I am striving these days for Order, Contentment, and Peace

Order

I have said before that I can handle a little clutter.  Well, I can, but it has to be clutter that’s in order.  Perhaps it’s because I don’t have much storage space in my old home, but I do enjoy crafting and homeschooling and bookshelves crammed to bursting with good books.  I have grown accustomed to having stuff, in order.

Even as I was cleaning the house last night, my 17-year-old son said, “A clean house is just easier to live in.”  He’s right.  I want my children to learn and use the phrase:  a place for everything and everything in its place.

• These days I am striving to keep the kitchen table clean so it’s ready for school lessons any time at all, unless of course we are eating. 
• It’s my goal to do just one load of laundry a day and enjoy putting it away fresh from the dryer.  Life is so much easier when everything’s not covered in either clean or dirty clothes waiting to be dealt with.
• I am also trying very hard to have meals planned and cooked in time for supper.  And frugal ones at that.

Contentment

Oh, contentment.  This is easier some days than others. 

Where do I start?  With my laundry room maybe?  When I see pictures of rooms like this China Red Laundry Room, well you can be sure that I am very capable of getting myself into a great big emotional uproar over all that I don’t have.  I am also very good at sucking my husband and my children into it.  But does my 10-year-old Princess of the Universe care if I have a china red laundry room?  No.  She has the good sense to care more about our relationship than my laundry room design.  Oh, it’s okay if she knows that I would like to have one, but what she should really know is that I am so grateful to have the means to buy her and her brothers clothes at all.  And the water to keep them clean.  And a washing machine.  It’s a fact that in some places women still wash clothes in the river.  So what if I have a 1950s medicine cabinet over my washing machine?  So what if this laundry room doubles as a bathroom and my dryer is on the other side of the house?  So what.

“It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman.”  Proverbs 21:19

 A little pearl of wisdom I picked up during 21 years of marriage: 

“Being content is much easier if a home is kept in order.  Keeping a home in order leaves one much less time to sit around feeling discontented.”  

Fancy? No. Clean? Yes.

Peace

Truly, this one is hard on some days and if you listen to the news it will only get harder.  Banks closing.  Groceries and gas getting more expensive every day.  Insurance woes for many people.  Job loss.  Pay cuts.  The list goes on. 

The fact is that many, many people have lived and died on this earth before I was even born, including my ancestors.  They struggled through hard and changing times, they clothed children, and ate beans and potatoes when they had to.  Sometimes they were hungry. 

I try to take in enough news to not be completely ignorant.  I find that tuning into the news on my van radio while running errands is sufficient for me.  In my home — my haven — the news rarely enters in other than an occasional discussion with my husband or a structured school lesson.  Oh, and we are not lacking in information.  The media is everywhere.  You can’t even go into our local Wal-Mart without seeing a large flat-screen TV near the check-out stand, blaring the news.  I cannot tell you how much news coverage you need to indulge in.  I am just sharing what works for me, and that is not getting eyeball deep into some type of media. 

We all only have today.  That is one great equalizer.  No one has the promise of tomorrow.  So I’ll do what I can with what I have, today.   That helps me to have peace and it gives me a lot to do in the 24 hours that I’ve been blessed with today.  There are many ways in which I can be frugal, use wisely what I have, and work on bringing order to my home so that we all may have more contentment here. 

Happy Wednesday,

Lynn