We are plugging away at our home organization project. I got a copy of Simplify Your Life which Cheryl recommended.   So far I have been diving into one such book every other month.  This one was quite nice. Some parts, particularly the beginning about organizing time, were worded a bit awkwardly to me. But lots of food for thought in practical areas.  The prayers at the ends of each chapter are definitely as nice as Cheryl described.  Those will be saved since I expect I will be praying for the fortitude to persevere with this project for some time to come. ; )

The author suggested listing your hot spots and estimating how much time they would actually take to tackle. This is my big bugaboo.  How much time?  Um well if I had tackled them before I might know!  Or if I didn’t have half a dozen children needing to be fed, clothed, bathed, educated, and taxi’d precisely while I attempted the hot spot tackle. Being that I do it sorta changes things!

Apparently I am not a good estimator anyway. I figured the current project – paper files and piles – would take about an hr per file drawer.  To which I now can only say BWA-HAAAAA!!!!  Perhaps make that a day each to sort, purge, and refile into a new container. In all it took the better part of a week to do five drawers which hadn’t been touched in yrs some of them.   All the needed papers are now re-filed.  There are still a few stacks awaiting permanent storage.

This has been very gratifying though! I had seen a review of Easy File Solutions on a large family blog. (course, which one escapes me now!) I was intrigued by the tabs – pic at left. They use a straight line filing method so all the stand up tabs are lined up behind each other vs zigzagging across the tops of the files. I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the logic or the system so I googled straight line filing and found a flash tutorial on Smead’s site.  Nothing earth shattering but it made sense. The eye follows a straight line better than others which is why the phone book is set up in columns. You can memorize colors easier than letters also so they color code categories like yellow for education, green for finance, red for medical etc.  The Easy File people also have a second tab on the right for the first file in a category. I can’t tell you how nice it is to look at the files now!

Fwiw I used the hanging files with the clip on tabs instead of the ones Easy File uses.  The others tend to fall over or slip down if they arent tight in the cabinet. The hanging files are much easy to adjust tabs on also. I did not purchase the Easy File set. You can buy colored tabs to place on the hanging files in the office supply section of Walmart etc. Honestly once you choose your category colors I can’t see that a premade set would be necessary.

There is still more work to do. I have a lot of softcover stuff on the bookshelves. Those will be boxed til the new shelves are finished but at that point I plan to put all softcover and booklet type bks into upright magazine holders which can be labelled more easily. If it doesn’t have a title on a binding then it may as well be in a black hole once it hits a shelf. I am also getting mag holders for the kids school books. We have used crates in past yrs but they tend to wreck the books and cause lots of rifling through during selection. Open shelves are nice but the soft covers tip or bend.

Finally there is the binder project. I am collecting all my articles, printable school projects, and craft patterns etc into topical binders. The thrift shop tends to have an abundance of empty binders cheap. So I am grabbing those each trip and starting to gather all these ideas into binders.

It is errand day here. Thought you might like to go on a field trip too. Country Living has a lovely Parade of Rooms to peruse.  Better Homes and Gardens has a great slide show and galleries as well.  Lots of inspiration there!

   I am working on updating and rearranging my sidebars to include our favorite curriculum picks and things we love to fill our home with. The Prairie Home is finished and the math has begun.  Over the next few weeks I hope to have it all uploaded.

   The Prairie Home Picks include things we own or collect, namely my Blue Willow dishes. Nothing says country and heritage and warmth to me like Blue Willow on a crochet tablecloth. : )  Guess that is the midwest childhood in me. I was very pleased to find an inexpensive source for sets. Allen will see this on my wishlist lol! The image uploaded here is from our China unit this summer. The girls and their friends each got a paper plate and blue marker. After reading the Blue Willow legend they proceeded to create their own.

   The curriculum picks will be largely self teaching and inexpensive as well as limited to things I have actually used over the yrs.  I am so glad I am a pack rat in that sense because so many books that I bought and shelved are now standbys in our program. I think life was overwhelming when we first began with the medical issues and constant moves.  In looking back over these books I would come to find they were delightful and incorporated them into our days.  Not ALL of them at any one time mind you. Each year we have subjects that are more notebook based and a few that we hit with worktexts.

