I just spent the last 2 hours cleaning my main living area. The same room where I now sit, at my 6 person dining table to type on my laptop. And as I am currently sitting here, I am watching 3 of my 5 children run back and forth between the front door and the kitchen. Jacson is building a tower made of 5 rolls of paper towels just to knock it down. Hadley and Tylyn are shooting a nerf dart gun at each other and slowly but surely my clean house is becoming messy once again. This is a very typical scene around here. As I clean up, my little ducklings are literally following behind me, “un-cleaning” everything in my path. I know most mom’s can relate. I am SURE moms of toddlers know this situation all too well. And I’m beginning to wonder if homeschool mom’s are ever blessed with the feeling of a clean house that lasts for more than 30 minutes. Like, ever? I’m asking for a friend.
Needless to say, the tasks of cleaning up with a house full of kids is an endless job. And to make the task even more difficult is the component of having a rather small house, small in terms of the number of people per square foot that is. I’m not writing this to complain about being a mother. And I am certainly not writing this to elicit “advice” on how to “get my kids to help”. Rather, I am hoping to paint a picture of what day to day life is like with a big family in a relatively small house.
(Just a couple photo's taken while the kids were doing school.)
As I said, I am currently sitting at my computer on the dining room table. Veggie Tales is
playing on the TV not even 10 feet away (no one is watching but I still gotta try to keep these yahoo’s entertained so I can write). Just 20 feet away is the kitchen and the light hum of the running dishwasher adding to the audio score of our home. And this, this is where 90% of my waking hours takes place. In this one room. In this room, I cook, I home school, we eat, the kids play, we watch movies, we toss baseballs to Jacson, the kids build forts and slide down the stairs, we discipline, we have conversations, we entertain, we live life, and we clean and clean and clean again. And right now, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love this often noisy and chaotic life in this room, the center of our home. It all happens here. We get to watch our babies take their first steps, learn new words, we get to be present in almost every aspect of their growing up. I value these years so much! And we get to be close (proximity wise) while we do it!
I wish I could count the number of times that well meaning people have asked if we feel like we need to move now that we have another baby. There is a very strong belief in America that kids each need their own room, and that homes should have different rooms for every single different activity that takes place in a day. Work should be done in a home office, school should be done in a homeschool room, eating should take place in a dining room, movies should be watched in the family room, and kids should play in the playroom. And it’s this notion that makes me want to wax poetic about how much I love our home and why having a small home while raising so many small children is the best! But, I am going to try and be a little more precise and poignant in this post. So, without much more ado, here are the top 4 PRO’S and CON’S of a small house with a big family.
PRO’S
1. Close Proximity, Closer Relationships: I’m not saying every interaction I have with my children and husband are good ones, but even the tantrums, and sibling fights are growing us together as a very close family unit. I will never forget this sage comment that I heard from a veteran mother/empty-nester. She said her biggest regret in the years of raising her children was buying the “Big House”. She said that with more rooms came more separation, less time as one big family and more complacency in the former. The spaciousness of their house created very literal space in the relationships of the family as well. I remind myself of this when we try to send a misbehaving child to their room, but there is another child playing nicely in there that has to be “sent out” just so we can administer some discipline. It’s funny to think that in a big house, we could send a bad attitude away to their room and not have to deal with the issue immediately. Nothing can go ignored or unaddressed around here. Privacy is limited so our kids only get to stew in their bitterness for a minute before they basically have to get over it. Kinda like a real life game of “Survivor”. LOL! And on the flip side we are eachother's best friends and biggest cheerleaders! For all the fighting, crying, and whining that goes on, there are equal parts hugging, kissing, laughing and playing!
2. Decorating with Intention: If you follow me on social media then you know that interior design is a huge part of our home atmosphere. I value a well designed space as much as I value having food in my fridge. And I love a challenge. When we first bought our house, I was slow to make any design decisions. It was nearly 8 months before I did any decorating projects at all. I wanted to get to know the space, see how my kids lived in it and how each room was being used before making choices that might not be the best solution for so many people in a limited amount of space. And we have had to make adjustments many times. For example, I had fully planned for Emmy and Jacson to be sharing a bedroom at this point. But Jacson just wont “move out” of his crib. So,Emmy moved from mom and dad’s room into our walk in closet. I would feel really bad about this if she didn’t think that little closet was just the bee’s knees - but she does - so were good for now! And now that we have lived here for a year I am confident in what we need and how to design the space to meet those needs. Of course you can easily apply this principle to a bigger house, but a smaller house is more challenging to design everything right, AND I LIKE A CHALLENGE! I would also prefer a small house that is appointed to the T than a large house where entire rooms go undesigned because there is just too much space to ever get around to all of it! So yes, little by little, I am excited to make my visions for each and every room of my house come to life. I’ll do a separate post for all of my design ideas in the near future.
