Chilly Day Musings

Sometimes I wish I had a smaller house.  "What!  What did she say"  I can hear you saying in confusion.  Yes, I said a smaller house.  With the weather cooling down we have started to have fires burning in the fireplace.  Well, the fireplace is clear at one end of the house and it seems like the rest of the living happens in the other end.  I want to be down in the nice, cozy, warm family room with the kids, but have to tear myself away to go to the kitchen and cook, or look up stuff on the computer.  My bedroom is at the complete opposite end and thus is the coldest room in the house.  If my house were smaller then it would all warm up more.  Also, maybe the fireplace could be closer to the kitchen and all those other rooms that I need to be in sometimes during the day. 

I also wish that I didn't have so much room for "stuff" then maybe I wouldn't collect so much "stuff".  I read somewhere that you can have: lots of stuff, a clean house, and a happy family.  However, you can only have 2 of the 3 at a time.  I can see how that can be true.  I have a lot of stuff and when I stress about cleaning my stuff, my family isn't always the happiest (I guess I get a little grouchy).  If I want happy kids and I still have a lot of stuff, my house tends to look as if a tornado went through it.  I'm working on getting rid of stuff, but it's hard.  I've gotten rid of a lot of toys in the last year.  The kids haven't even noticed.  Of course, they keep getting more, but we are trying to be more selective on what comes in.  I went through the kitchen and put 2 boxes of stuff out into one of our sheds.  I hung onto them just in case there was something in there I needed, but now I can't even remember what is in there, so I think I can get rid of those boxes now.  I've gone through my clothes a couple of times, but then I keep getting more and need to go through them again.  I need to go through the kids clothes again.  The hard part is that I have more children growing into clothes that are outgrown, so I don't want to get rid of them, but storing them is taking up a lot of space.  Also, Robert is afraid that I might go overboard with this getting rid of stuff.  Seriously, though, I think I could take out half of the stuff in our house and we would be just fine.

I love my house, though.  Besides, if we do end up adding to our family I know that I really don't want something much smaller, but when I look around and see the clutter, or when I'm freezing waiting for the oven to warm up and think about the nice, warm fire at the other end of the house, I do wish this place was a little more compact.