I just got a flyer in the mail from Shutterfly showcasing their new memory book formats.  WOW!  these have come a long way! You can choose a size all the way up to 12 x 12 in hardcover even.  The pages come out glossy and professional looking. The new formats provide all sorts of options from page backgrounds to font choices. I was not so fond of the kiddie pages but if you look at the general, travel, portfolio, and journal sets you will be pleasantly surprised by the sophisticated, artsy designs. There are watercolor, distressed, and vintage patterns available. Under the baby book section there is a nice washed floral. Under the travel heading there is a vintage set that would look very nice with black and white heritage pics.  Under wedding there is a pale blue toile-like pattern which would look lovely as a baby girl’s scrapbook. So do look around all the sets before you settle on one.  Then, you can choose a border color for the pictures so they appear matted. Some, like the journal book format, allow for lots of text to tell your stories.  And nary a glue stick or scissors required. <g>

Now, these aren’t cheap.  You can expect to pay around $50 for a finished, hardcover 12×12 book.  Those of us who scrapbook the oldfashioned way will be quick to point out that this is still likely a savings over a traditional book. If you have been procrastinating about jumping into memory books this is a great way to get your feet wet! The year Brendan was born – the same year my husband retired from USAF, started a new career, and we started the dairy and chicken projects – I did very little scrapping.  That Christmas I made one of these books and have been very very happy with it.

The piano has arrived! It was a happy day for all of us.  Asher spent the better part of the day glued to it.  Truly though even the youngest players sound incredible on it. I noticed the arrival dovetails with the newest Loveliness Fair, but I didn’t have much to add this time because we just emptied the living room last week in our first phase of the re-ordering of this space.

I am still working through House Thinking and thinking it is making me do. Yesterday’s reading was about Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and how he designed the spaces to orchestrate his visitor’s experiences. Much like an artist incorporates a visual triangle or a flow for the eye in his paintings, Jefferson arranged stimulating artifacts around the room to create a script of sorts. This whole concept fascinates me. It took me til yesterday aftenoon to figure out why. Essentially this is the same principle that Maria Montessori used in the Casa for the children. I have long heard from Montessorians about preparing an environment condusive to independent learning. Unschoolers often discuss ‘seeding’ the environment with books and materials. Jefferson prepared his public spaces to bring his visitors into a reflective, contemplative state of mind, in order that their conversation and experiences might have his desired impact upon them.

This has made me look at our spaces, not just our ‘learning spaces’, less as merely physical areas and more as a spiritual and emotional challenge. Perhaps what we are dealing with is not a superficial arrangement of *stuff* but rather a profound effect upon those present. Maybe we can actually influence the types of things thought about in these spaces and the attitudes people have about spending time in them.

I have struggled of late in developing a vision for this room. My own inclinations ran up against contemporary ideas about what is comfortable and how people live. We have heard time and again that rooms should reflect lifestyles.  While that is true to an extent I think an underconsidered aspect of room design is how the room may affect the lifestyle.  Lady Lydia had a recent column that discussed respect for the home. She relates that before recent times people rarely lounged or reclined on their public room furniture, particularly when guests were present. It was an affront to respectability and general mannerliness. I believe it was Sherrie who was saying she had similar motivation in reworking her learning space. Her son candidly told her that the reason the children weren’t taking care of that room was because it didn’t appear nice enough to warrant such care. While that isn’t the answer most of us want when we just would like them to CLEAN it up it does beg the question – are we arranging rooms that are likely to produce feelings of respect and honor and pride or rooms that encourage lower responses?

This whole train of thought has given me the nudge to run with my initial gut feelings about how our spaces should be set up.  We moved the entertainment center to the old schoolroom this week. We have yet to take down the remaining bookcases in there but that is next.  Falling down cases do not impel children to care for their books properly.  The tv seems to generate more reclining and eating – two things we didn’t want in the living room. What did we want?  A thoughtful space that might encourage lofty thoughts, peacefulness, and reflection. Appreciation of finer things – such as music and good books, both of which will fill this room in the coming weeks.

