Small House Homeschooling

Moving back to Idaho opened the outdoors to us, but it cut our living space indoors almost in half. We were perfectly comfortable learning and living in just over 1500 sq. ft. Now we have 888.

It’s not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. It has taken some getting used to though. Here is what I do to ease the squeeze.

1. Get rid of everything I don’t use regularly

(or replace it with something smaller)

Before we moved, all the stuff stored in the garage to fix someday was immediately purged. The television and entertainment center were given away. We’ve never had cable, so the computer suffices to watch movies.

I have a going out/give away pile that grows almost daily.

2. Keep toys small and few

My son is content with one huge box of Lego that slides under his bed.

My girls each have a shoe-box sized drawer to store all their little stuff: tea sets, dolls, and ponies.

One large wicker trunk holds all dress up clothes and a basket corrals their stuffed animals.

3. Hang up as much as I can

I hung hooks by every door in every room.

Pegs in the girls’ room hold their coats and bags. My son hangs up his music bag and sweatshirts. I thought of running hooks all the way down the hallway, but I dream of shallow bookshelves there instead.

The kitchen received the same treatment. A pan rack created out of a metal shelf and s-hooks freed up a cupboard. Cup hooks screwed into the edge of the kitchen counter create a place for towels and pot holders.

Inspired by this post, How to have open shelving in your kitchen without daily staging, I hung two shelves to display my dishes and freed yet another cupboard for food.

The brackets aren’t pretty, but they are what I had.

4. Decorate with creative containers (and books)

There isn’t room for lots of stuff to set about prettily, so I consider storage containers decorations.

• Jars showcase the rice and pasta.
• Small wooden boxes are stacked on a shelf.
• Suitcases work well as storage.
• Even my pottery usually has something inside.

My coat rack wouldn’t fit behind my front door, so I put it in the bathroom.
By hanging a bag on one of the hooks, I have a container for my make-up bag, brushes, and hair accessories.

5. Solve the issue of NO closets

I”m pretty sure the previous owners used one of the small rooms as a large closet. That won’t work for us, so I found some closet shelving on clearance and pounded it into wall to hang our clothes.

It’s not exactly pretty, but it is practical. And it creates a shelf for a bit more storage.

Wardrobes would be nice, but they might make our small rooms seem even smaller. The doors would have to slide or else hit the bed. For now, I’m calling the issue resolved.

6. Try to control clutter where it happens

A beat-up wicker laundry basket sets inside the front door to collect shoes.

My girls always have something creative happening, so baskets next to the craft table trap their art supplies. The largest basket I have stores their artwork.

I’m still working on corralling the laundry, but when we get the bathroom remodeled that will help. We’ll put in a closet for a laundry hamper. (I can’t wait! I’ll have a closet, a real closet!)

7. Embrace the process

Even though our house is still ugly on the outside, the inside is taking shape. It feels like home because we have the things we use and enjoy surrounding us.

Perhaps, these walls help shape us from the inside out, too. We have so many opportunities each day to prefer one another. We stumble over each other’s messes, wait in line to use the bathroom, and work together to improve what we’ve been given. Our closeness clarifies the importance of being family.

The House God Gave Us: It’s Paid For!

While we were at camp, I asked a friend if $40,000 houses ever came on the market. He laughed. So did I, but someone told us they were praying for that very thing. I admit I sort of laughed at him, too. It was outside the realm of normal. I never expected such a thing to happen to us twice.

Instead of driving around with Dylan hunting  for our next home, I could only scan the internet. My dream house faded as the desire to be with my husband expanded. Two weeks after Dylan left for Idaho, I begged him to come back, but he announced a new job.

I made it two more weeks before I lost it again. By that time, Dylan had put in an offer on a foreclosure. A bidding war ensued, so we thought we were out of the running. Before my plea was finished, Dylan announced our winning bid of $39,900!

Stunned, I tried to mesh my emotions into what was about to be reality. How could we fit 5 people into 888 sq. ft.? I convinced myself space was overrated anyway. I just wanted to be with my love.

A few days later, the ring of the telephone ripped apart my new revised plans.

We can’t get a loan, because I’m employed through a temporary agency.

No way around it. No alternatives. We decided to wait and see if one of the people tramping through our finally finished Texas house would buy it. I was just getting ready to lower the price, when an offer came. A full price offer! If the deal went through, we would have enough to pay CASH for our ugly, tiny foreclosure.

Closing dates overlapped by one week, so we asked for an extension. I held my breath until I saw Dylan at the airport. Then nothing else mattered. Tears rattled my composure as I collapsed in his arms. Little ones crowded around our legs giggling hysterically.

It was all an act of faith. We didn’t know until hours before closing whether the deal would go through. We finished packing the moving truck in the rain. The phone was shut off, power was next, and still we waited. The buyer came for the final walk through. She almost skipped it, because of her frustration.

Our suitcases were the only thing left in the empty, echoing house. Dear friends came to help, but there wasn’t much left to do except try to avoid the depressing thought of how far away Idaho was from Texas.

When we pulled out, I noticed mud smeared on the front of the house. The kids must have put it there while playing. I wanted to jump out and clean it off, but there wasn’t time.

We were on our way to Idaho, a caravan of Deckards who were already home because we were together.

Next in this series: How does a family of 5 fit in here?

The House We Hoped For

We began the hunt as winter came to close. Every weekend our family of four piled in our auction-find Hyundai and cruised neighborhoods. Our eyes roved for red arrows pointing to abandoned houses. Pulling up driveways and surveying the possibilities became a routine that lasted for months.

