Toys

Ok guys, it’s been a while. Sorry.

What have I been up to…what have I been up to?

I feel like I’m in a transitional phase. Maybe it’s the season change at hand. Maybe it’s the fact our house is getting closer to being done. Whatever it is, I’ve been in a kind of mental shift.

And I feel like that shift is taking up at lot of me right now . I’m less focused on the house overall. And more focused on our existence inside it. (And no, not in that poetic, getting my priorities right, it’s about who lives here, not the space…sort of thing. That’s nice. But that’s not what I’m talking about it, really.) I’m thinking through how we want to live inside this space. I want to try and make it a really good fit.

One of the biggest things I’ve been looking at is our Toys.

We used to live in a tiny 700 sq ft duplex, before we moved here.
To be honest with you, the size of that place often blessed me more than negatively impacted me. (I just hated that I couldn’t paint it or change stuff like the bathroom mirror and whatnot -- we were renting.) I’m someone who likes a place to be figured out. And so small makes that easy. I liked having a limit on how much stuff we could have around. I liked being able to vacuum my entire house without unplugging the vacuum! (Seriously that would entertain me and bless me every single time!)

In hindsight, the best part of that place I would have to say is the fact that our toys just could not overtake us. There was not enough room form them. We had to keep them in check. We had our toy cabinets and if they couldn’t fit in there I would either store them in the garage (I had maybe two small bins I would rotate out) or give them away. I adored that people would believe me when I told them we can’t accept many gifts, especially not big ones (You know the big toys like play lawn mowers, play grocery carts, kid sized play cars, play kitchens all those things…) People would see our place and agree in a heartbeat that we sure could not house those toys!

This room would get messy every day, but I could handle cleaning it, a good nice clean, every single night.

Since moving to our house here though…it felt like overnight the toys had doubled. I remember taking one night off from painting, right after we moved in and feeling just totally defeated by how much we had. It took me well into the night to get them in order (so the girls could stop asking me where it all was from the move.) I really just wanted to get rid of them because I couldn’t believe how much time and energy it was taking me to just sort of get them back into some kind of order.
And over our time here, we’ve been given lots more. It’s totally love motivated. Everyone is gifting us and it’s so sweet. But it’s more than we need. And we’ve been given all those big toys were didn’t use to have room for. (They were being saved for us, for the day we had the space.)

I was trying to come to an emotional place were I could accept them, figure out how to live with them and how to get them into a system I could function inside. Like how can I keep our house clean -- not just the toys, but the dishes and the bathrooms and the laundry AND the walls that still need paint and such…

Eventually I just had clarity.

I can’t.
I can’t do all that.

I wrote that post a while ago I called Balance. I didn’t keep up with anything I said I would in there.

I’m made in a certain way. And I’m always tempted to try and change myself to fit a mold. But the mold usually doesn’t fit me right. And so all my plans just go to waste because I can’t keep up with stuff that doesn’t work for me.

I finally got clarity on the toys.
I finally saw who I am inside that kind of space.

This might come across as selfish, but I mean it in a loving, best for all of us way.

I need less stuff.
We need less stuff.

Here’s the deal: Who I am is a person who loves (and needs) a beautiful environment. I adore design and colors and pretty.
BUT I also am a person who has a very hard time cleaning. It’s just entirely effortful and not in my nature.
 I’m also an all or nothing person, so to clean, I want to deep clean. I have a hard time surface cleaning.

Essentially that boils down to me needing to have a few gorgeous things around, and that’s it. That way  its beautiful. There is less to clean. I don’t need to clean it as often. And when I do go to clean I can deep clean easily because there is less of it to manage.

I’ve been noticing that about myself for a couple years now.
It includes my wardrobe. My dishes. My decorations (holidays included.) I want it all pared down to the right amount (small but not sparse) of lovely things.

Via

This quote is so perfect. And ideally I’d love to have every thing be BOTH. Useful and beautiful, beautiful and useful.

I’d been trying to leave toys out of it, because I thought maybe that was selfish.

But I’m starting to realize a couple things.
1) It’s not selfish. Or wrong.
2) It’s the only way I’m gonna be able to find my stride as a mom.


