maybe more, season and family size-necessitating) per day and then (this is clutch) folding it/delivering it as soon as it’s done.
Seems outrageous, but it means I have a couple of dirty things each night in hampers, but overall, the entire laundry situation is perpetually in process, being worn, washed, and delivered back to the respective closets in a beautiful circle of life.
It seems counterintuitive that perpetually processing laundry makes for greater mental freedom, but there you have it. I now see laundry like I see dental hygiene or running the dishwasher. I’d no more let 3 days worth of dirty dishes pile up in the sink than I’d let as many days’ outfits pile up in the hamper. Here’s a big, fat caveat though: if you have unlimited supplies of anything (aside from the strict necessities like socks and undies) you will use them. And their very presence will enable the overwhelm of your laundry system, just like, I imagine, owning 40 sets of forks and knives could prevent you from dishwashing out of necessity. So my kids operate from fairly capsuled-wardrobes, with limitless socks and undies (specific character for each child of same gender to ease sorting + all white socks for boys and colorful socks for girl) and a strictly limited selection of other options.
Each big boy has 5-7 uniform polos, 4 pairs of uniform/Mass pants, 3 pairs of jeans, and about 4 complete sets of jammies. We also have a drawer full of athletic shorts/pants for leisure wear, and they each have 3-4 long sleeve and short sleeve t-shirts in their current rotation. I will pull down new shirts of the current size from time to time and rest other shirts in order to give them some semblance of variety and not miss the window of the item of clothing actually fitting them, but at no point do they have access to their entire Star Wars t-shirt collection, nor are their summer clothes accessible during the colder months. It would (and has, in the past) make for a miserable, endless pile of work for the chief laundry officer of the house.
Once or twice a week I do sheets and bath towels, as necessary. And all our bath towels are white and bleach-able. There are 3 or 4 of higher quietly cotton pile that I secret away in the master bath for parental use, otherwise it’s fair game. I probably buy new towels ever 6-12 months and rotate the old ones out for rags or pet use.
I realized I was more or less making use of this system on my own, but added the additional linens to their own schedule as needed per the recommendation of Lindsay from “My Child, I Love You,” whose mothering skills I tip my proverbial hat to while bowing deeply at the waist. I figure if she can keep empty laundry baskets with 9? 10? kids, I have zero excuses.
I also make the kids deliver their own goods after I wash and fold it all. Because I like doing those parts, and because I don’t feel confident in their nascent sorting abilities. Soon enough though, kids. Soon enough.
2. I pack lunches as soon as we get home from school. Sometimes the kids help, sometimes I do it myself, sometimes it’s a group effort. I call for lunch boxes to exit backpacks upon arrival in the house and be delivered to the counter, where I promptly dump and clean as necessary and then re-pack and return directly to the fridge. I give them a good wash on Fridays before retiring them for their weekend rest. I try to see it like paperwork, and so I only want to touch them once. If it’s on the counter and has to be put somewhere anyway, I may as well fill it with food and put it right back into the fridge. Plus, I hate mornings.
3. Dishes. Now dishes I hate. Dishes will be the domestic duty that gets me to heaven. But. I do have some thoughts. First, I streamlined our kitchen setup down to bare necessities and all one color. Maybe that strikes you as utilitarian, and you’d be absolutely correct in saying so. It’s beautifully, wonderfully, uniformly utilitarian, and my cupboards look like an IKEA display. White and glass and nothing else. Because you know what is colorful enough? Life with 4 kids. Anyway, we have about 12 white Corelle dinner plates, bowls, and small plates, and 2 dozen mason jars for drink ware. I have a little more fun in the barware department, but still only 4 of each type of glass (red wine, white wine, champagne, and whiskey) and they all match. Some are from the Dollar Tree so trust me when I reassure you that this is not an expensive venture. We also have a single drawer with about 8 IKEA poisonous plastic kid’s plates and tumblers, and 3 sippy cups with lids. And that’s it. Oh, wait, tupperware. Again with the IKEA, about 4 matching containers with lids in 4 graduated sizes, plus half a dozen glass 1-cup rubbermaid containers for daddy lunches.
It is so pleasant (well, as pleasant as dishwashing can be) to do dishes when everything matches and is clean and free of scratches or chips. That’s where the utterly boring and utterly serviceable clean white Corelle comes in. When my kids are older and out of the house I can relax my aesthetic of prison minimalist chic, but until then, we’re gonna wash those same 12 white plates every day and we’re gonna like it.
(And when we have parties, we use paper. We’re not partying much these days, so I have zero qualms of the environmental impact of a single sleeve of high quality paper plates purchased on a bi-annual basis. If you are partying more than we are, might i suggest the even greener option of buying a second dozen of the white Corelle beauties and keeping them in the garage?)
The kids load and unload the dishwasher, and they’ve also begun clearing and wiping down the table after meals. Which leads me to my next brilliant revelation:
4. “Yes, as soon as ____”
I’ve been working this system hard all school year, and so far, so good. Here’s a live demo:
“Mom, can we watch Wild Kratts?”
“Yes, as soon as you hang up your backpacks/finish your reading/bring me your lunch box”
“Mom, can we go play baseball till dinnertime?
“Yes, as soon as you pick up the Legos and put them away.”
“Mom, can I go outside and play with Andrew?”
“Yes, as soon as you put on your jacket and make sure there are no shoes on the floor of the front hall closet”
“Mom, can we have hot cocoa?”
“Yes, as soon as you finish your salad/carrots/whatever vegetable I’m pretending we’re eating tonight.”
