Sunday, September 13, 2015

House and Flower Bed Status

  I am pretty good at keeping our house sort of clean.

 That is to say, our floors are clear much of the time and the piles on the horizontal surfaces don't usually reach too high.

  I've been working on steadily removing items from our house, because less stuff means it is easier to keep the house in decent shape.

 Though of course we still have a whole bunch o' stuff.

  I am getting rid of all our baby clothes as Rose grows out of them.  I think we're done having children, and if by some chance the Lord blesses us with another kiddo -- well, the local children's thrift store is great.

  This morning, I went through a tub of maternity clothes.  I got rid of some items, but decided to hang on to some JUST IN CASE.  Because buying maternity clothes is a total pain.  I'm tall and pretty thin and most maternity clothes don't fit right.  It would be horrible to have to buy new ones if necessary.

I decided to show a few pics of our house today, especially focusing on our basement storage areas.



      This is our main storage room, which we call the "secret room."  It is interesting place.  We think it was originally designed as a tornado shelter because it is made from poured concrete. We live within 15 miles from a town that has been hit with 2 major tornadoes in the last 40 years.  One was an F-5!  Anyway, we use this as a storage room.  You can see it is full, very full, but there is space to walk. This room constantly need work as we pull items out and store items on shelves.  All our spare clothing is in here.  The rod with the jackets and coats is a new touch.  Kevin put that up a couple of months ago and I love it.



This is the other end of the storage room. We keep our "grown up" DVD's here.  I ponder that because lots of movies can be streamed now but not all.  So for now, we're keeping probably 50 DVD's. We try to weed out the ones we don't like.  Kevin and I both enjoy watching favorite movies over and over again.  A few months ago, I got rid of all my old Doctor Who VHS tapes.  I just don't have much patience for VHS anymore, and the library has all the DVD's. I will confess that I'm slowly acquiring my favorite Tom Baker Doctor Who videos on DVD...


  This weird little area is behind what was originally a bar in our basement.  We don't use it as a bar (obviously) and now I stick a bunch of homeschooling stuff back here. And dress up clothes.  And miscellaneous stray microwaves.  See, I wonder about the microwave.  This one (lower left corner, brown boxy thing) is usually just sitting, unused, in the basement. But every once in a while, we have a problem with our main microwave and then we really like a back up. But it is  taking up space most of the time. For now, we are keeping it.


   This is the same room as shown above, with the bar at the back.  The bar counter usually has bins for items I am going to donate.  I have a bin for items over size 5T children, and those items go to Vietnam Vets or Goodwill.  On the right, are clothes for newborn through 5T, which go to our local crisis pregnancy center.  This room is obviously not amazingly tidy, but I am proud of the lack of clutter because we work at it to keep it moderately clear.  The kids play here often, and we periodically haul out building toys.




Our kitchen this morning. I am proud of this.  This is a good state of affairs for our kitchen.  You can imagine that with 11 people in the house, the kitchen is a constant battle.

  So, these pics are ... fine.  I'm pleased with how these areas look, though they need constant work to keep them in good shape.

Now let me share my area of shame:

Outside...

Loyal blog readers may remember that a few months ago, my mom and dad came down and my mom brought spare plants from her extensive and gorgeous  and WELL WEEDED flower beds.

This was in mid June:

And this is now:




So obviously, it totally and completely got away from me.  (Sorry, Mom!)

My poor metal birds are lost in the waving weeds.

I am showing my shameful flower bed because I want to point we all have our areas of giftedness. I'm decent at keeping a house in order.  I have had people indicate that they think I'm some kind of super mom for homeschooling and keeping the house moderately tidy with 9 busy kids.

But house cleaning comes naturally, and I don't get attached to objects much, so I'm able to keep clutter down by ruthlessly tossing unwanted items.

BUT, I'm a lousy gardener. I don't like dirt, I don't like sweat, and I don't like CHIGGERS.  I'm horribly allergic to chigger bites, so working outside in the summer is fraught with danger.  I literally struggle to sleep well for a week after getting a chigger bite because of the vile itching.  Chiggers do come off if scrubbed thoroughly during a shower, but sometimes one stays on me and then, ugh.

So really, this flower bed is a mess and I'm not even ashamed of it.  I know my limitations, and I know that I prioritized other things, and that's Ok. 

In a month, the frosts will start and the weeds will die.

Next year, I hope I'll do better than this year.  Or teach the kids to weed :-).



  

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