Let’s talk about #2 first.
I’m constantly drowning in the day to day stuff of home life. Keeping house -- all that it includes, none of it is my strong point. And some of that has been made even harder than it would be -- like I’m not so prone to making meals everyday, but then add in the fact that I have picky eaters who are allergic to tons of food. Rough stuff.
The additional total-toy-chaos in my days it literally sends me over that edge. Not in like I yell and freak out. But in the “I give up” way. I can’t clean up the toys because I know they come right back. And i know it takes me hours to fix. So why not leave them a mess most the time.
But if they are a mess all the time so is my mind. And then my mind has no room to think of dinners free of allergens. And if we aren’t on top of food we aren’t really on top of anything. And so I feel more defeated, and even less inclined to clean up because what’s the point.


Now back to #1:
If I’m a better mom based on less-toy-stress, everybody wins --- on pretty much every level of our home life. So that can’t possibly be selfish when you get down to it.
Also,
Kids don’t need a million toys.
My kids don’t actually play with MOST our toys.
What ends up happening is, they riffle through all the stuff they don’t want to to find the couple things they do -- and all the extras wind up EVERYWHERE.
Literally most our stuff is just a waste of space.

A couple weeks ago I went through all our toys, at night while the girls were asleep and got rid of TONS.

My cleaning process.
You so can’t see all the mess in this photo -- it over takes the WHOLE enormous room.

The girls didn’t notice.
Not at all.
I actually didn’t give it away yet. I just set it aside, planning to give it away in a bit. I wanted to make sure they didn’t beg for any certain thing that was gone.
So far they haven’t mentioned anything.

We still have LOTS of toys.

I honestly plan to keep doing this until it almost hurts. But I don’t think it will actually hurt.

My kids like playing with sensory stuff. One of our favorite things to do is play with beans or to play with rice.
For some reason that I can’t understand, this is AMAZING fun. They could sit for hours and just kinda play like it’s a sand box, but better.

They also love crafts. I feel that once I have our toys and house under control we will have more time, mental clarity, and house-order to do crafts regularly.

I feel that less toys will equal more creativity.

My plan with the toys to to narrow them down to just a few fantastic (and visually lovely) toys.

So just keeping a few beloved ones we have now. But most of our current toys will be gone (slowly over time, so to make it less emotionally challenging). And then replaced with just a few great open ended play toys like blocks and doctor sets and such. Things we can use our imagination for, can be played with for a long time, but don’t have tons of clutter that go with them.
Blocks have lots of pieces, but they all go together and don’t need sorting -- you just throw them back in the bin. So that doesn’t phase me. (But I’m so not ready for Legos -- the small ones -- please don’t make me keep track of those yet. Dear LORD please do not give me legos yet!) (And one more aside: I don’t like puzzles because the girls get mad at them and then just put the pieces in purses and lose them. Then the puzzle is ruined. If you lose a block or two the world keeps spinning.)

     I plan to get rid of most our big toys (which actually have tons of small parts like play food which make way too much mess) (and these big toys are also very unattractive -- bad colors and designs) and replace them with a few wonderful and very versatile toys that will last well through ages ranges.

My plan is:
 In one corner of our family room, next to our fire place, I want to build a doll house to fit that space. One that is rather YoungHouseLove-esque (They are bloggers who made an adorable big simple doll house…see it here.) Only I want to make ours a bit off scale, so that when we hit Barbie age they can fit in there too. (I’m not ready for Barbies yet -- too many pieces for them to lose at this age. But honestly -- I’m so pumped about Barbie re-entering my life. I LOVED playing Barbies!)
Having one big awesome doll house will replace 4 less than stellar plastic doll houses we have. (How do we have four!?)

Our family room furniture is different now. (I need to blog that!)
But here you can see in the spaces on the side of the fireplace I’m talking about.
P.S. The room NEVER looks this clean anymore.

And on the other side of the fireplace I want to take out our play kitchen stuff and replace them with a baby doll corner. The girls are SO into their baby dolls right now. I want to give them each a doll crib. (Right now we have one plastic one they have to share, which for 4 and 2 year olds they handle well, but it does get exhausting monitoring that. They each need one so both baby dolls can get good rest. :) I think we will build some along these lines. And I already bought two matching doll high chairs off Varagesale.com. (I couldn’t believe there were two! How perfect is that? And they are really cute.)
And since the only part of our play kitchen that gets used is the sink. (Ruby likes to fake fill cups there.) I think we will make a super small “kitchen” which is basically just a sink. To go in that corner.

This I feel will be a major family win.
Because the girls get some major toy upgrades.
And I get less stuff, but stuff the stuff we will have will be stuff I think is nice to look at. (Read: Mental clarity.)
Also the girls will get to enjoy a cleaner house just due to the fact it won’t be able to get so dirty.
And when they get asked to clean it won’t be so daunting. (To be honest I want to throw worse fits than they do when I think of cleaning those toys we have right now.)