You get the idea. I found that I was constantly saying no and feeling like I was bargaining with my kids to preempt them to good behavior/good habits, and I’ve realized that by leading with “yes,” we’re all so much happier and feel like we’re winning. Now, I don’t honor every request and I promise, I don’t preface every movement of their lives with a necessary domestic task, but all in all I’d say we’re learning a better balance of helpfulness and permission granted, of give and take. Plus, it makes me feel like a much nicer mom to say yes so many times a day. Power of affirmations, babies.
5. Empty the car.
Don’t know why it took me 7 years to master this one, but we’ve disciplined ourselves into the habit of almost completely emptying the car upon arriving home for the day. No backpacks, shoes, toys, food, or mom-debris left behind. The exceptions are my makeup bag (a girl has to have some time to mascara), 2 emergency pairs of socks in the glove compartment (thanks, mom!) diapers and wipes, of course, and a stash of current library books for in flight entertainment. Additionally, there can usually be found a spare fleece or light jacket in the back in case someone has an accident or it starts snowing out of a 70 degree day, not unheard of for Denver.
As a result, the car looks clean, the kids are actually encouraged to keep it clean, and we are all encouraged forced to put stuff back where it belongs upon arriving home each day. It’s like the mobile version of Marie Kondo, and yes, a healthy stack of spare diapers under the passenger seat spark joy.
This room is a naturally toy-free zone. When I find them there, into a bucket or basket they go until put-back time. (I mean, unless they’re actively being played with. I’m not a monster).
6. Kamikaze clean at night. I’m a little militant about this one (cough, cough, sorry Dave) but I do not go to bed with a dirty house. The kids tidy up the dinner table and their craft area in the kitchen, plus any toys that have remained out from the day’s play. And I finish processing and delivering the laundry and make sure the kitchen is scrubbed down and ready for business the following morning. Mornings are tough enough without waking to a disaster (and more often you will wake to some other disaster, any way) so I like to have a clean slate to start fresh from. Otherwise, I tend to feel like I’m behind the eight ball all day long.
Obviously there are nights where the dishes don’t get done and someone is sick or super needy or one of us is traveling and things fall apart, but on the whole, we go to bed with a clean house 95% of the time. And it makes a big difference.
All your toys are belong to us
7. I promise I’m going to stop. But this one is critical. Limited toys. We have 4 kids – soon to be 5 – and they’re all really little, and we could literally be drowning in toys. But we’re not, because I refuse to live that way. Our kids are not deprived: they each have a bike or plasma car, an armory of Nerf guns and lightsabers, a handful of special stuffed animals, and a few personal trinkets. Other than that we have a small box of Legos, a toy kitchen with cooking instruments, some doll-sized baby care gear for Evie’s growing cat family (don’t ask), and some matchbox cars and a ramp. There is a soccer goal in the backyard, and a stash of baseballs and bats in the garage.
And that’s it.
That’s all the toys we own, pretty much, and we are constantly paring back after birthdays and holidays, swapping out old or broken toys for newer favorites. Our parents are really great about buying thoughtful or small or even non-toy gifts, and I suspect this is one area where larger families can have an advantage, because spending big $$$ on a dozen grandchildren could really add up.
Our kids don’t seem deprived, but if they do complain about not having as much stuff as so-and-so (which to be frank, is very rare) I just point out different families do things differently, and aren’t they lucky to have more siblings? A pet? A bigger yard? etc. than that friend. Accentuate the positive.
Besides, they’re accustomed to our continuous purging of possessions, and they’ve confided to me before that they were grateful “for not having very much to clean up,” because when I give the order to go put the toy corner back together (two IKEA Kallax 4-cube shelves with bins) it can be done easily by even the 3 year old in under 5 minutes.
It forces me to be accountable to my own accumulation of “stuff,” too. I don’t really need a new piece of seasonal decor for my mantle or another candle (okay, maybe another candle…) or a cute mug because the stuff I have, I like, and it’s working well. It’s a good practice of minimalism for the sake of contentment, rather than minimalism for making some kind of philosophical point. We are minimalists by nature because our lives are kind of stuffed to the bursting with relationships, so there’s not a lot of room for much else.
Whew, that was a novella. Hopefully useful? Interesting? Or at least you’re sleeping peacefully now.
May your laundry be manageable, and your dishes unbreakable.
There’s a nesting bug infestation at our house right now, so at the end of this week’s list of must-reads from around the Catholic inter webs, I’ll regale you with a tale of two vanities. It was an endeavor of monumental proportions (mine) and really pleasing bang-for-buck, because our master bath and the kid’s bathroom look utterly transformed by about $50 in paint and supplies. My kids have become accustomed to mommy disappearing to the nether regions of the house to paint things for most of their short lives, so the only real advice I have to other aspiring DIY-ers out there with small children underfoot is “paint early, and paint often.”
Also, Netflix.
But first, our list. In honor of the upcoming observance of All Hallow’s Eve and the great Feast of All Saints, this week’s offerings are a tad diabolical in nature.
-1-
Italian exorcist: “There is a demon that targets the family.” Anyone who gives even a cursory glimpse to the headlines most days could confirm that suspicion, much as it’s out of fashion to attribute suffering in 2017 to the existence of evil. Still, a chilling and appropriate read this time of year. How do you talk to your children about the devil? About the existence of evil, and about the spiritual warfare we are involved in as baptized Christians?
-2-
This one hits close to home – literally. We live about 5 blocks between the two schools featured in this piece, and in fact I’m writing this from a Starbucks adjacent to Arapaho High School, where posters promoting “Offline October” adorn the community bulletin board. Archbishop Aquila touches on some really crucial points in the battle for our children’s hearts and minds, particularly in supporting burgeoning young adults learning to navigate a profoundly different world from the one even we oldest millennials came of age in. Take a quick moment to say a prayer for someone who is contemplating suicide today. You never know where those prayers could be directed.