So for now, we have lots of potential….and very little else lol! But this blank canvas is inspiring!  Already there is a change in tone and all those who enter this room slow down a bit and take a deeper breath. That is a good start.  We listen to each other play beautifully in here, we read in here, and we pray in here. Next the windows will be addressed.  We need to control the light and heat coming in and onto the piano in the afternoons. We are planning on cream for a color to replace the taupe. ditto for the couch.  Eventually a wall of bookshelves will fill the one empty wall, floor to ceiling. For now it is potential.  But potential is good. We have a vision. The rest will fall into place.

As to where that tv went? Unfortunately not into the dumpster as was my vote. ; ) In an adjacent room we have created a cozy sitting area for less formal family gathering. We underfilled this space as well hoping to make it easy for the children to help maintain it. The floor is wood so if a popcorn kernel or dozens land upon it the sky will not fall. Still we chose to fill the space with family albums and souvenirs from Allen’s trips abroad and his military shadow box.  These things all define where we have been together. The colors are taken from old houses we have had. Everything was salvaged from other places which was thrifty yes, but also grounding.  It seems to be working.

I am excited to finish this book and am grateful for all that it has made me consider about the emotional attachment we have to certain things and the impact our spaces have on our children for long after they leave them. I hope that we can work more diligently to address these nonverbal messages we are sending them through our home.

There’s a mouthful hey?   But worth the visit over. Today the theme is that frugality is a state of the heart and elaborates about eliminating the sources of our material discontent. Hopefully it isn’t too terribly hypocritical to link there after dropping the wad we did on the piano. : o   But, I will say, that piano was made possible by lots of homemade bread, thrift store shoes, and doing without.

While you are visiting the farm check out One cup Two cup  Here she articulates her rejection of separatism in childrearing and education while giving a small glimpse of a day with a toddler.

Back to the Clean Sweep here!  24 hrs to go for round one!

   We did it! We bought the piano. The most beautiful thing we have ever jointly purchased outside of our home. The thought process involved in deciding where the beautiful piano would live, while here, has led us to contemplate some serious home re-doing. We were already heading down that road but this gave us the impetus needed to push through the final hard jobs.

   It seems like after living in a house a while we can see where things could be set up more efficiently. Previously however, we would get to that point and think well, we are going to pack it all up next year anyway so just deal with it for now. Annual overhauling is just overwhelming. We are at that point here and still dealing with a few spaces that never really got handled when we moved in. We had two rooms to completely finish off when we arrived (ie they were subfloor and drywall) which took a good deal of time. Then there were some major repairs to be done.  The barn and outbuildings were full to the rafters with junk and construction salvage. It took 3 pickups of the commercial roll-of dumpster just to get it out. Add in a deployment, a baby, a new career, another pregnancy, and a couple boys moving out and you start to see how we get three years into the project in need of some catching up and overhaulin.

   Some things we realized in assessing our current set up:  We never ‘do school’ in the school room. Mud needs to stay in the sunroom and never get as far as the entry hall (gotta move the outerwear storage), The tv is a pain in the living room due to a wall of windows. Also – food and drink gravitates to the tv like flies on….. sorry I got carried away <g>…. it gravitates there let’s just say. Hence – the piano and the tv should not live in the same room. Books COULD live with a piano. Books should NOT live on the ten year old Walmart particle bd shelves anymore.

   So with all that in mind we began today. The entry is now cleared of shoes. When the books come off the WM shelves in the schoolroom the shelves will move to the sunroom and house the miscellany that ends up there – outerwear, toys and shoes. The schoolroom bks will get boxed til we can install wall to wall to wall shelving in the living room, where the piano will live…..after the floor is replaced. There are French doors leading to this room so it can be safely closed off when there is a babysitter or visiting children here and hopefully the piano will be safe. The tv and a couch will live in the old schoolroom. the everyday schoolbooks and manip’s will be in the empty kitchen cabinets – yes we have empy kitchen cabinets here!  I still can’t believe that! We do school in the kitchen anyway.

   There is a hall closet nearby full of games and puzzles about to be purged as well. They never truly should have moved here.  They had missing pieces and had been poorly maintained but I felt such a sense of guilt over that lapse. I couldn’t bring myself to watch so many dollars worth of materials go in the trash.  So they came along only to be stored in their incomplete, hence useless, state instead. Stupid! Pride will need to step aside and we will have to face the music and toss them.  Clean sweep right?

