We Bought a Farm: What our mud room looks like with 15 people here

 "Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up." A.A. Milne

I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE our mudroom in our house. The room didn't even exist before. It was a porch. But it has revolutionized our home. 

A quick reminder: we bought a farm that we loved that came with a house. From the outside, it looked beautiful. But the inside truly frustrated me. 

I'd lived in many homes that didn't quite "work" for me. But I knew they were all temporary, and I did my best with what we had for the time we had it.

But this time, I knew this house was, most likely, forever. And that was so hard for me.

I mean, how in the world do you build a farm house and not put in a closet on the first floor?! We live on a farm for crying out loud. Surely this is a requirement?

But it matched many things in the house pre-flood. So many things just didn't work right. They didn't fit right. We'd say: "Why do you think they did that?" or "Why don't you think they did that?" 

And then we renovated. And top of my list: a mud room! I wanted a room that could hold all the things we needed on a farm. I never owned a pair of boots before we started farming and I definitely didn't understand the need for so many coats. But weather is a key ingredient in our life here. Some days require warm boots. Some require cool boots. Sometimes your boots get too wet to wear the following day. You might need a heavy coat. You might need a light one. You might need water proof gloves. You might not.

So these pictures above feature our mud room. We have eight lockers: one for each of us, one for our visitors/wwoofers, and one for the grandparents. The Kotynski family also has a section in the back when they are here. 

The other day we had the entire Kotynski family here, our family, and two wwoofers: Jacob and Alexa. That makes fifteen people total. Believe it or not, we all ate together too! That's a lot of folks. 

However, I thought it important to show that despite the pretty baskets and the fact that the "core" of this room is organized, there are days when the room still takes a beating. It isn't going to look like a perfect picture from a fancy magazine all the time. Sometimes I get it there. But more often, the room is being used. It is serving it's purpose. I mean what do you expect from a room that has MUD in the title?

Remember folks: get organized. Get your house in gear. But it has to be lived in. If you come and visit my house, you'll find organization. But you'll find reality. The truths of our life and what that means at that given time.

Just keepin' it real,

The TP Reality

Debate vs. Reality

I keep seeing all this debate about which way the toilet paper goes on, and honestly, it confuses me, because let's be real. This is how it goes on in my house:

 

Combatting Worry

I actually just submitted an article to The Glorious Table about my battle with people-pleasing. It should run sometime in August, and I will be linking to it, of course, when it does. But I spoke about something in that piece that I wanted to share, now, on my Blog, as a "teaser" of sorts. 

In staying with my "keeping it real" theme on this Blog, I didn't hesitate to share when I began battling some anxiety and almost-taking-over panic attacks during the last few months. I can tell you that as of right now, I am doing really well emotionally. I was truly only "down and out" for about two weeks. As I have begun to heal, I can be honest in saying that this battle was a combination of: 

1. Physical: I was a bit run-down and not taking good care of myself. I needed more sleep and more quiet and peaceful times to make sure I was "healing" each day. I also did start on a mild anti-depressant again. I have not taken this since I dealt with PPD after the birth of two of my three biological children, but I felt it helped take the edge off a bit so that I could get to the deeper work of healing the parts of me that needed to heal. I do not intend to stay on this medication.
2. Spiritual: I truly believe that Satan is real, and that he does not want good things for us. I truly believe that he is using mental "illnesses" to wound Christians left and right in our world. We cannot share Christ and be the person we are supposed to be when we are emotionally injured. I believe that If I am not physically, spiritually, and emotionally strong, I cannot combat this enemy.
3. Emotional: I have been a people-pleaser my entire life. I have tricked myself into thinking I'm "beyond" it during times when everything is going good. If everyone is happy with me, and I'm not fretting, than I am no longer struggling with this. When in fact the truth is, this issue was simply lying in wait, festering under the surface. I refused to truly deal with it and put it to rest. And so whenever I became physically and spiritually exhausted, it would rear its ugly head. I really do think that the election was a major turning point for me because suddenly I could not "control" things around me -- this was something way bigger than me, and I couldn't stop the mean things people were saying. It started working me into the ground. Back in November I felt this coming on -- this breakdown -- but I didn't stop it. I just let it keep festering.

While I am on a little bit of medication to help me heal, I am really, really working to make myself stronger. I am working to be:

1. Physically stronger by getting good rest, eating well, and exercising regularly. 
2. Spiritually stronger by putting positive in me as often as I can: scripture, worship music, Bible reading, scripture memorization, bookstudy. I wanted the truth to be what I thought of first every morning. I started memorizing a passage. I made a worship playlist. I am trying to put all things God first. I still have four little kids and life is really busy, but I am filling my tiny moments with Christ. I have removed negative from my Facebook feed. I have stopped reading the news and dwelling on anything negative.
3. Emotionally stronger by surrounding myself with people who built me up. I decided to put the emphasis on the people who truly mattered. Like the famous Dr. Seuss quote says: “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” I realized that my inner core of people accepted me completely and utterly without question, and that I didn’t need to be careful with every little thing I said and did when around them. Those were the people I needed to focus on and spend time with. And I needed to stop worrying about those who truly didn’t matter.

Now don't misunderstand me. I am not saying that I have arrived in the slightest. I have a long way to go. This is something I did not learn overnight, and it will therefore probably be something I am working on until my dying day. I will continue to share my journey in the hopes that others can know, as always, that they are not alone, and we are on this journey of life together.