-3-
I think this piece is always worth re-running this time of year. I had an interesting conversation on Facebook with a Latin American reader yesterday that got into some of the differences between the way Halloween is celebrated outside the United States. Obviously I’m writing from an American perspective, but what I’ve observed about the holiday over the years (and participated in with my own kids) bears little resemblance to anything dark or demonic. We don’t do witches or devil costumes. We don’t do chainsaw killers or Harry Potter or grotesque decorations. But I see little harm in dressing as a super hero or a princess (or heck, recycling that saint costume you’re going to be putting on again in the morning) and mingling with the neighbors for candy. Plus, there are some decidedly Catholic origins to the way we practice Halloween today.
-4-
Not everything that pops up around this time of year is harmless, however. Ever heard of the cult surrounding “Saint Death?” Drug lords, folk religion, and a pinch of superstition all wrapped up in one ugly package.
And now for some lighter fare. Actually, it’s still pretty dark. I went with a charcoal-ish navy blue to bring these sad, 70’s oak bathroom vanities into the light of the present day, and I think it turned out pretty nicely, if I do say so myself. And I’ve got the pixilated cell phone shots to prove it:
Before:
This is not my bathroom. Every time I got close enough to the scene of the crime (carpeted toilet-surround) I had to back away lest I vomit. I think we ripped the carpets out 5 hours after we closed, a week before we moved in.Progress shot. The friendly gentleman at Home Depot recommended a thorough chemical stripping and sanding. I opted for a biodegradable cleaning solution and a baby wipe. Progress over perfection, that’s my motto.
Midway point:
This is always when I run out of steam and think, gosh, can I just skip the topcoat of polycryic and get on with my life? (Short answer? No. Not with 5 kids.)
And, voila, after:
MasterKids’ (didn’t my father in law do an amazing job on our tile? It was super cheap, too. Under $100 for both bathrooms, though I can’t promise that’s accounting for the toll on his knees and back.)
Nesting for me literally manifests as “oh my gosh, what should I paint today????” And meanwhile, barely cooking dinner. PB+J but a really nicely coming-together house, that’s my 3rd trimester MO.
(And guys, don’t worry, the paint was low VOC. Definitely safer than bleaching baseboards.)
Colors, for anyone who cares:
Mirror: Valspar chalky finish in Oxford White
Vanity: Behr premium plus in Night Sky
Thought I’d kick it a little bit old school today with Christmas being just a handful of sleeps away, and most bloggers having fallen silent in the lead up to the Silent Night. I wandered around the dirty house snapping some phone pics after driving to school this morning to drop off “free dress” clothes to a very, very angry kindergartener whose mom was up too late alternating between rubbing a barfing kid’s shoulders and finishing this excellent book until o’dark thirty and forgot and sent him in his uniform.
How’s that for a run-on sentence?
Anyway, it’s past noon here in the Mile High city but I’m dressed only in the very loosest application of the term. My new Costco leggings are dreamily soft, but I would not recommend leaving the house in them without a long tunic or skirt situation. Which compounded the awkwardness of this morning’s jeans + thermal handoff to the aforementioned kindergartener. I’ll just leave it at that.
We’re kind of hanging on by the loosest of threads to our Christmas anticipation over here with one definitely sick kid who was mysteriously well enough to go to Tae Kwon Do last night, but who climbed riiiight back aboard the vom train around 11pm last night. Thankfully, he doesn’t have school on Mondays and Tuesdays this year, so we haven’t exposed anyone aside from his poor little martial arts buddies. And nobody else has yet to hurl. Crossing every digit and pleading with heaven to spare us from a holiday puke fest.
Anyway, on to the house tour, shall we? I actually love this house more and more each day that we edge into Christmastime, because it just calls out to be decked in candles and garlands and tiny Little People Nativity figurines and broken ornaments. The weirdly green mossy fireplace stones almost look intentional when festooned with my festive dead Trader Joe’s eucalyptus branches.
Also, I realized that I’ve hardly shared any pictures of what this new place looks like, save for a handful of hideous 70’s before shots, and like a grade A creeper, I will admit that I love looking at pictures of other people’s houses. Especially if they are A. significantly more beautiful than mine or B. just as sketchy looking up close.
Keep option B in the forefront of your mind as we tour, mkay?
It seems that Evie will be joining us on this little virtual reality excursion, because since her 3rd birthday five whole days ago, she has ceased napping but also ceased using diapers altogether, so while my introverted soul recoils from the extra hours on duty, my wallet is sighing with relief at having just!one!kid! in diapers for the first time in 4 years.
She just walked into the kitchen asking me for shrimp and vitamins: “Babe, where are the cups? Do you know, honey? I need a glass of water. And some shrimp and my vitamins.”
Without further ado…
Let’s start in the kitchen, shall we? It’s where I spend 89% of my time. Not cooking, exactly, but pulling slices of turkey out of the meat drawer and flopping them in front of various people’s noses. And retrieving clementines to peel. And mostly picking up IKEA plastic cutlery because I’m too dumb too committed to Montessori to move the kid’s stuff up into a higher cupboards. Plus, as you’ll soon see, there are precious few cupboards to be had.
Let’s start off with a candid shot of Luke and his persistent love interest, the garbage can. Treasures in, treasures out. So far I have retrieved numerous forks and knives and not a few toys and once my phone. He, in turn, has fished out many a plastic strawberry carton and egg shell to cackle with delight over.
Moving into the expansive belly of the galley kitchen, we have the … entire rest of it:
And a gentle candid shot of a little human hard at work. See how masterfully he empties the cupboards and learns all about the world around him by trashing it? Poetry.
Lest I be remiss, I’ll end the kitchen portion of our tour with an action shot of the cat drinking water off the floor. Is this because she has none in her dish? Or is she just an opportunist like the rest of the family? A lady never tells.