  Asher has already started disassembling the school room. I am nearly done clearing the clutter from the kitchen cabinets so the school supplies can move in.  Tonight the carpet cleaner comes. While we intend to replace the living room carpet these other jobs must happen first and we can breathe easier with it cleaner. Whoever thought of white carpeting anyway???

  That explains in advance where we will be for the next few days.  If you are so inspired, the links from the previous entry on organization are a great start. In particular I LOVE Mrs Catherine’s Xanga site. (ck her left sidebar for room by room plans) I stopped there this morning to psych myself up. I don’t think she intended her whole house cleaning plan to be implemented in a matter of days but hey, I am having this baby in a matter of weeks and small people can wreck havoc in piles and stacks. So this will be a sprint vs a marathon. Wish us luck!

   Welcome to all who are visiting the Living Lives of Loveliness Fair today!  Elegant Simplicity in the bedroom(s) is our focus this time around. Unfortunately for too many of us the bedroom is one of the most neglected spaces in the home. Few people outside the family have reason to venture into them and it is easy to put off ‘dealing’ with the bedroom while we attend to more public spaces.

   Still, time and again we are reminded that this room, above others, deserves more thought and attention. For those of us who are married it can serve as a retreat from the outer world. For some of us, this is the room where we birth our babies. For many more of us, it is the place those babies are fed and cuddled and cozied. Regardless of marital or parental status however, the bedroom can be a special place away from the noise and demands life places upon us. Everyone needs a place of their own to rest and renew. Those goals are to be kept in mind when working on this space. I wouldn’t venture to make sweeping statements about HOW to do this. So much depends upon what each person considers soothing. For one it may be comfortable clutter – loads of pillows, knick knacks which bring fond memories, family heirlooms. For others a sense of peace is better induced by open spaces and clean lines. To each his own! The fair entries run the gamut. Take a look:

Leonie lives in Australia where she has raised her seven sons with relaxed sensibility. Since they are an unschooling family she sees each room as an educational space. For more rooms see here and here.  This one and this one show school storage in the bedrooms.

   Cheryl and her husband recently built a beautiful new home. She ponders if this room will receive more ‘decorating’ or if in fact it is perfect as it is – as I tend to think it is!

   KC’s bedroom is currently in borrowed space. They are waiting and praying for her husband who is currently deployed. She reminds us that “home” and “retreat” can mean many things. What is most important is that your space is nurturing to those it houses.

   Elizabeth’s bedroom is awaiting its newest occupant – baby number 8. She shares how nighttime parenting has influenced her bedroom design. Like so many of us, she learned the four-times-a-night shuffle – the dance you do while trying to nurse a baby who sleeps in another room – before settling upon this arrangement.

  Dawn will tell you her master bedroom is neither the most simple nor elegant room in her home. If so, I can only imagine how simply elegant the rest of the rooms are. This is quite lovely. She includes some compelling quotes about the wisdom of addressing the needs of this area of the home.

   Cay relates the surest measure of true elegance in a bedroom – “the assurance that one can escape into it, lie down, and feel completely at peace.” There is a goal worth shooting for! Here you can see the space leading to her room.

  CC has abandoned futile attempts to create canned beauty and found her own definition based on her family’s values. I had to laugh at the silk flowers since I too kill the real thing! Hey, they don’t call this ‘simple’ for nothin’ folks!

  Sarah showcases both her room and her children’s. She explains how the items in her room have helped her through difficult times and their presence there is a reminder of that heavenly aid.

   Donna  Marie discusses children’s rooms, how their family furnished them and how she keeps on top of the closets. It is wonderful to hear other people articulate their systems and decision making!

   Lisa remembers her own childhood and what her parents’ room meant to her. She writes about what her own master bedroom has means to her family and how that factors in to what that room contains.

     That brings us to the ranch. We have been guilty of neglecting the bedroom over the years. Prior to this home, the bedroom was often the holding area for whatever didn’t fit anyplace else. It was a challenge just to get the public rooms in order before the next move and we rarely got as far as the master bedroom. In this house we have made considerable headway, mainly due to our room’s exceptional size. This was a blessing to us since we usually keep our babies close by for the first year and a half until they are ready to bunk with a big sister or brother. We now actually have space for both babies – Brendan and the new baby due in Dec. A good thing, since B shows no signs of moving on just yet!