3. More Incentive to GET OUTDOORS! I’m fairly certain 50% of the reason we love our house so much is because we have a full on park right out our front door. And our kids play outside 50% of the day. This percentage is a little less in the winter and a lot more in the spring and summer. During the long winter months, my kids go-to recess activity is racing up and down our long driveway on their bikes and scooters. Their current sphere of freedom is rather limited right now, but as they grow up I imagine them riding their bikes around the neighborhood and having the healthy outdoor childhood that I had when I was a kid! And in the summer our park has a splash pad that is on every single day. These kids may be home schooled but they aren’t lacking in friendships as they have made sure to meet every kid that frequents that playground. And sure enough, they are now looking out the windows and telling me that “so and so is at the park, so can they go and play?” I wish it were so easy for adults to make friends!
4. Less space to clean: This is actually a double edged sword right here. A pro and a con. Because we don’t have anywhere to hide our messes and we are constantly cleaning. But there is less square footage to cover, and one day when my kids are up to the task of cleaning up without my help, the job might actually get easier!??? It is this exact concept that put me on a bit of a purging mission about a year ago and has lead to a fairly minimal design aesthetic in some regards. I said Goodbye to lots of my “decor” items simply because having less things means there is less to get out of place and need to be picked up! I purge constantly! Less clothes to wear = less clothes to wash. Less dishes to eat off of = Less dishes to wash. But yes, frequency does increase! I’m still trying to get my kids on the purging bandwagon in regards to their toys, and they keep finding our “garage sale box” where Tyson and I try to hide un-played with toys.
"SIMPLICITY IS THE ULTIMATE SOPHISTICATION."
CONS
1. Little Privacy: Maybe it’s just a mom thing but I don’t remember the last time I went to the restroom, bathed or showered without another little human in the room (or all 5). Similarly, the grown ups don’t get to have nice, pleasant conversations without kids climbing all over our laps or trying to wrestle with us. This might be more attributed to the number of children we have than it is to the size of house. But the two seem awfully connected. The house will play a bigger role as far as privacy is concerned as our kids get older. At some point it’s going to become imperative that I am able to poo in private! And our 2 bathrooms may become a bit of an inconvenience with 4 girls vying for the mirror. But we will cross that road when we get there.
(real images of Emmy getting into my postpartum feminine products while I was in the bath.)
2. No where to get work done: I’ve tossed around several ideas for where I can create my own little office space as well as a home school room. But every time I’ve tried carving out a little work space in our utility room or a corner of my bedroom, I’ve realized it just doesn’t work with the reality of our lifestyle. I don’t have the privilege of leaving the room for an extended period of time without my toddlers getting into some major trouble. So any and all work I do has to be within earshot of the kids. I’m often typing while nursing a baby or holding a crying/bleeding child while I do my daily bible reading. Yep, you’ll have to forgive my typo’s, grammatical errors and unedited photo’s as lots of my writing gets limited editing or attention to details. HAHA. #reallife #justgottagetthewordsout #somanywords
3. Constant cleaning: As I said, there is less to clean but the frequency is increased with a smaller house. I am constantly cleaning. If you took a random snapshot of our house during the day you would think, “man, what does Lexie do all day?” But I guarantee that the place was spotless an hour before! I love hosting people at our house and getting everything cleaned up so that the moment that first person walks in my house they can think, “Wow! Your house is beautiful!” But by the time they leave things are undoubtedly a different story! I will have 100% of our dishes washed and put away in the morning and by the time lunch hour comes around, it looks like I have fed a small army. Our vacuum cleaner is a permanent fixture in our living room. It doesn’t not get put away because I am lazy, it’s because I vacuum all day long! And these are just a couple examples I can think of from yesterday.
4. Growing Pains: I know that our house seems perfectly fit for our large family at the moment. But I am not naive in thinking it will always remain this way. As hard as it is for me to ever want to move from our perfect little house here on the park, I know that as our children get older our housing needs might change. There will come a day when Jacson won’t be sharing a room, and when 4 girls in one bedroom might cause a few too many problems. Just physically speaking, 5 teenagers and 2 adults won’t be able to all sit on our couch and watch a movie together. And our house won’t easily host a multitude of high schoolers after the footballs games (as I imagine happening one day). I actually grew up in a big house that was always bustling with people, all the time. It was where my sisters and my friends came after school. It was where all the parties took place and I loved the “open door” policy that the house (and my parents) provided for.
I can’t say we will forever have a small house for the growing size of our family, but I fully believe that the roots we are establishing in this little house will produce good and plentiful fruits for our families future!
Side Note: As I am now finishing writing the content for this post, 4 kids are having a paper towel fight with the rolls of paper towels that Jacson was so calmly building a tower with before. #Someonesaveme #imignoringtheissue
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