Moving out of the kitchen into the dining room, oh wait. I forgot to turn around and show you my “office” and the pantry. Hang on.
(My coworkers are ever present.) See that cleverly-disguised-in-white-latex 90’s tv/entertainment center situation? No? Just a pantry? Good. Move along.
And this? This is where all the magic happens:
Moving back through the kitchen to the dining room, which you may remember had floor to ceiling orange wood paneling, aka “vertical shiplap” plus tootsie roll brown wall-to-wall carpet, I’d say we’ve made some real improvements.
As you can see, it gives us an almost panoramic view of the main level of the house. We’ve scratched our heads over how we could gain more space for a bigger table and more chairs, but,
There really isn’t any space to take from. That wall is lined with the major kitchen appliances in an already slender galley kitchen, and then the fourth “wall” of our dining room is really just the enormous jut of the hulking stone fireplace the previous owner installed as a questionable aftermarket design “upgrade:”
Still, it fits the 6 of us when we don’t have company. And when we do? We make it work. We had Dave’s parents and 3 of his adult siblings over for Evie’s birthday dinner, and we crammed 11 humans around that oval, yessir we did. It was an intimate and festive affair.
Moving into the living room/family room situation from the dinning area, you can see the front door and the entryway that leads to my office/the kitchen. The main level of what is effectively 3.5 levels is pretty small and kind of set up like a circle, so the kids have a sort of track to run. Which they do.
If you turn back around you can see the fireplace and the edge of the dining room table:
(And I have to admit, that fireplace which is weird and hulking the rest of the year, it does shine at Christmas)
This is a shot standing just inside the front door, watching my kids learn Latin declensions watch Netflix. #memories
And then turning to the left, my favorite little corner in the whole house. I love to curl up in that perfectly distressed leather chair with the great hammered brass trim (that I thrifted for nine freaking dollars) and read at night. Paint colors in this room are Sherwin Williams for HGTV “Passive” grey and “Marshmallow” white, if anybody cares. (Primed the wood paneling with oil-based death smelling Kilz and then slapped 3 coats of paint on it before almost asphyxiating, in case anyone is looking for a good wood paneling painting tutorial.)
Moving into the entry way and looking back towards the kitchen, we head upstairs to the main bedrooms. (We also have a basement that we’ve framed out a 4th bedroom for the big boys in, but 4 months in and they’re still sleeping in what will eventually be the family room/playroom, because hanging drywall is one thing, but tape and texture is a whole other beast. Which we have yet to tame. Maybe I’ll do a separate post on the basement next time, because this is getting loooong.)
So anyway, here’s the entryway, as seen from the kitchen/my office. If you walked forward towards the front door, you could turn left and look back into that previous view of the fireplace and couch.
If you turn right at the cheetah print scarf, that would take you down to the 1/2 level of what I’ve dubbed our tri-and-a-half level house, which houses the laundry room, the entrance from the garage into the house, and a weirdly large bathroom that I have big plans to convert into a mudroom with some floor to ceiling beadboard and built in shelves. Backpack station be mine.
Ominous drop off, no? Ask Luke how he knows it’s so. (Also, proof that one shouldn’t drink and tile. I am not making any judgments on the previous owner’s soul, just observing the dangers of mixing home improvements with ever clear. Which I presume would be the necessary fuel behind such a design choice.)
And the laundry room, which has dreamy light and would look amazing with a tasteful little chandelier and a pocket door swapped out for the regular one, wouldn’t it? A girl can dream.
Turning back towards the front door and looking right around the corner from this perilously not-to-code stairwell, we have this little number:
Which you can bet your bottom dollar I’ve fantasized about stripping down to the solid wood and doing some kind of rich coffee colored stain on the treads, but…kids. Who keep falling down the gently carpeted too-short planks and cause me to raise some praise hands every time I hear little heads hitting polyester padding and not wood.
Upstairs on the left we have the sole functional shower in our palace with 4 bathrooms. That’s right, 4 toilets, but only one reputable shower that does not cause mysterious waterfalls to pour out of the front of the house. Dave re-caulked our master shower about 3 weeks ago, to be fair, but we’ve been – okay, I’ve been – too afraid to test it in freezing temps lest lest the leak problem be deeper than we realized. One shower for a family of 6 we can handle. Burst pipes in the dead of winter, not so much.
So this beauty was also floor to ceiling orange wood paneling. How lucky are we?? And I Kilz’d it and nearly sent myself to urgent care in the process, and I solemnly swear never to paint again without a respirator or at least a high quality mask. Or maybe just never paint again, ever. Like, never.
But it looks so much better white. Even if it does give off a bit of an unintentional birchwood forrest vibe. Ah, well:
What’s that you say? Not enough shots of wilted eucalyptus in mason jars here? Wait, wait. Don’t click away to Pinterest yet. Here:
(This post sponsored by 222.4 million germs and parenting guilt surrounding oral hygiene decisions.)
Moving down the hall past the bathroom, we have the master bedroom which has great, dreamy lighting. Unfortunately I’m so attached to the airy look of the daytime lightning the white curtains provide, we no longer have blackout quality sleep at night.
But look how pretty:
Some laundry in the bottom of the shot. “For relatability”
And my decorative scarf rack, aka the only color in this entire whitewashed and gray situation, according to my beloved. Also, see that painting? My talented friend painted that for us as a belated wedding gift. It’s an original rendering of the view from outside their wedding reception, where Dave and I had our first kiss. (Sorry, future kids who are one day trolling mommy’s blog archives and now grossed out.)
Oh, and see that hideous little snippet of baseboard heating? Gah, those things are ugly. But the heat they put out is dreamy and soft and non-drying and so much better on everybody’s lungs. But the radiator covers are he.i.no.ous. These ones in our room are in the best shape of the whole house.
