Get real

In an attempt to be real, even though I don't care to share my name and where I live, here's a bit about my real life.  It's messy.  Always very messy.  Having five kids and being a pretty laid back housekeeper makes for a messy house.  I do typically clean it up with the help of the kids Monday through Friday but, Monday through Friday the house is still always a mess.  I guess when you live life that's how it usually goes.  On weekends, I don't clean much.  There just isn't time or sense in it when your better half is a tornado.

Yesterday I showed you some of my mess and I did get it all spic and span including doing two full loads of dishes and then being left with another sink full after dinner.  Here's how it all looks this morning.

This is taken from the hall.  The kitchen, dinning, and living area is about 22' by 20' total.  It certainly doesn't sound ideal for a family of seven but it works for us.  It makes cleaning pretty easy too.  We have a rule that says no toys downstairs (except for the baby and toddlers toys...they only have a few.)  That helps more than any other thing we've ever tried.  This area is a bit of a mess right now but I bet I could get it tip top including dishes in about 30 minutes. 

Here's a view from the other side by the fridge.

I'd love to cover the couches and chair in a lighter colored fabric (white!) to lighten up the place, but that won't work with my family due to the cost of such a project and having children who live outside in the dirt all day every day.  I'd have to make a no playing outside rule and that just wouldn't be any fun.  Plus they'd be inside all day bugging me.  Ha!  I love my kids and I love having them around me everyday, but mine talk a LOT (nonstop...to me) and it's not usually about anything I'm real interested in, plus, they make messes.  I really enjoy my quiet time while they're outside.

As I said yesterday, we're building this house with cash so it's far from finished because we don't have and abundance of the green stuff laying around or an abundance of time to work on it.  We just do what we can when we can.  That ladder will eventually be replaced with a ship style ladder and it leads up the the kids room.  Right now the entire second floor is unfinished, the walls and ceiling are even paper backed insulation but some day it will be two bedrooms and a half bath...hopefully. 

Once the baby wakes up from her nap, I'll clean the house real quick.  My bedroom is already done and the laundry is all washed and waiting to be folded and put away so hopefully I can keep it fairly clean this weekend.  My two youngest girls are sharing a birthday party this weekend which is good motivation for me to stay on top of things.

We homeschool too and this year my one and only boy will be starting kindergarten so I'll have three in school.  I'm looking forward to it.  We plan to start on Tuesday, I like to stretch summer vacation out as long as I can.  As far as curriculum goes, I don't use any particular one.  I just mix and match and use what I have and that has worked for us so far just fine.  My oldest is starting sixth grade.  I'm not sure what I'll do once she gets into the harder math but so far I've found lots of resources online as well as some pretty good work books from places like Mardel's book store.  Wal-mart carries some good work books on several subjects for kids up to grade four (I think...can't remember for sure what grade.)

I hear the baby babbling in bed, so it's back to work I go!

Before and after

I didn't do any housework yesterday so I'm a bit backed up.  It rained all day and I just had zero motivation.  Today, however, I'm rebounding so I'll give you a little before and after.  I must preface these pictures with this:  Hubs and I are building our home from scratch with cash and we're a one income household and we sit right on the poverty line of annual income.  We're pretty thrifty and have very little debt (grrrr...I wish we had NO debt) so we don't feel poor but these pictures probably paint a very different picture to plenty of other people who live more "normal" lives.

Kitchen with a day and a half worth of mess:

This is the skeleton of our future kitchen cabinets and counters which are, for now, covered in contact paper.  I used one entire role that was $5.00 or maybe it $5 and some change...I don't remember.  Not the prettiest, but functional.  Back to the mess, scary, I know.

After:

I didn't notice that water bottle on the floor until I added the picture to blogger, but it's put away now.  The dishwasher is full and running and I have a little better than a half of a load left in the sink but things are looking a whole lot better.  Since I don't have cabinet drawers and doors, I've covered a couple of the holes with a dish towel and a small embroidered table cloth that used to belong to my grandma.  It's better looking than the junk behind the towels.  I also don't have a pantry right now but have plans to add doors to a book case that's just out of sight and to the right of the dishwasher.  I use it to hold my everyday dishes for now and keep the food on the temporary open shelves and lower cabinets.

Next up, the stove. 
Before:

Aaahhhhh!  Of coarse, it isn't original to the house being that the house is less than a year old and the stove is from the fifties.  It's a shame any time it gets this messy because it is such a cool looking stove.  We bought it for $70 and hubs refurbished it with new wiring, burners and insulation as well as a good scrubbing.  Eventually, we'll have a half wall behind the stove (right now a love seat backs right up to it but don't worry, it's not a fire hazard) and we'll build lower cabinets on either side.  For now, I have a small white credenza on one side that is being used for food storage and a small white sewing table on the other side, so I do have some extra works space around it, but I actually do ALL of my cooking and prep work right on the stove.  It's HUGE!  It has a lot of space in the center between the burners.

After:

Pretty stove, huh?  The door on the right is the oven and all the others are drawers, so there's lots of storage for my cookware and bakeware.  (The living area's a mess too, but I'll do a quick touch up as soon as I'm done here.)

Last, but not least, the table.
Before:

We're a family of seven and the table comfortably seats everyone for now (baby goes in the high chair.)  There's a bench next to the window that three kids can and often do sit at and four chairs, a couple of which are strewn about the house, sigh.  I'd love to paint it white and paint all the chairs and bench a soft accent color or strip them down to bare wood.  Put that on the to do list too.

After:

Bad picture, but I'm in a hurry.  Sorry.  It's clean and two year old is having a little snack.  I still need to round up the other chairs though.

In other news, hubs and I (by far, mostly hubs) finished the electric fence for the goats and we even bought a calf from one of the neighbors the other day and tossed him in with the goats too.  Yipee!  I didn't think that would happen this year.  We've experienced a lot of losses with the chicks (seven so far) and have twelve left...probably all roosters.  Oh well, Saturday is chick days at one of the local farm stores so we're going to get a half a dozen or so more then.  The laying hens laying strike is over and production is better than ever because the younger hens have also started laying.  We now get 10 to 15 eggs a day!  We love eggs!

There's  a mole in my garden ransacking the place.  It's tearing right through my turnips and radishes that were looking so good!  Gotta dig through the barn and find the mole trap.

Back to work I go!

Have a good one!