Balance: The Secret to Health and Happiness

It's been a whole week since I let you know I was giving myself permission to be imperfect. 

Since that time a friend mentioned that she had a hard time relaxing since her father had brought her up to work first and then rest.  It was a great idea, except the work never ends for a homeschooling mother with a house full of preschoolers and an entrepreneurial husband.  This is the idea that I shared with her.  I hope that it gave her a thimbleful of peace.  I hope you find rest in it, as well.

There is a time for every purpose under heaven.  When you work, do it with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength as if working for the Lord.  When you play, do it with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength as if playing for the Lord.  To do otherwise, cheats both health and happiness.

Shared with Simple Lives Thursday.

Finding Peace in Chaos

My third daughter helped to take care of the little things

I've decided to give myself a break.  It wasn't an easy decision, but I knew that something had to give.  I decided it wouldn't be my sanity.

It started as we finished rehabbing Dad's house for sale.  At the time, we had finished most of the bedrooms and the office.  As rooms were being finished and preparations were being made for staging, the kitchen became more and more cluttered.  The right way to do the project would be to sort the items and bring them to their final destination, but in the hurry toward the finish line it was simpler to just dump it all into the kitchen.  Dad's house boasts a large amount of counter space and a sizable kitchen table (I wish I could keep them.  I definitely have counter-space envy), but both were quickly filled to the overflow.  Somehow we managed to find enough room to eat our meals and educate the children, but it took more and more effort to do so every day. 

Tools, fabrics, and herbs over here

From early morning to late at night we worked.  Breaks were few and far between. 

Through it all, I struggled to eat traditionally.  It's difficult to choose otherwise after being educated.  Yet, I knew that I had a choice.  I could either give my all to the project, or I could give my all to educating my children and feeding my family.  I knew that if I wasn't working full-time on the project it would take longer to move home and return to our normal life.

Banished to the laundry room and still content--that's why I love my toddler girl

Then came the day that we started working on the kitchen itself.  The refrigerator spent several weeks in the living room.  The stove spent a few days in the laundry room.  So did the high chair, but my toddler didn't seem to mind since she could never wait until the meal was served anyway.  We no longer had the ability to eat at the kitchen table every night.

I chose sanity.  I knowingly set aside what I knew about the links between food and health and chose to turn back to the standard American diet.  We still made wise choices for fats, meats, dairy, produce, and eggs, but it was filled out with boxed cereals, boughten breads, lunch meats, deli food, pizza, and even (gasp!) a frozen dinner or two. 

Managed to eke out some kefir and broth over there

Sadly, my children were in heaven.  I didn't worry too much about it though.  I knew that they were just happy because it was new and unusual.

Even after we moved home it took a few weeks before we fully returned to traditional cooking.  By then there were three more mammoth projects that needed to be done.  It was still all-consuming and unrelenting.  At first, I continued to need the respite of using some ready-made foods.

Breakfast o "champions" in the living room

Even after going back to a more normal food cycle, I still haven't fully transitioned back to normal entirely.  My laundry room has been filled with at least 6-8 loads of clean laundry.  (Okay, maybe that's a little normal, but still it's a little over the top.)  My kitchen table has more than the normal amount of clutter.

But the most important thing is that I'm okay with all of that.  I've given myself permission to be imperfect.  The truth is that I'll be imperfect no matter what my opinion is, so I may as well find peace in it all.

Shared with Simple Lives Thursday and Traditional Tuesdays.

Washing Laura Ingall's Clothes--An Update

If you missed the original post, you can find it here.

This has been a learning experience for us all.  My original intention was to limit the amount of work I would have while we were working on rehabbing my father-in-law's home, but I found that it wasn't so simple.

The very first night that we lived at Dad's, my toddler began by vomiting.  Thankfully we found a set of replacement sheets in the linen closets, but I had no replacements for the pajamas.  I tucked her in bed with only a diaper on, and the doubts began.

I knew going in that there were at least two shortfalls with my plan.  First, our pioneer forefathers lived rather isolated during the workweek.  Even when they did visit each other, body odors were considered a normal part of life--unlike in our artificial world today.

Secondly, our pioneer mothers did their best work while spouting an apron.  I brought smocks and old clothes to wear while we were painting, but that offered little protection from tomato or coconut oil stains.

Over the next few weeks, I found that there were other things I hadn't fully thought through at the beginning of this experiment.  First, a toddler needs a different outfit almost every day.  Life happens differently before nerve endings are myelinated, and the clumsiness that accompanies that accessorizes our clothing in undesirable ways.  Her clothing just couldn't wait until Wednesday to be washed.

We brought a few extra outfits for my toddler.