Oooookay, moving along seriously, let me just dump some shots of our master bath and then Evie and Luke’s room and we’ll call it a day, yes? Totally unrelated, but my awesome next door neighbor just knocked on the door and handed me a note while whispering furtively about candy canes and “coming through the garage door” on Christmas Eve.
The note encourages me to give him a call about “Gaylord the Elf.”
I really love my life.
Hey, I painted that poop brown vanity dark grey myself. Pat, pat. Never mind the shower. Nothing to see here.
Moving on:
Evie’s palace. It’s a little bit bigger than the master, maybe? But with no en suite. So we let her keep it. Meanwhile, her older brothers bunk in the basement like dogs.
I hung a mirror at her height in the closet, and it’s a popular spot for the elves who live here.
Look, here comes one now! Pls note the IKEA super hero bib turned cape. Luke has a flair for accessorizing.
And then finally, Luke’s spartan quarters:
The previous owners slapped a white coat of paint on everything (and I do mean slapped) before they listed this house, and I’m so glad they did, slaps and splats and all, because it makes a world of difference to have a clean, blank slate to start from. We installed wall to wall gray carpet throughout the upstairs and the basement, because after repeatedly crunching the numbers on every other potential solution for flooring (and living for 2 weeks with the persistent eau de dog poop) we just LOL’d and said OH WELL IT’S DISPOSABLE ESSENTIALLY, RIGHT???? and then laughed maniacally while spending $$ (but not $$$$$$$$) to coat the floors in bodily fluid catching fabric stretched and tacked down tight to all four walls, which I calculate will need to be completed replaced in 4.5 years. But so far I’m really happy with the color choice, which is holding up marvelously to the kid traffic.
And I think at a record-setting 2000+ words, we can call it a day. Tune in next time – or maybe never – for the basement and backyard edition.
And if I don’t see you before then, Merry Christmas!
(I have zero affiliation with the state of Kansas or their basketball team, so I apologize if that title gives offense. But it was irresistible.)
Earlier this month, fed up with the 4.3 million to do items that it turns out are actually too hard for me to accomplish on my own (y u give me inflated sense of my home improvement abilities, HGTV?), I decided that if nothing else, I could paint.
But not, you know, walls. It turns out those are really, frustratingly hard to paint. To date I’ve done 3 bathrooms, most of the kitchen, the dining room and living room, and I’m done. I don’t care what color anything is any more, not if it involves me buying yet another pack of roller refills and spending 3 hours making lackluster progress.
But furniture, now that’s another story.
So I wandered into Lowe’s to pick up some of that fabled chalk paint that everyone has been talking about for 4 years or so, and after dropping more than $70 after the helpful guy at the paint desk convinced me I could “easily and much more cheaply make my own!” I returned to my senses and then returned to the store, sheepishly, to return the ridiculous amount of ingredients he’d talked me into and instead opted to just buy one measly quart of Valspar “chalky finish” in woolen mittens. And it was $33. Which is horrifyingly expensive for a quart of paint. Let’s just acknowledge that. Plus, I purchased the finishing wax for another $15. So, this is a project with a little upfront investment. But! But. Here is the biggest but of them all: the stuff is never-ending.
It has almost magical stretching abilities, and I can hardly believe how many pieces of furniture have been coated, to date. They all look incredible, as I will soon demonstrate for you using my lackluster cell phone photography skills. I mentioned on Facebook earlier today that of that original can I still have maybe 15% remaining. And that is enough to do at least one more medium piece of furniture, which I will hastily slop paint onto as soon as I’m done tapping this out and before the two younger kids wake up from their naps. Because no priming. Zero. And no sanding. It’s a harried mommy miracle.
Also, it’s low VOC (I would say no VOC, because it has no discernible odor) which was key, because I did not want to move heavy pieces of furniture back up from the very unventilated basement to accomplish this feat. (Not a sponsored post, I just love this stuff.)
The breakdown for time invested was probably around 6 hours, all told, for painting, waxing, and touching up. And in that amount of time I was able to refinish a china buffet, a twin bed frame from IKEA, a piano bench, an antique chair with attached half desk, 2 children’s chairs, and a small bookshelf.
Our little homeschool nook in the basement looks adorable. Which is important since I’m not homeschooling, you know?
And Evie’s big girl bed which she will not sleep peacefully in under pain of death is completely charming, too. Which is nice, seeing as she is so repulsed by it, and the crib was donated nigh 3 weeks ago now. Typical.
I also plan to turn this buffet my mother in law passed down to me (she’s fine that I painted it) into a media stand for all the TV we don’t actually watch, except during football games, so basically it was really essential that I focus on all these Very Important Projects to make the house feel pulled together.
Girls can be weird.
I swear that I am sleeping more deeply and more contentedly with a few more “settled” spaces in this home of ours, though. And it feels great to check some things off the ‘ol to do list, even if I had to scan all the way down to the 79th position on the list, in terms of importance, because it turns out hanging drywall, installing baseboard, and resealing caulk lines in the shower are not my forte.
Anyway, want to see how some of it turned out? Okay, good.
You see now why I am clearly meant to be transitioning to a lifestyle blog in 2017, no?
The only thing I did more than one coat with was that large buffet piece, because I cared more about how it turned out. Oh, I guess I did multiple coats on the twin bed frame too, now that I think about it. Because it was raw natural wood from IKEA so it was much “thirstier” than some of the other stuff I was painting. But this stuff really worked so well for me. There were brush marks when wet that just sort of faded away as it cured, and it required zero sanding, which I think we can all agree is just the worst. It’s the worst. Plus, I never wear a mask and then I feel very anxious about mesothelioma or whatever inhaling particulate matter can give you. For about a day. And then I go back to worrying about whether my kids are wearing enough sunscreen, eating toxic produce because I can’t remember which ones are the dirtiest of the dozen, or being adequately spiritually formed because their mother is chalk painting thrift store furniture instead of catechizing them.