    My favorite things about this room are the double French doors, the big windows, and the ceiling. The ceiling is pine and vaulted and makes the room a serious retreat spot for us.

   This doorway leads to the master bath. Another novelty for us. We had grown accustomed to bathrooms where you could practically touch all four walls at once. Of course HAVING such a bathroom and actually using it are two different things. I can count on one hand the number of times we have used the deep tub. : / Sounds really good at the moment….

   Another bedroom we are pleased with is the little boys’ room. It was the first home which we could actually paint. And paint we did! The walls are denim blue and the furniture is barn red. The furniture and accessories are all found items. The beds originally belonged to my mother and her sister growing up. The dresser was a garage sale find. The paint unified these separate pieces. The curtains were once in a living room of ours. In this room we tied them back with rope and topped them with bandana fabric in true cowboy fashion. Outside the window is the barnyard with a view of real ponies. It doesn’t get much better than that when you are six <g>.

  Doesn’t that just sound idyllic?  At least until I admit that I could not find the pics on cd in time to post them here. Guess that makes me miss the deadline to my own fair lol! My Gram had a saying for girls like me – "She will be late to her own funeral".  Ah well. You would think I could just take more pics wouldn’t you?  But alas, my little cowboys were playing in said room and somehow pulled the ‘simply elegant’ curtains down accidentally. These are rooms that are lived in and ultimately the people who live in them are more important than the ‘stuff’ that lives there. They will go back up as soon as life slows to a dull enough roar and I promise to upload then!

  For grins I thought I would throw in some related article links:

bedroom decor ideas

bedroom cleaning

Go clean your room

organizing kids’ rooms

bedroom basics 101

Mrs Catherine on decluttering and keeping up a master bedroom

ditto for kids rooms

and more decor

   In closing here are some words from Homeliving Helper, a source for all manner of good things, about homes prior to the 1960’s:

“There was really no such thing as "decorating" as we know it today, with styles or colors matching. A hand braided rug was placed in the middle of the living room floor. Paintings on the wall were usually bought from a friend who painted, or painted yourself. Often, people would take pictures out of magazines and frame them for a wall hanging. Black and white family photographs were especially treasured. A picture of grandparents would be displayed on the mantel.

Bedrooms were places that were also kept in order. We each had a bed, some blankets, and maybe a little dresser. We took time to fold our clothes and put them back neatly in the drawers. (You can imagine the astonishment of that generation of parents, when the modern bedroom came into their view–with stacks of clothes in a corner, and loud rock music blaring from huge speakers.)

We knew the purpose of the dwelling place. It was not somewhere to flop around in and create a mess and disrespect. It was something to be proud of. Our parents told us that if we respected the house and the home, we could expect to spend many happy hours there.”

  I hope we remember that memories are made not from decorating magazines, much fun as they can be, but from the things that happen in these spaces and how we feel about being in them. Thanks for joining us!

What to do about that 330am wakefulness of late pregnancy.  Why scrapbook, silly! Course the kicker is your head gets so full of more and more ideas you might find your 330am project turns into 430am project. Even if you make yourself go back to bed images of new page options may float before your eyes keeping you from sleep……  Ah well. Sleep is overrated lol!

Here are some pages from this week, at least one of which was a shameful Cathy Zielske scraplift.  The new Simple Scrapbooks (as well as CZ’s bk on the sidebar) has a good Microsoft Word tutorial. I am playing around with the wordart and text box instructions. Wow!  Really easy, even for techno-challenged ladies like myself. And the savings… think of all the do-dads you no longer need once you have all these fun fonts and text  directions to make backgrounds with.

Starry Sky will be hosting the next blog fair in the Living Lives of Loveliness series.  The goal of these fairs is to encourage others in creating environments of simple elegance. The focus of this fair will be bedrooms – master, guest or children’s.  How do you create a warm, restful, simply elegant room?  Send your links to me by email (kimallenf@elpasotel.net) and I will post them next Monday!

Here is a list of upcoming fairs: