31 Days of House To Home

The next two days I'm going to focus on probably two of the BIGGEST ideas that have changed the way I think about my personal response to making a home - and tonight it's all about food.

Well, truly, it's half about food and half about priorities.  You see, once upon a time I would have done just about anything to save money.  And don't get me wrong, I still love to save money, but I've realized that there are some things in every household that are the 'breaking points'.  For us, that's food.  If I spend the money to stock our house with lots of well-loved foods, ensuring that we never have a frantic 'everyone is hungry and what am I feeding them?' moment then the rest of life just seems to be that much less worrisome.

For me, this pretty much translates into lots of meat in the freezer, cheese, milk, all the spices I need to make our favourite meals, fruit for quick and healthy snacks and a few convenience foods in the cupboards.  I can pop out to pick up shampoo; I can wait a few days (or weeks) without q-tips if I have to, but when 5 o'clock rolls around and I have two shrieking children clinging to my legs I better have a meal at my fingertips and not, for example, just be starting on a lengthy process of making my own tortillas.

31 Days Of House To Home

After style preferences, the thing I've noticed that differentiates one person's home from another's is their approach to needs and wants.  They needed that big leather sofa.  They wanted that second hand shelf in the kitchen.  They wanted the thrift store curtains.  They wanted the pricey cookware.  They needed the candles for when the electricity goes out.  They needed the computer.

Each family is going to make completely different judgement calls on these things - even we take different stances from one house to another, or from one child to the next.  The point is that when you look through your house (or consider bringing something else into it) asking yourself "Want?  Or Need?" can be invaluable.

Do I want the sofa?  No, I probably need the sofa.  But do I need the BEST sofa?  Well, you know what?  Maybe you do need the best sofa.  Maybe you have a bunch of children and they're very tough on furniture and you have three huge dogs and you've been saving for a good sofa and by george you are going to buy a good sofa.  And maybe you don't.

Keeping the house from turning into a resting place for all sorts of random flotsam and jetsam is a lot of trial and error, but it's worth it.

31 Days Of House To Home

David tells a story that goes something like this...

There was once an elderly Jewish couple with many children and they all lived in a one room house.  The man and his wife were so crowded and unhappy in their little house that they went to their rabbi to ask him what to do.  The rabbi said "Go and get a horse and move it into the house with you."  So the couple went and they bought a horse.  After a week the house was even worse than it was before so they went back to the rabbi. "Bring a cow into the house, too." he said.  The couple took his advice, moved in a cow, and after a week the house was awful and they couldn't stand it.  They went back to the rabbi again and he said "Go get a pig and move that in."  Back the couple went and moved a pig into the house.  After a week they went back to the rabbi and said "This is awful.  The house is terrible.  What do we do?"  The rabbi said "Now you're ready for the solution.  Move all the animals out."

Do you see where I'm going with this?

My house is small.  I mean quite small.  Small enough that I can hear Samuel turn over in his bed at the other end of the house.  Small enough that we need one smoke detector.  We have no basement, no attic; my bathroom linens are stored in the kitchen cabinets; my washer and dryer are in the entry way.  When I say small, I mean small.  But do you know what makes it seem big and spacious?  When something leaves.

I figure I rarely really need more space, what I really need is less stuff.  And so every once in a while I get rid of something big, or even something little.  I wander around the house with a garbage bag and suddenly there's room!  Light!  Air!

Space!

31 Days of House To Home

So there I was yesterday telling you to reach out, reach out, reach OUT people!  Reach for ideas that you don't have, be willing to ask for what you need from people who have done it all before you; don't be shy about it!

But that's only Part A, really, the more I think about it.

Because you don't just want to randomly grab ideas all the time; you'll get overwhelmed.  You'll be thinking "I need to do stuff with my insane children.  I need to.  I'll go look at Pinterest.  Ohmyword Pinterest has, like, ten gazillion ideas of things to do with string.  There's a pin that describes 82 ways to scent your homemade playdough.  There are apparently 5 substances I can make with flour and oil that my children can mold into shapes.  I'm overwhelmed."

And who wouldn't be, honey; who wouldn't be?

So Part B is going to have to be collecting a group of resources around you that you can rely on to take you from clueless to, I don't know, less clueless.  I have mine, and I'm pretty sure you've got yours already if you think about it.  The magazines you turn to when you need a recipe.  The websites you think about when everything in your house is boring and you want to throw it all away and buy new stuff.  Put those resources aside because they're the ones that are going to be your safe place to gather good, solid, YOU oriented ideas when you need them.

Seven Quick Takes

1.  One of the benefits of having a blog where you open up your head on a regular basis and let complete strangers poke around inside looking for something interesting is that everything in life tends to present itself as a possible Thing To Write About.  Or at least that's the explanation I'm giving for why, when cleaning out my picture files this week, I discovered folders devoted to pictures I'd taken of cacti that dated to 2008, of assorted meals spanning the last four years, and of a step by step photo montage entitled How To Descale Your Kettle.