The 21st century is a real hoot for anxious mothering.
But where was I? Oh yes, here are my next 2 victims, provided that Mary Poppin’s-esque can of paint doesn’t run out on me:
Nap time sirens are wailing, so it may be a longer wait than I’d hoped, if the noises I’m hearing from upstairs are any indication.
Though last week I did paint “with” Luke, which went about how you’re imagining it might have. Still, stuff’s nontoxic and it was a memory making moment.
If you’re intrigued about details like these, I used this paint in “Woolen Stockings” and these brushes (chip brushes, the cheaper the better!) and I used cheesecloth to apply the wax, which is still somewhat present on my hands 5 days later, so, minor regretsies about not buying the actual wax brush there.
Hi, I’m Jenny and I’m a closet real estate junkie. I devour episodes of House Hunters and read shelter magazines like 4 walls and a front door are going out of style. And I regularly nickel and dime our carefully-crafted monthly budget to death with “just one missing piece” or “a quick $11 tweak” to rooms in our house that I desperately want to love but feel hamstrung in so doing, because they are not actually mine.
(The irony of the very title of this post is not lost on me, because no matter whether our housing checks go to first mortgage of wherever or rental company, inc, aint none of us taking it with us. But bear with me.)
I love decorating. I love finding something and giving it new life with a fresh coat of paint or by introducing it to an unlikely partner and achieving style cohesion.
When the Nesting Place dropped a couple years back, I was all over that pretty little tome, even though until this morning, I’d actually only read it in black and white on ye trusty old Kindle. (Kinda ups the game to see her genius laid out in brilliant color. My bad, Myquillin.)
I eagerly incorporated her battle cry of “it doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful!” into every square inch of our cute, if beige, rental house.
This may not be my house, my internal monologue mused, but it’s going to look like it, gosh darn it. Even if I can’t change the wall colors or tear out every inch of (perfectly nice, but still horrifying with small children) carpet, or Joanna Gaines me some decent sight lines between the kitchen and dining room.
So I mixed and I matched. I scoured Saver’s and Goodwill and the clearance racks at Home Goods. I’ve even curb-picked a few gems from our neighbor’s ample front walkway. And over the past two-and-a-half years, I’ve turned this place into our home.
Bringing a couple more babies home into the mix hasn’t hurt to make it feel more official, either.
And yet, every month when I write that rental check, I have to tamp down a little surge of shame, or maybe it’s more like wounded pride.
This isn’t where a thirty-something family of 6 should be. We should be homeowners by now. When will we be grown ups?
Even just writing that out, it looks so ridiculous to me. Because it is ridiculous. We have clean water and secure jobs and healthy babies and 300 days of sunshine per year. And we live in a safe and walkable neighborhood that I have come to love. I can walk to the grocery store, our gym, and, quite recently, a craft brewery which welcomes children and goldfish crackers. Because Denver!
Of course, when I’m throwing my monthly mental pity party as I sign the check, I’m not usually thinking about the choices we’ve willingly made that have gotten us here, choices we would never dream of altering, even if we could. Living in Italy. Traveling abroad. Being open to 4 little souls who are even now mingling Legos and mac and cheese into a builder-grade paste which will cement itself to the side of my (free! hand-stained and refinished by us!) kitchen table.
I wouldn’t trade what we’ve done with our first 6 1/2 years of marriage for anything. And yet there’s still frustration as we crunch the numbers.
God has been so faithful. He continues to be so faithful, even as I question His path for us, frantically searching Redfin and Zillow for new listings as I nurse a sweet baby to sleep. I could be doing spiritual reading, or even staring blankly at a wall, and it would probably be better for my heart and soul than clicking on “just one more” listing, devouring data about square footage and interest rates and HOA fees like an addict.
I’ve some work to do in the contentment department, and I know there needs to be a day of reckoning for my heart which seems to vacillate wildly between “let’s eat rice 11 times a week while we save for a fantastic down payment” and “I just need to spend $75 on some patio furniture for our front porch so this feels more like home.”
Can’t have it both ways, Jenny.
Can’t have that Pinterest-perfect curated space of your dreams, updated as the styles and seasons change, and be hitting those financial goals you set with your patient and probably saintly husband.
So here’s my new missive: waiting. Waiting in joyful hope. Waiting in expectant peace, and believing that one more load of crap from the thrift store or the Target Dollar Spot is not going to make this place more home to us. And waiting on God’s timing and His clear directive that our next step is His next step.
I’m better at doing. But I can’t “do” my way into the kind of patience that grows gratitude. Which is a pity, really, because I’m rather handy with a hammer and spray paint.
One of my most popular posts of all time is the little “how to” I banged out around this time last year about how to hack the KonMari method with a houseful of kids. Except, as a few commenters have pointed out lately, it devolved more into a “why to” then a “how to.” Mea culpa, I guess I got distracted by grandiose visions of whole-family minimalism. (Which is very much my jam, but may not necessarily be yours, so click freely away if the thought of throwing stuff away stresses you out!)
This post aims to remedy that, providing you with some practical steps on how to implement my preferred lifestyle and home esthetic of choice, a movement I’ve dubbed “militant minimalism.”
I’ve little doubt my affinity for scarcity has a lot to do with my identity as a rare female INTJ, but I still firmly believe this homemaking style can work well for families, and in fact works much better than many more popular styles. See “drowning in Dollar Spot crap and permission slips” chic.
We’ve all been there (raises sheepish hand).
Here are some things I’ve learned by gleaning from Marie Kondo’s treatise on tidying (keeping the baby but throwing out the Buddhist bathwater, if you will).