One of my older girls is an occasional bed wetter.  When we started on the GAPS protocol, even though we cheated regularly, her occasional problem began to visit us nearly every night.  Bed sheets couldn't wait until Wednesday to be washed.

We brought a few extra pair of pajamas for my daughter.

( On an interesting side note, we noticed that on nights where she worked toward the Bowman squat (recently expanded here) she was invariably dry.  Coincidence?  Maybe.  But we're keeping at it, just in case.)

I hadn't planned for growing children.  As soon as we arrived, all four of my girls went through simultaneous growth spurts.  It was almost laughable.  At home, I would just unpack a few boxes in my basement to meet the needs with either hand-me-downs or last year's clearance.  When we reached home, we were so busy that I found it difficult to find the time to unearth proper clothes.  (In fact, I found it more difficult to keep up with the laundry when we were home, since the girls wore new outfits every day, but we weren't home long enough to wash them.)  Hardest hit was my eldest daughter, whose only pair of work-worthy jeans were already last year's size.

In the beginning, I made sure that we packed our oldest, yuckiest looking clothing so that we wouldn't have to worry about stains in a work zone.  That was during the time that I naively thought we could get the job done in just six weeks.  Now, it's looking like three months, and I've come to the realization that our oldest clothes just can't survive this many weeks of constant wear and tear. I didn't blink when the knees wore out.  It irked me when my darling daughter decided to tear up her pants, in the hopes that they would look better as shorts.

When they developed holes in the back end or in the groin, I knew it was time to replace them.  The question remained though: what was the wisest way to replace them?  I certainly didn't want to bring something that looked nice.  Eventually, I found a few extra pair of pants (that were still modest) in the quilting pile and brought out replacements.  The jeans pictured here have all found their way to the trash bin now.

If I had it to do all over again, I would make some changes--the same changes outlined above.  But over all, I believe this has been a worthwhile endeavor.

Linked with Monday Mania and Simple Lives Thursday.

Washing Laura Ingall's Clothes

This is a time for new beginnings.  Not only is it 2012 now, but also we are living in a new place.  My father-in-law passed away in October, and we've moved to his home just long enough to sort through everything and prepare the home for sale.With so much work in store for us, I'm trying to simplify our lives as much as possible.

God gave me the foresight to begin our school year six weeks early, with the idea that the busy season at work may have been too intense for me to teach every day.  Actually, I was able to teach during that time, but it gives me the freedom to skip out on teaching now.  The older girls are going to be continuing some lessons in a study hall style, but I'm giving myself permission to take a full six weeks off from teaching first grade.

As for the housework, I'm trying to simplify that as much as possible, as well.  My girls have enough basic cooking skills to be able to prepare a simple meal by themselves and keep the dishes clean.

Laundry, however, is always a problem.  To be honest, I have one full-time slob who gets part-time help from her sisters.  She can single-handedly keep me busy from morning till night, either supervising her as she picks up her string of socks, shoes, coats, gloves, scepters, boas, scarves, crowns, shirts, pants, dresses, and handkerchiefs or just picking up the darn mess myself.

If I don't watch closely enough, the girls are liable to fold the clothes, put them on the floor by their dresser, walk over the top of them, and clean up everything on the floor straight to the laundry basket without ever having worn an outfit.  It's a maddening, depressing problem which I'm determined to rid myself of.

Over the last few months for entertainment my family has been reading the classic Laura Ingalls Wilder novels.  As I was thinking over simplifying our lives during these next few weeks, I stumbled across a bit of inspiration from the pioneer days.  Perhaps you all realized this a long time ago, but I must confess that it hit me like a lightening bolt.  If I want to wash less clothes, perhaps we need to own less clothing.

I haven't made any permanent commitments.  Nothing has been thrown away or given away.  During this temporary move, however, it seemed the perfect time for a grand experiment.    I had each person pack one Sunday outfit, one pair of Sunday shoes, two pair of work clothes (one to wear while we're working and one to wear while we're washing), one pair of work shoes, one pair of warm pajamas, and a week's worth of undergarments.  That's it.  Everything else was left at our permanent home.

The first thing that I noticed when I got here was that everybody's clothing fits into one drawer.  (Actually, there is one exception to that.  My husband didn't hear me when I told him that I had already packed for him, so he has A LOT more clothes than anyone else.  Since he's good about cleaning up after himself, I'm not really worried too much about that.)

My hope is that I'm able to wash everything in only a few loads.  My in-law's washing machine only holds about 3/8 cup of clothes at a time, so we'll have to wait and see.  I'll keep you posted on how this grand experiment works for us.

Read Washing Laura Ingall's Clothes--An Update.

Shared with: Monday Mania, Fat Tuesday, and Simple Lives Thursday.