Our mountain has been feeling quite Springy this week. It has been sunny for awhile now but the sun actually felt warm on my back yesterday! We are all ready for a change. Feeling pretty blessed to live in a place that has four seasons. Right when you are feeling "over it", in comes the new to refresh us.
The kids had spring fever this week and so when it came to school, it was a lot of reminding to keep to the task at hand. We kept it short with a good morning time together, math, piano, and one day of Latin. I really would like to do more Latin but you really can only do so much before you are stressed and life just doesn't work so well when stressed.
Which brings me to my cleaning projects!
Our cabin is twice as big as it was last year, but still smaller than most homes. We have no closets, not enough bookshelves or dressers, a tiny sink, no dishwasher. I could go on but you get the idea; it's a bit tight here and we don't have all the conveniences that we had been used to. Waa. Waa. Waa. :) Not really.
I have been really content. I have been really humbled, too.
I have run the gambit on how I feel about my home at it's current state, "I love our little cabin in the woods!", "What the heck were we thinking to buy this tiny space?", "No, all it needs is to be cleaned and freshened up.", "Let's try minimalism in this home.", "Minimalism as a home schooling family of 6 just doesn't work for me.", etc.
So, here we are with one closet now, winter is wrapping up, our bodies want to be moving and out and about. I wrapped the kids' school day up on Wednesday and headed upstairs. To the boys' room. They were outside or reading and had no idea what I was up to. So I began. Two bags of garbage, one pile for garage sale, and one pile to put in the shed. By this time they were all up there wondering what was going on and decided excitedly to join me. We rearranged their beds, swept everything, made a hammock for their stuffed animals, and rehung Z's apartment pictures. He loves having his own space filled with pictures of family and friends, posters, shelves, and other random tidbits 10 year old's enjoy.
They had no complaints about what we threw away or put in the pile to sell which was so nice and confirmed my thoughts of, "Most of this stuff is useless to them!"
Z even said to me, "Mom, I don't always like to clean but when I do I like to clean it all." Sounded like a meme to me!
So the boys' room is feeling great and no money was involved. Just a freshening up of what was already there. Now have you, we do still need a dresser and maybe one more shelf and I would love to paint it this summer. But that is miniscule compared to what we have done on this house so far and what still needs to be done to the rest of the house.
I moved to the small school area we have and got that organized and cleaned up.
I moved on further to the front entryway. Now when you walk into our house, you aren't bombarded with an array of things to trip you up.
Then I looked around at the rest of the house, which had quietly exploded when I wasn't watching! Yikes!
I slumped. I hunched over and sighed deeply. Then I picked myself up and remembered that I can't do it all. I can't keep up the laundry, the schooling, the dinners, the relationships, the schedules, all of it, at the same time. But that's okay.
There are weeks like this when a lot of cleaning is on the list. Or seasons where we eat simply, and get a great amount of school and reading in. There are other times when we are out and about in our community playing and connecting with our people.
And in life it balances out. We have a fairly clean house. We eat decently. We do school consistently four days and randomly throw another day in there for good measure. We hang out with friends and family regularly.
It's a blessed life. It's a busy life. A get to life. And I am grateful.
I write this to remind myself of the balance and the effort. It's not always balanced, but I try. The effort really does count.
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