1. “Spark joy” might be unrealistic for some categories. Let’s go with “isn’t paralyzingly irritating.”
When evaluating my children’s myriad possessions, including a mysterious and precious nightstand drawer full of “treasures” including chunks of concrete from the backyard and inexplicable scraps of roof shingles, I have to ask myself clarifying questions that go beyond the aspirational inquiry “does this spark joy?”
throwback pic to when those Duplos did indeed spark joy. But the honeymoon ended and back to Saver’s they went. No shame.
Because what Marie Kondo fails to adequately address, through no fault of her own at the time of writing, is the issue that much, nay, most of the necessary and optional equipment accompanying tiny humans and their care is not inherently joy-sparking.
Stained Hulk Smash t-shirt, disgusting bath flutes, multiple tubes of diaper cream and random drawer of backyard detritus, I’m looking at you.
While it’s true that the usefulness of, well, some of the aforementioned items can and does contribute to their beauty, some things are just important to your children because they are. There’s no logic, and there’s definitely no reasoning with a passionate 4 year old with a ladybug fetish.
I concede that point. And so there are items in our home that are utterly worthless and even irritating to my spartan style, but I don’t live alone, so exist they must. The key here is scalability. So can my kids have a handful of crappy Dollar Tree treasures, a drawer full of random coins and old sticks, and a couple of creepy bathtub toys which are clearly past their prime? Yes. But the key is moderation. Extreme moderation, in this case. I could gather all of the truly offensive items in this category into a single laundry basket and it would’t be full. So yes, your kids will have a small, curated pile of crap that you won’t understand, and that’s fine and normal, so long as it’s limited to small, identifiable areas of your home. So a special drawer in their bedrooms and a ledge along the bathtub? Fine. A pile in every single room in the house and 5 piles in the backyard? Not fine.
2. Ask for help
When you first start out to attempt the purge laid out in “Life Changing Magic,” you will need time. I personally do a lot of my cleaning and decluttering after bedtime or during strategic and well white-noised naps. If your kids aren’t good sleepers, aren’t super young, or your house is too teeny for that to work, you’re going to need back up. Either hire a sitter for 2 6-hour chunks (or 4 3-hour sessions, whatever works better for you) or ask a girlfriend or neighbor to swap childcare with you as you help each other.
I just spent a long weekend with a dear friend and her 4 young children and my 1 lap baby milling about and even though it.was.insane at times, we managed to declutter her kitchen, family room, dining/craft room, walk-in pantry, and part of her master bedroom. In about 2 days. Was everybody wearing pants the entire time? Well, that would be telling. But we did end up with about 20 large cardboard boxes and trash bags FULL of stuff to donate, not counting furniture.
3. “One in, one out”
If your kids are little it might be relatively easy to start working with them to establish a “one in, one out” rule for toys and items of clothing. So deciding on a set number (maybe not a literal number, but a reasonable amount you eyeball and deem appropriate for your family) and then going forward in coaching them to consider what they’d like to donate, dump, or repurpose in order to accept some new gift or sought-after toy.
My kids know that when they get a new pair of shoes or jeans, it’s because the old pair(s) are in need of passing down or retiring permanently. Same goes for toys.
If my kids unexpectedly receive a new toy (neighbors, grandparents, happy meal, exhausted mother at Target) then I’ll make the call (because they’re still little and it’s my house) whether or not it stays, and for how long. I have zero guilt about passing along little tchotchkes and toys to the local thrift shop or doctor’s waiting room (ask first) if my kids have played with them and then basically abandoned them after a couple days or a week. Also up for grabs? Toys that just annoy you. If it makes my kids fight, ends up scattered in pieces everywhere every time it’s used, or is just plain ugly (or inappropriate) then out it goes. This is the mommy version of “sparking joy,” I suppose.
4. Paperwork/junk mail: don’t let it in, but if you must, get it out quickly
This is a huge one for most busy families, I know. I don’t have the perfect solution, but I think it can cut down significantly on piles. First, be extremely on guard about what comes into your house in the first place. I am ruthless with junk mail/solicitations/school paperwork. Our recycling can is right by the entrance to the house from the garage, so 90% of what comes into my mailbox or in school bags gets dumped before it ever crosses our threshold. If I’m not sure about something, I’ll file it immediately into a vertical file on my “office” shelf, and try to take care of it within the week. If it’s a piece of paper that simply contains information I need, like a school calendar or swim lesson schedule, I’ll snap a picture of it with my phone and toss it.
We have a single designated spot for paperwork in our house, and I go through it weekly to fill out/pay bills/return to appropriate venue everything in the pile. That’s part of the glamour of having a stay at home parent: I’m my own (and our entire family’s) admin.
5. Artwork/crafts: your kid’s (probably) not Picasso and you aren’t required to have a daycare’s worth of supplies on hand
I have a confession: a piece of my withered grinch’s heart thaws a little bit every time I hold a preschool masterpiece in my hands. But not enough to keep it. I have about 1 project per kid that makes the cut per semester, and then I try to incorporate it temporarily into our decor, either in their atrium space in the front room, or on the fridge. My kids are ruthless like me, so I’ve yet to see any tears over masterpieces hitting the circular file. We’ll see if that changes when her ladyship reaches a more sentient age.
We have a designated spot for a small collection of craft and coloring supplies. I don’t save broken crayons or dying markers. I buy 2 or 3 packs of high quality crayola stuff at the back to school blow out sales and hold extras in reserve as we go through it during the year. My children are, admittedly, not very into coloring or crafts (and I can’t imagine why not. Cackle.) but having a full set of fat washable markers, 48 sharp crayons, a bottle of glue and a pack of construction paper and regular coloring paper seems to satisfy them. We have a couple coloring books too, but that’s it. And they still manage to express creativity somehow.
