A New Normal

Our family of four is currently home most of the time now, Monday through Friday. Besides an occasional errand or random appointment, none of us leave the house much on weekdays. Our house is no longer serving as just a place to live. These four walls that surround us are serving many new purposes. We have a new normal.

Many new purposes

It has become Jamie’s office. He doesn’t goes to a separate building to work. It all happens from here.

It functions as Anika’s school. She takes part in remote learning live meetings from a desk in the living room and completes the rest of her first grade work in various spots throughout the house.

It serves as a preschool for Jacob. He learns letters and engages in sensory play on the floor while his sister writes sentences and does addition near by. He practices sharing while playing with her in their playroom.

It has become a veterinary nursing home for our geriatric pug. She sleeps in a bed near the action.

It’s a cafeteria to feed four people and a dog multiple meals and snacks all day long.

A year ago…

Last year at this time our house felt empty. My husband was working long hours while renovating a rental property with any second he had off. Anika started full day kindergarten and was gone from 8 to 4. We had just put Rocky, who was a bit shy of 15, to sleep. I missed him so much. The house felt cold and lonely. I didn’t want to be there.

But currently…

Now our home feels fuller than ever. With this fullness, aliveness and energy comes mess. It brings chaos and more to manage. More dirt, more to clean and more to put away.

When I think of last year at this time I’m embracing every second of our current life…but I am also so glad we have simplified our lives in the past five years. If our home wasn’t decluttered at the start of this, we wouldn’t be thriving right now. We would simply be trying to make it through each day.

If you want to have less to manage you need to have less

My biggest revelation on this journey to live an intentional life has been this. If you want to have less laundry to do, you have to have less clothing. If you want to have less dishes to wash, you need to have fewer dishes and if you want to spend less time putting away the toys you need to reduce the number of toys you own.

That’s it. Magic. But not really. There isn’t anything magical about it. It’s very simple and easy. I just hadn’t been able to wrap my brain around it when our home was so full of stuff.

If we set up systems in our house that allow us to be lazy, we will be lazy. If we own an excessive amount of dishes and cups we will continue to reach for another one from the cabinet instead of rinsing out the water glass we used an hour ago. We also do not give them the care they deserve. Dishes don’t make it to the sink when we know we can just grab another out of the cupboard.

The systems that allow us to be lazy in the moment end up creating much more work for us in the long run.

Not perfect

Our house is not picture perfect clean all the time. Absolutely 100 percent not. Quite the opposite really. I’ve learned to let go and change the way I view the messes.

Since we have less, it’s not going to take the time it once did to reset it. I know we can get things back to good quickly. This quote by Rachelle Crawford says it all, “Minimalism doesn’t mean always tidy, it just means easily tidied.”

“Minimalism doesn’t mean always tidy, it just means easily tidied.”

Rachelle Crawford

I also see the beauty in some messes now. For example our play room is messy, or through my adult eyes would be seen as such. But it’s not due to excessive toys mindlessly strewn everywhere. It’s a magical land that Jacob and Anika created using MagnaTiles, stuffed animals, figurines, legos, blocks, train tracks, pieces of cardboard, paper and felt. It’s a game they created and play happily for hours together. The goal in all this. The end result in reducing their toys and being selective in what comes into our home to encourage creativity and collaborative play has happened. We’ve arrived.

I feel so blessed that we discovered this way of living and it’s allowing me to see this time when our nest is full in such a positive way. Had our home been crammed with useless inventory for me to manage throughout all of this I might not be able to maintain a state of such gratitude for our life.

Our home is no longer full of unnecessary stuff. It’s full of incredible people and it’s wonderful.