I keep mentally going back to this post I once saw on Pinterest. A mom took away her kids toys. All of them. And the kids were way better for it.
When you read the follow up post, it sounds more like long term they just have very limited amounts of toys. Which is basically what I would like to achieve.

The only hard part I foresee is making sure we don’t get given tons more toys again by people who are just being loving.
And giving away stuff that people spend good money feels awful. (I’m totally fighting guilt through this whole process of mine.)

I’m still trying to figure out how to handle that.
But one thing I liked from those posts I just mentioned was the idea that they like to spend money on experiences instead of things. So instead of toys, a trip to the zoo. That kind of thing. I think we could ask for things like that for gifts.
And that author mentioned for birthdays its not about the toys but the fun of the party.

So we will see.
I don’t expect this to get fixed over night. And I don’t think it will be a cure-all to my life.

But I’m excited about it because I feel like I’m finally just agreeing to be myself even inside motherhood. I’m not letting who I am scare me into worrying I’ll ruin my kids.

So that’s one thing I’ve been doing while not blogging. Figuring all this out and making big plans for it.
(I think most of this will come to pass this Christmas, with my paring down what we have more and more until then.)

This past week I also went through our clothes. The weather kinda made me. I was not looking forward to it at all. We have WAY to much! It’s been amazing how much we’ve been loved on with clothing, we’ve hardly had to buy anything for our girls.
But when our drawers are overflowing, I just stop again. Too much laundry. Too many choices. And the girls end up wearing pjs over a few days in a row. (Until too much spaghetti sauce gets on them.)

SO I pared it way way down. And what do you know, the girls have been dressed almost every day since. And laundry isn’t overtaking my world either.

Wonders of glorious just-enough.

Anyway, besides that….

We’ve been doing a bit of house stuff here and there. Like adding in our baseboards in the living room.

I’m still working on getting the girls room done. They are getting matching pink beds! We are all pretty pumped about these!

And we are gonna be re-doing our roof on the sunroom this weekend. So…big stuff. Blake is sort of nervous to do this ourselves, but we have some great help coming, including people who know what they are doing. And when you get a quote for having one small part of our roof redone (the smallest and easiest part of it) for close to $4,000 (and maybe even more because of they extra contingencies they throw in) DIY sounds SO SO SO much better!!

It’s gonna be awesome to not have to run in there with buckets and towels every time it rains anymore!

So I’ll keep you filled in on all that stuff!! More pictures and stories. Exciting stuff!

Windows

The first person I met when we moved into our new house, was our neighbor across the street. She’s an older women. She saw us coming and going…came out and introduced herself, told us a bit about her and her family. She has two full grown kids who never had their own kids. (I’ve never met them, but I think they are past their child-bearing years.) Her husband was in the house, he doesn’t come out because he has parkinson's disease.

She used to paint and decorate cakes. He used to work at the university. “His mind is still sharp as a tack. And he’s so strong, he wants to get better. He wants to keep going.”

They sounded like us. Art and Science married.

She seemed so nice. And I felt an ache to hear about her husband.

We’ve interacted with her more than any of our other neighbors. But that doesn’t mean we’ve spent tons of time together.

One night I was getting back from the grocery store and she was pulling up and getting her mail. I hadn’t seen her in a while so I called out and said Hello and asked her how she was.

We walked towards each other and she told me how her husband was in the hospital. My heart just sank for her. I hugged her and she cried.

We’ve talked a few more times.

A couple times about kids.
One time resonated so deeply.
Another time I felt a bit at a loss for what she said and how it applied to me.
(I over think. I over thunk it.) (Is thunk a word?)

And every morning I watch her drive away to go visit her husband -- a man she loves and she’s not sure will ever come back home. And every night I see her pull up to her house to sleep. And sometimes in the in between I watch her walk up her driveway. She hobbles. One hip seems crooked. But she’s strong. She keeps up with her garden -- this lovely dream of a flower bed -- across the street from my weed ridden disaster of a yard I hope to some day make lovely too.


On Instagram I follow a mom, new to her empty nest.
The images she captures to fill her space -- lovely and longing.

The deeply rooted picture I have in mind of my neighbor walking her driveway, and leaving and coming.


When it get’s very loud in here on days when I haven’t slept and I want to make everything stop…
I end up looking up from my chaos into the empty windows across the street.
And it dawns on my with stark clarity, it really won’t always be loud in here.



