Have you encountered Mystie Winckler yet? She's a homeschooling mom who runs a few different sites, one of which is focused on better homemaking via better attitude. That could be dreadful, I know, but it is the very opposite of dreadful. I find her so helpful. Lissa Wiley turned me on to one of her e-books a few years ago; it was full of useful tips and pointers.
She's running a program called New Year, New Attitude here in the first seven weeks of 2017, and her emails together with that mid-Whole 30 energy burst are getting the wheels turning in my brain. I've been thinking.
When we moved into this house in 2005, we set things up for toddlers and small children. We haven't had any toddlers for a while. Our youngest child is now the age that our oldest child was when we arrived in Gladlyville. It's time to adjust accordingly.
In 2005 we put an open bin of plastic containers on the kitchen floor for babies and toddlers to rearrange. It's been years since anyone wanted to chew on a lid for fun, though, so I'm thinking about alternatives. My big Kitchen-Aid mixer doesn't get used very often because all of its accessories live in its mixing bowl and I have to haul the whole thing up and find a place to put them in my teeny kitchen with minimal counter space. The seldomer I use the mixer, the less inclined I am to use the mixer, because then I have to wash everything before I can start when really I just wanted to knock together a quick batch of something. Here's my idea: I think we can still use the existing bin if I turn it the other way. And then, if I can find a similarly sized one with a lid, it can be my baking bin. It can house the mixer accessories and the hand mixer that lives in the high cabinet over the stove and measuring tools that are currently mixed in with other kitchen items in an annoying way. See?
There is also the Not-Exactly-Horrible-But-Not-Far-From-It Office. There's just something about a room where the kids spend more time than the grownups: it attracts mess. The office has a desktop computer that doesn't get used for much except Stella's favorite YouTube videos, because now the boys all have to have laptops for school. There's a table that gets used a lot for drawing, which is also housing the printer that makes me swear like Yosemite Sam and my interrupted scrapbooking efforts and some vexing homeless bits and pieces that I need to rehome or perhaps douse with turpentine and set ablaze. Oh, and a file cabinet that can only open partway, and two guinea pigs who seem to have poop-throwing contests when we're not around, and all of the existing photo albums, and the desk that I do actually use, and about 2000 books because OH MY WORD the books in this house just keep multiplying. Here, let me show you the view from the northwest corner.
Oh, I forgot: an entire closet (in a 1923 house where closet space is at a premium) filled with games. Filled.
My husband loves it when things fit tidily into their spaces, so he was very pleased when the guinea pig cage fit under the drawing table and the Printer of Perdition. The thing is, you can't leave the chairs in front of the table that way. They get moved every day for guinea pig feeding and patting, and they rarely get moved back. So there are always these big chairs sitting randomly in the middle of a small room. Just the thought is making me frustrated. So here's my new idea: if we ditch the (ancient, limping) desktop computer (Stella will have to watch her 80s TV shows elsewhere), and take that desk down to the basement, then the guinea pig cage can move to the wall that's shown on the right-hand side of the picture. We can hang a couple of additional shelves for photo albums on the standards you can just see there. (Not shown: trade paperbacks on shelves that go up to the ceiling. If I want to read a book from the A section I have to stand on the desk. Hm, I'll need a ladder if we move the desk. Or I'll need to resolve to read only trade paperback books written by people whose names start with C or later letters.) That way the albums will still be accessible -- the kids love to look through them -- but they'll be neater than they are at the moment, lined up on the floor along the north wall of this room.
Last, the living room. In 2005 we set up our living room so kids could run around a little bit without too many furniture collisions.
(Whoops, the throw and stray pillowcase left in the floor were invisible to me until I prepared to post them on the internet. As was the pile of knitting left on the couch.) Here in 2017, we don't have small boys chasing each other in circles around our downstairs any more. I'd like to have a conversation circle: a little loveseat at right angles to the couch, with a coffee table in the middle. And while I'm thrifting for a loveseat, I'd like to replace that armchair in the corner -- preferably with one that doesn't rock. I am tired of the THUNK of that armchair slamming into the wall behind it. And you know, I have often felt that we don't have much wall space for pictures because we have books on all the walls, but look at those bare walls calling out for some decoration.
My husband is not a fan of this conversation circle plan, because he is used to our sparsely furnished living room. But I think it contributes to separateness within the family: often in the evenings I sit here on the couch while my 17yo sits on the music room loveseat and my 14yo sits at the dining room table. Elwood sits at the dining room desk. Wouldn't it be nicer if we could sit together? Around a coffee table?
For years our living room was a no-coffee zone, because we had small boys caroming through it. It seemed like every cup of coffee my MIL brought in here wound up getting spilled over books, until finally we banned beverages from the living room. But hey -- perhaps we could have a coffee table with actual cups of coffee upon it!
I don't know if that's what most people mean when they talk about the joys of parenting older children.
Recent Comments