2.  I was stuck for bath reading the other day and pulled out some books I had ordered on a whim a few years back, Mary Ostyn's A Sane Woman's Guide To Raising A Large Family and Meagan Francis' Table For Eight: Raising A Large Family In A Small Family World.  And then I went on with my life and the children destroyed the bathroom and in the process moved my books all around the house.  It just didn't occur to me to put them away on the shelf again until I realized that my inlaws had been visiting for almost a week and what must they think??  Books about giant families scattered everywhere!

3.  I've bitten the bullet this year and started making Christmas lists for the grandparents.  It started with the realization that we now live in the world's least storage friendly house and I couldn't handle one more big, noisy toy that needed it's own special bed/shelf/accessories, but I'll admit, it quickly has turned into an avenue in which I can be controlling and obsessive and make lots of lists.  I'm trying to figure out how much information is too much information.  For example, can I say "Clara needs mittens and socks but other than that is set for clothing"?  Can I then add "Please no television cartoon characters on anything"?  Is that taking it too far?

4.  Duck Dynasty - Love?  Indifferent?  I'm astounded by the beards, myself.

5.  I'm in the market for a daytimer/organizer/planner type thing.  I'm not sure why I don't have one now, except to say that if I had one I likely would have written 'Get New Planner' in there somewhere and would now currently have one.  So there you have it.  Instead here I am in September October trying daily to remember my own phone number, when the children last ate, and if I've showered.

6.  If I had a planner I could also write a list in it of all the stuff that sorta-but-not-really works around the house.  For example, my washing machine, which has been hooked up (praise the Lord!) but with the valve thingies the wrong way.  Or maybe it's the hoses that are the wrong way.  Regardless, hot water comes out of the cold water tap.  Or at least hot water comes out of the washer when the machine is set to cold.  Is this making sense?  Anyway, from my limited understanding of such matter it seems that what needs to happen is the hoses need to be switched, except that to do this seems to involve super human strength and a wrench that I do not currently own.  So I just keep washing my clothes on the Hot/Cold cycle, which is actually Cold/Hot.  Oh my word.

7.  Do you know what my inlaws did?  They went off for a night by themselves and when they came back they brought me a tonne of food for the freezer.  Chicken breasts, a Butterball turkey breast, a lot of cheese.  It was so exciting!  Especially since my plan for the evening meal last night was 'pray'; I'd spent the entire afternoon doing visitation at the nursing home and frankly people were going to eat rice and sausages from the day before.  Everyone should be thankful that someone saved the day.

Linking up with Jentastic - go check her out!

31 Days of House To Home

If there is one piece of advice that 30-something Amy could give to 20-something Amy it would be this:

"Baby, stop trying to reinvent the wheel.  You think no one's ever served supper before?  Made a bed?  Entertained a house bound hysterical toddler for eight hours?"

I just get into these moods where all of a sudden the way I used to do dishes is clearly the worst way in the universe and I need to make a new way, a better way, a faster, more efficient, prettier way.  And if there's anything I've learned in the years since setting up my own household it's that there's nothing new under the sun; if I've thought of it, then someone else has as well.  And they've probably got a blog on it, too, and a Pinterest page with nice pictures.

This minor revelation has maybe led to a bit too much time looking online at other people's living rooms, but it's also brought me to a place where I am completely okay with going online or delving into my library or calling on a group of friends to come up with an answer to whatever question I have.

To help work together on a project too big for one person.

For craft ideas.

For meals, for anything really that I just don't have the answer to myself.

I really think that being willing to reach out and say "I don't know, but do you?" is pretty much the most important thing we can learn in making a home.  After all, we aren't all experts at everything.

31 Days of...

Over at The Complete Guide To Imperfect Housekeeping, Kelly has just started a series on 31 Days of Simple Hospitality, and I'm so excited about it that honestly my first thought was:

OOOOOOOOO!

Followed closely by: I want to do something too!

And so I give you 31 Days of House To Home!  We moved into our new house about four weeks ago now and there is still a laundry basket of slippers, air conditioner parts and Ziploc bags beside my desk, so obvi we're not going to be talking Martha Stewart type anything, don't worry your head over that.  But I am such a huge fan of making a home, just Making. A. Home.  However that works for you.  And I get upset from the top of my unruly hair to the tips of my unpolished toes whenever someone thinks that has to be perfect.  It doesn't.  Oh dear ones, it truly doesn't.

I hope you'll be inspired, of course; that's one of the reasons I drag myself away from the never ending excitement of washing diapers and baking bread and trying really hard not to yell when I step on Legos to hobble to this ancient computer and type something for you all to read.  Because I hope there's something worth reading in it.  Also it took me over half an hour to figure out how to type that caption in Paint, so have mercy on me.

There are some topics I'm just itching to tackle, and then there are some spots where I'm a little...vacant.  And so you just feel free to comment or what have you with what YOU want to think about along with me, and I will squeeze those in, too.

Aren't you as excited as I am!?