It’s been a hard transition into motherhood for me. I don’t think I’m naturally a mother. I like to mentor. But I’m not sure what to do with small people. It’s been harder and different than I thought it would be. I haven’t been the mom I envisioned I would be and that started the day the stick told me I’d have a baby.

I think since my kids hitting age 4 and age 2, that I’ve started to feel a bit like I can tread water now.
I wish I had know from the get-go: that the new-ness is just newness -- it’s not my forever state. That they do grow -- and that’s a good thing (not a wistful disaster) because then you can function again. It would have helped me have peace in the midst of when I thought I was downing -- because I would have known it’s not a forever ocean.

But now that I can tread water, I’m really excited to enjoy motherhood.
I’m getting a real kick out of my kids now. (Not every moment is enjoyable -- and there are a bazillion mundane moments all day long but) I’m just feeling more and more blessed lately by them.

And while I’m very sad for, and am praying for my neighbor, I’m grateful for her and that and her empty windows are in view of mine. They bolster me with more patience to try in the now because I know I don’t get to keep now. It hits home, because of our two homes, on one street looking at each other from different places.

My neighbor’s house outside our kitchen window

I want to stop trying so hard and start just loving it before it’s gone.

From Trash to Treasure -- The Octagon Table

A few months ago I landed on the best curb alert of my life! I got TONS of great free stuff in one fell swoop. And since our move had us going from 700 sq ft to 2700 sq ft (I still think I’m dreaming most days) our new house was essentially empty. So…the more free stuff the better!

So I brought this funny little guy home that day not having any real set plan for him. Just knowing I had lots of room for him to “roam."

He was pretty gross, and then he sat in our garage getting saw dust all over him for months. 

I had to give him a major scrub down. And I even had to run a butter knife in those grooves on top to clear them out.

But since he was literally trash, and smelled like he used to live in a musty smokey basement…and I have girls with allergies. I needed to needed give this guy the full overhaul.

The Reading Room

This has been my life for longer than I actually know. I lost track on how long ago we ripped open the ceiling (to check on/fix water damage), or how long this room has been covering our whole first floor in drywall dust.

Jasmine had refused to walk under the open part of the ceiling because there were some cobwebs, and she was sure spiders would fall on her.

But the good thing is…this is all in the past. The room is a room now. And I can’t even begin to tell you how wonderful that is. I mean, my brain has snapped into place all of a sudden, since this room became a room. I’m like on this whole new plane of thoughts -- it’s basically "want-to-craft, want-to-create, time-to-paint-furniture" because suddenly there is that much more clarity in my head, much less weight over my head to get this house done. (It’s not done, but it feels so much closer. The entire downstairs has been painted now.)

But anyway, let me flash you back to where we were when we bought the house.

Looking towards the sunroom, with the living room to the left.

Random Little Post on Social Media as a Mom

A month ago, I realized Facebook was eating my brain alive. It’s not the first time I’ve realized this. But it may be the first time I figured out how to handle it well.

During previous moments of Facebook-overload I’d always think I needed to delete it from my life. This time I realized I could just check it’s screen once a week. A wise move, since I’d like to be able to keep in contact with lots of people I’d otherwise lose track of.

Since having a month off (for the majority of the time) I feel like me. I don’t have all these other thoughts from everyone I ever knew (and all the people they feel they need to link to, or quote from) chanting through my mind.

And I’ve started to see how Facebook (or insert social media here -- Facebook is basically the only one I’ve used) has made my parenting experience entirely harder and more dramatic than it as ever needed to be.

Last night I realized it was my Facebook day and I hadn’t been on Facebook at all. So before bed I thought, "I’d better check in with 'the world’.” So I asked for some input on where to buy mattresses (since we need to upgrade from our toddler disarray we’ve been in) and I checked on what was happening.
It was a lot of stressful stuff! A lot of stressful stuff I’ve been living my life in fullness without (read: it’s all stuff that doesn’t effect my life really at all. Well in some ways it might, sort of, but at the same time I’m living just fine not knowing it, so it doesn’t really).
And one stressful thing I saw was a link to a lists of fights you “will” have with other moms. I read it (mindless Facebook action) and thought to myself, “I’ve actually never had one of these fights.” (I was expecting to see other ones that the link listed.)

