Quick! Things are clean! Take a picture!
This is how I felt for the five minutes last Wednesday that my house was clean.
So I thought I would share and give a bit of a SlowHome update – how things are going here as we wrap up our HomespunSummer and get ready to start school, and how things are going with my Unpacking 2.0 project.
I mentioned before that we managed to empty our last storage unit days before we hit the one year mark of our move. Which was a HUGE relief. All my stuff under one roof again! Hurrah!
But of course this relief and celebrating comes with a price. And that price is hours and hours of unpacking and purging and rearranging.
When we packed up and moved a year ago we were moving into a rental house. We had no idea what type or size or style of home we would be moving into permanently, so instead of purging on that end of things, we just packed it all up and moved it, lock, stock, and barrel.
So now, twelve months later, the time has come to decide what to keep, what to give away, and what to sell.
I love this process. I hate this process.
I think we have finally settled on an arrangement for the living room. Sorta.
Settled as in the couch and coffee table will go here, but the entertainment area, well it is still up in the air. Right now we have the hutch and the chest taking the place of the work bench we had been using.
Sweet Man likes this arrangement. I am not 100% sold (I worry that it looks too cottage and not enough farmhouse, but I tend to over think these things,) but for now it stands. The only other place these pieces could work is the in the guest room, and that room is current our main storage room, soooo for now these will stay here.
We moved the two white chairs to the no-mans-land between the living and dining area which created a nice little sitting area by the chalkboard. Now I can sit and watch Sweet Man cook me steak while I enjoy a nice Pinot Noir. Why didn’t I think of this arrangement, months ago?
And finally we hung the chalkboard addiction collection down the hallway. When Wylie, fresh home from camp saw this, he said “Wow! This looks like a real house! There are things on the walls!” Who knew he was even paying attention?
The big chalkboard will be where I post our weekly schedule and daily chore list, right where everyone will see it each morning and evening.
The smaller ones boards feature a variety of family mottos etc. I am thinking I can change them up seasonally – Christmas hymn lyrics in December, love notes in February, favorite movie quotes in the summer…
There are still SO many boxes to unpack (way too many that are labeled “misc.” and frighten me with what they may contain,) and looking at the hallway I see all the remodeling projects still to finish – baseboards, light fixtures, painted door jams, and new doors.
But these changes, despite how many other things crowd my to-do list, these represent progress.
And this is the point of living slow. When we go slow we are taking them time to cultivating on the inside of our home what matters, and leaving all the comparisons of the world outside. When we live SlowHome intentionally we find ourselves becoming slowly grafted to both our physical surroundings and each other.
So, we are making progress in our settling in. Slowly, but surely, one box, one decision, one change, at a time, And because of this, Preservation Acres is becoming our home and not just our house.
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