"Good Housekeeping" Need Not Apply

I began going to La Leche League meetings when Aimee was about nine months old, and I remember one of the pressing questions I had was about sleep, and how to get any of it with an active, growing baby. One of the Leaders in the Group at that time gave me some helpful suggestions about bed and sleeping arrangments, adding that "your house might not look like something out of Good Housekeeping, but you'll get some sleep!"

I am not sure if she was right about the sleep thing (haha!), but about our home not looking like anything like Good Housekeeping, well, about that she was exactly right. I remember this Leader's comment occasionally when I walk into my bedroom now and see the king size bed - on the floor - and beside it, a double mattress that is supposed to be for the two (and sometimes three) kids who like to sleep with us but whose growing size makes things a little crowded. Usually a parent ends up there instead, sometimes with a child, sometimes not.  In fact, sleep happens (or doesn't happen) all over the house, and usually not in the intended areas for each person. So there are lots of blankets and pillows all over the bedrooms, and not very much is color coordinated. (Or if it is, like in our bedroom - sort of - a couple of bold, sweeping marks from permanent markers have kept us humble.)

And so it is in other areas of our house, where function is so much more important than form. Nothing in our house would be featured in any magazine - unless there's some kind of homeschooling, attachement parenting  magazine that caters to the very small percentage of people with whom we identify. I like some kind of order, and touches of beauty here and there, and I do think there is intrinsic value in those things. But still, we live here, learn here, work here, discover here, grow here, socialize here, argue and make up here...We have friends over, but we don't "entertain." We like to have a pleasant environment, but we don't want just to sit around and look at nice things. We definitely don't want to have things so nice that we have to fuss at little people all the time and make sure those people don't bother or break those things. We can have "things" later. Maybe. Right now we have lots of growing, active people, and lots of ideas floating around.
We have Bible flashcards and alphabet flashcards all over the dining room walls, along with a couple of Latin prayers, a list of English kings, and the table of elements. I printed out some verses (you know, mostly subtle things about loving each other and regarding each other's needs about your own) and tacked them on the walls upstairs by the bedrooms. Someone gave us a wine cabinet a few months ago, and it currently houses some art supplies. In the living room, my couch is waving its last white flag of surrender, and I've finally accepted the fact that I can't eke any more time out of it. It will be nice to have something without rips. But still, I find I don't even want anything too nice, because I know it will be subject to the not-so-gentle treatment of growing boys and a dog (the girls tend to be less hard on furniture).

So...I find that twelve years down the road of our family journey, we certainly don't have a "Good Housekeeping" sort of house. We do have lots of life, love, and learning, though, and all kinds of other things of eternal value, so I'll take that trade-off any day. Which is what I remind myself when I wood-glue another chair or find a new drawing on the wall...