Our entire craft and Lego situation. (Alternately titled: what they don’t know won’t hurt them)
6. Have an ongoing “to donate” bag/spot, and pass along what you’re not currently using to friends and family
I hang a big blue IKEA bag in our front hall closet, and I can quickly fill it with old shoes, ripped jeans, rejected toys, outgrown t shirts, stained towels, annoying plastic cups, etc. The kids know it’s there, and it’s become entirely normal for them to see me add something to the pile. They’re not traumatized by it, and since we do most of our clothes shopping at our local thrift store to begin with, they know it’s going to a place where someone who needs it or wants it can buy it. I think we may have an advantage since I’ve been doing this for as long as they can remember, but I imagine older kids could be coached along with a firmly resolved set of parents and some time.
It makes physical space in our home which makes it a more peaceful and enjoyable place to be, and it makes space in our hearts for gratitude for what we do have, and trust that what we need in the future will be provided as and when we need it.
I’ve seen this more clearly in the area of baby gear/clothing than anywhere else. I’ve freely passed along 90% of what’s not currently in use by the resident baby, not because we don’t want or anticipate future pregnancies, but because it seems, to us, silly to hang onto things for 12, 18, 24 or more months between uses when another baby could be using it right now. So while I hope to have another little girl one day, my niece is currently almost exclusively outfitted in Genevieve couture. I save a couple sentimental items from each bebe, but everything else – including baby swings, boppies, exersaucers, bumbo seats – gets passed along or temporarily farmed out during its fallow season.
Baby girls are fun to dress, but not when their closet is crammed. Less is more in toddler couture. And I’d rather do another load of laundry than match dozens of tiny my little pony socks or fold 100 pairs of jeggings.
My kids observe this and they recognize that if God sends another baby, He’ll also send the Fisher Price continuous-motion AC cord adapted swing. (And He has, every time.)
7. Have an ongoing conversation with your kids about needs vs. wants
My kids are normal toddler and preschooler aged kids. They want to keep everything. They’re like magpies with (some) higher reasoning function and immortal souls. But I don’t have to let them stay there. Part of my job is to train them into an appropriate sense of “want” vs. “need,” so they don’t end up with the absolute worst dorm rooms and the most frustrated future fiancées (or seminary rectors) ever.
Of course a 4 year old doesn’t want to part with any of his myriad superhero tees, threadbare though they may be. But I can help teach them “this doesn’t fit/isn’t in good condition anymore,” and show them how curating a smaller, more thoughtful closet makes laundry and cleanup so much easier, and helps keep us grateful for the nice, clean, well-fitting clothing we do own.
If your kids are struggling to clean up their closets/put away toys, it might be that there’s just too much stuff. We saw this in a big way last summer when I blitzed their already (I thought) modest toy collection down to about 80% of it’s former size. After the excess was bagged up and hauled out, my then 4 year old looked at me with relief and said (I kid you not) thank you Mommy, it was too hard to clean up all those toys.
Word.
(And if your kids are developmentally challenged or have behavioral issues? Even more reason to keep your space more spare. I have some close friends with little boys on the spectrum, and it’s immensely helpful to them if their physical surroundings are more serene and, yes, more spartan, to the extent that it’s possible, and that your spouse is on board with helping you maintain it. Goodness knows moms of high needs kids have enough on their plates. But visual clutter really does cause stress, even in little kids.)
8. Gratitude need not equal “we’re keeping that”
This is a big sticking point for people, and I get that. But it’s also the part of the whole KonMari system that I “get” the most intuitively: the gift is an expression of the giver’s love, but is not itself essential. Think of it as “love currency,” whether its a loaf of banana bread or a light up toy police car with a wailing siren: if you’re trying to lose weight, you might accept the loaf with gratitude and serve it to someone who isn’t counting calories.
The affection and thoughtfulness in the heart of the baker is in no way diminished by this!
Same goes with loud, unnecessary, or simply superfluous toys. It is entirely possible to accept the gift graciously and with real gratitude, and then turn around and either regift, repurpose, or rehome said gift. Grandma just wants to express her love to her grandchild, and your child can learn to express gratitude and contentment right back by writing (or scribbling on) that thank you note and then deciding either to give away an existing toy to make room, or deciding maybe they don’t like the new toy enough to do that, and thinking of a new home for it.
You can do that. You’re allowed to do that. It’s your home, and you’re the one (along with your spouse) who gets to decide what comes into it. And it’s so freeing!
If you’re worried about ruffling family feathers or hurting feelings, then take the next mature step and have a conversation about the family culture you’re trying to cultivate, and the simpler lifestyle you’re pursuing. Ask if they’d consider giving gifts of books or clothing or experience gifts like zoo passes or swimming punch cards. And if the barbies and hot wheels keep rolling in anyway? Smile, say thank you from your heart, and pass along what doesn’t work for your family.
9. Make it normal
Eventually this will become second nature. I think that’s where Marie Kondo herself claims “declutter once and never again.” That’s true…sort of. But only if you commit to mindfully curating and periodically culling through your stuff. Because we with families and children to care for are in a constant battle of accumulation and maintenance.
And that’s okay.
Acknowledge that the Dollar Tree exists, that your kids are going to go to birthday parties and on Easter egg hunts, that grandma is going to send a bag of squirt guns and bubbles, and have an automated procedure that kicks in as stuff comes in. As long as you keep if flowing out, (and get picky, where you can control it, over what comes in to begin with) this can totally work for you, even with a houseful of kids.
It’s a good life, I’m telling you.
Now go forth and Kondo your toy room, nursery, and basement storage room. It’s the easiest way to lose 20 lbs without breaking (much of) a sweat.