Now I need to make a disclaimer: I’m a happy introvert. (As in I’m happy to be one.) I don’t venture forth into society a ton since having kids. And when I do I don’t try very hard to strike up conversations with moms I encounter there (like the library or the park) because I don’t personally like conversations that don’t lead to deep friendship -- and I don’t expect to life connect in that way there. So because of my personality I might just be avoiding all sorts of mom fights -- I don’t know. But that said, I’ve never had a mom fight with a mom I am sitting with in person. Maybe I’ve totally lucked out in this regard, I don’t know. I mean I haven’t had a blast with every mom I’ve ever met -- but I’ve never fought. Perhaps sensed judgement from them -- but even that has been pretty minimal (and kind of repetitive moments from some people I grew to expect it from and just ride off).

So last night before I went to bed I started to think about this article and why I didn’t really relate to it exactly. And it dawned on me that any and all mom fights I’ve experienced have been online. Either watching it unfold on Facebook. Or reading articles or blog posts or comments.

And I realized that had I not been on Facebook before and during motherhood I would have had so MANY (many, many) less parental doubts in my head. Facebook was the place I learned about every single mom hard-stance there is. Had I not had Facebook I seriously doubt I would have ever learned anything about anything that plagues me when I think I’m not mom-ing right.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think I wouldn’t have had doubts. I don’t think it would have been a walk in the park. And I DON’T think being a mom would have been easy (it's SO not.)

But I wouldn’t have had all these opinions in my head that fight.
     I read so many mom-stance articles before I had kids (thinking this would help me transition into motherhood when the time came) that I literally thought insane thoughts when I came home from the hospital with Jasmine. (Let’s not forget the power of baby blues and hormone brain.) But I actually thought people might be trying to listen in on my baby monitor and call the police to take my child away if they could hear her crying because that would make me an unfit mother. (You may have guessed that most the articles I saw posted were attachment parenting based.)
      I wouldn’t have had to see who’s baby beat mine or didn’t beat mine at milestones. I wouldn’t have bellies to look at next to my belly and see who’s looks the best.
     Or who has on pants that zipper already post baby (or lost all the weight or fit in old jeans.)
     I wouldn’t have links screaming “I’M DOING THIS MOM THING RIGHT! THE OTHER WAYS ARE WRONG!!”
     I wouldn’t even know there was labeled ways to do this mom job.
    And I would rarely hear that now dreaded, by me, sentence “It goes so fast.”(Always said with regret…which is why it’s not helpful.) Because I really only hear that online. I’m not sure I’ve actually heard it since becoming a mom in face to face interaction.

So I came to the conclusion that without social media inside my mothering world, I’d just get up every morning (whether I slept that night or not, not knowing who did and didn’t get a full night sleep the night before) and do what made sense. No professionals writing articles to me on why this or why that. No links to another article debunking the one I just read. I’d just look at my children and use my gut, and I wouldn’t have other voices telling me a thousand other things. And I could also just put on whatever clothes fit, and not worry if my hair and makeup are mommy-and-baby-selfie ready.

I could just live. Live without thinking so much.

Or at least thinking about other people’s opinions so much.

Social media is not a evil thing. It has brought me lots of good that I haven’t addressed in this post. Without it I know I would have had a harder time with being alone with an infant, I would have felt more vulnerable initially. But I would have turned to the phone more which I think would have been healthier.

I’m not gonna regret my first four years of motherhood and the time spend on social media during them. But last night, taking a very honest look at them, and then spending just a small amount of time imagining them with out social media was extremely eye opening.  I just found it jarring to realize these thoughts in full last night.


We aren’t all made the same. And others may find social media a extremely supportive experience as a parent.
But I haven’t.
And so I look forward to moving forward, sticking to my guns on much, much, much less of it in my life. (But I do plan to keep it in my life. Like I said, I do see some benefits.)

I am feeling so much more at ease with myself, my mothering style. My kids even.

I feel more like the me I was in high school or early college (which -- well, was before I was on any form of social media -- either because it wasn’t invented or I didn’t have it) but the me I was back then was very confident in myself. And the me I have been since becoming a mom has been full of doubt, fear and anxiety. I thought it was due to mom stuff. But I think in a large part it was due to so much “sound” and so many opinions I’ve taken in via a screen.

I love the internet. And I get to learn more than I’ve ever been able to learn, quicker than ever before because of it.

But I’m working on the balance of it.
And what things I want to let it teach me.

And, I think this is for more than just me.
I’ll be modeling this aspect of my life very clearly for my kids no matter which way I end up using it.
Finding a way to use social media in a way which allows peace in my heart, is going to be key for them learning how to do the same.