Giving Up

The above is a picture of our living room from shortly before we got our Christmas tree this year. Before I had kids I never thought I would have such a mess of toys and brightly colored plastic all over my living room, and even as the kid stuff started to pile up I was able to keep it out of this space (the focal point of our whole house) for a long time. At some point I had to give up on it though and this is the result.

I had different ideas about keeping the toys and art materials in the loft or in Echo's bedroom but it never seemed to work out, we would always end up bringing whatever we were doing to the living room. It hit home to me after reading a book on project based homeschooling (and a conversation with Eric) where they talked about the importance of keeping materials in the heart of your home. If you keep materials put away in a distant room no one will use them and then what is the point of having all these great toys, games, books and art supplies?

So I gave up on having the front room of our house be a showpiece an gave in to having kid stuff strewn everywhere and I'm totally ok with it. For one thing this is their house too, why shouldn't they be allowed to have their things where they want them? Also, when I get down about all our kid clutter I just remember that as a unschooling mom my number one job is the kid's education, having materials easily available and being available myself are the most important important things I can do for them. If these means having a messy living room so be it.

Lastly whenever I find a little scene like the one in this picture:

It makes me so unbelievably happy. Echo explained to me that this was her and her sister sailing in a boat with their animals. Joy doesn't even begin to cover what these kids make me feel :-)