Reality hit hard. The loan we were approved for was more than we could afford. As the loan officer plugged information into her computer, she laughed and said,

Oh, I can get you into a lot of trouble. Remember you are the ones who have to make the payments.

Yes, we knew that well. When Dylan and I married, we decided to base all of our financial decisions on Dylan’s income alone. We wanted to keep our options open, so our plans reflected the desire for me to stay home.

There wasn’t much in our price range. Even the $90,000 houses needed a lot of work, and for that payment the space needed to be move in ready. If we did find something that would work, it was under contract. So we gathered our hope and kept driving.

A For Sale by Owner sign compelled us to stop in front of an ugly house on a corner lot. It was a drab brick red with a lattice-wrapped porch hanging off the front. A ceiling fan with large globe lights was the focal point. I mentally noted that could be easily replaced with something less obtrusive. Because the place was obviously empty, we peeked in the front window. The entry was a long narrow room with doorways on both sides. The walls were cheap wood paneling. The floor was mostly covered with stained, white vinyl squares. Very drab, very uninviting.

Meanwhile, our son gazed at a hastily-painted, yellow plywood tree house in the backyard. He wanted to live here. He prayed that we would move to this house. I was not even interested. Then I found out the price: $65,000.

Our first tour was hard to stomach. The kitchen floor was three layers of dirty ripped linoleum. Cupboards were white with blue shreds of latex paint trying to cling to the oil underneath. The garage was full of junk, and there was nothing to heat or cool the house except an assortment of ceiling fans.

As we listened to the owner tell us about the toilet backing up when it rained, the true issues surfaced. I concluded he had a buyer at one time, but the house wouldn’t pass inspection. Then I heard,

If you take it as is, I’ll sell it to you for $40,000.

Dylan said he’d be in touch, and we walked quietly to the car.

As soon as the door shut, I blurted out,

We need to jump on this!

I was scared. We knew nothing about fixing houses. I could clean and paint, but this house needed more than a brush of color. It needed a furnace to keep our kids warm in the winter and an air conditioner for the blazing Texas summers. The septic had issues. Did that mean the plumbing was suspect, too? What about the cracks in the mortar? And the bathroom where the toilet had fallen through the floor? Was that really fixed?

A few friends with rental property assured us it was fine. Other friends wondered what we were getting ourselves into. I later heard,

When you said it would be nice I believed you, but I sure couldn’t see it.

And it was nice, eventually. That is why I took so many pictures. I knew I would need to be reminded that the sore muscles, sheer frustration, and inconvenience was worth it. Dylan had sent me pictures of our new house in Idaho…(to be continued)

My Homeschool To Do List

Melancholy settled in as the hours passed. My to do list unmarked except for what I’d deemed most important: prayer, Bible reading, school lessons, and home-cooked meals. Those things took all day. Literally, all day. What about the trail of obligations and ideas for things I wanted to pursue?

My brain tried to focus in the quiet of the night, but darkness and sleep shut out the whispers of failure. That was enough for one day.

Bug, Age 12, 2010

I am task-oriented by nature, so my spirit lifts when I can stand back and look at accomplishments. The dullness comes from my weary eyes. They glance around the room and get caught on the undone and the messes. Yes, meals are consumed, but the smiles and laughter linger. Lessons are, hopefully, stored in the hearts of my children. My little prayer book is stashed away to collect even more memories later.

This is my life now. This is what is important.

The lists in my notebook grow each day, but the time I have with these children is short. Oh, some days feel like they last forever. The truth is they don’t.

Bug, Age 5, with Baby Sunshine, 2003

Now is the time to make messes, so I brought the craft table in off the porch.

Now is the time to read great books, so I let my son devour a biography during our normal math time.

Now is the time to make a home, so I close my eyes to the missing boards around the windows and the torn up bathroom. Those things will be fixed in time, but I don’t want to miss the eternal for a nagging piece of paper. The truly important things I do in a day are hard to check off as done.

Homestead

When I mentioned how much I like old farmhouses, my husband said, “Oh, that’s what we have!” He’s funny. Our new house doesn’t have the charm I referred to.

The Homestead

The jerry-built shed is nothing like an old barn. Very few items date back to the time the nearby canning kitchen was in operation: a couple of doors and the window over the kitchen sink. Those items are my favorite. They remind me of simpler times.

Times when people stored a harvest in the cellar for winter. Times when large closets weren’t a necessity. Times when families huddled indoors for long winters. Times like we are having right now.

Our tiny, ugly house is slowly being transformed from the inside out.

The cellar isn’t full, but boxes of potatoes are stored and green tomatoes are ripening. Our bedrooms don’t have closets, so we keep only the clothes we really wear. The kitchen and living room are now a fresh shade of yellow and new carpet was installed today.

After Dylan hacked out two walls in the bathroom, we hung a curtain for a door. It will be replaced and that space made more functional. Books will come out of boxes and our routine of learning will resume.

This 1920 house was beyond my vision. I walked through imagining. Ideas completely clouded over by the last room. The choke came and my silence said it all.

Falling asleep that night, I mourned and felt so foolish. The house we left in Texas wasn’t pretty when we bought it either. It was bigger, but not pretty.

Tears in the night evaporated in the morning. Friends came to help us. Lots of friends who unloaded our moving truck and tore off paneling and brought food. Laughter came with them and then I knew this little place would become home.

(Photos to come.)