It’s hard to live in a Pinterest world….one of shiny new things, imagery of perfected home tours, and snot-free kid photos where the children apparently don’t create drool in their mouths because there isn’t even a slightly damp collar in sight. It’s hard to not feel the slightest bit of confusion or jealousy or feel like a bit of a failure. It’s perfectly normal to feel SOMETHING when you see those spaces….even if it’s just the natural inclination to compare or contrast the difference with your own situation. One of my friends told me that she was asked by someone that doesn’t know me personally if our house was “actually that way all the time”….my friend laughed at the question and replied “no….they are normal”.
And that is what I want you to know about us…we are normal. Maybe not in all ways (um, there are pictures of my family dressed up like rednecks on the internet, ya know?!)….but when it comes to our house…yup, completely and utterly and messily normal. It’s the reason we haven’t posted a house tour in so many years….because with four little boys, it would surely look different than our staged rooms in our house tour page. Which is why I am so excited to have Chelsea from the blog Two Twenty One ask me to share some of my spaces in their natural state and explain why they look the way they do.
Welcome to the Bower Power edition of the Keeping it Real Home Tour. I will be sharing some random shots from around my house as well as my perspective on what I see. This might be a little TMI but we are going with it 🙂
First up is the playroom. It was actually one of our half-year resolutions (perfectly normal thing to make resolutions in the middle of the year) to keep this room cleanish. So this is super clean. The cleanest cleaning-up-job that the kids can do. You might see toys on the ground, shelves with randoms and picture frames that are obviously not supposed to be leaning on the kids art table. But what I see is my 3 year old learning to clean up his matchbox cars. I see a space that we are SO FREAKING LUCKY to have. A room COMPLETELY DEDICATED TO FUN AND TOYS.
Next up is our Garage. You may remember it looking something pretty perfect in our reveal. But lately it has housed leftover projects, a ton of tools, some upcoming projects and a lot of randoms. You may see a dusty floor and a bunch of boxes but I see opportunity past and future. I know what is in those boxes – leftovers from our Haven experience…where we had the biggest honor of creating a legit booth for a legit company that we legit love. It may look like a messy garage….but to me, this looks like success.
Our dining room is next and this is exactly the state it is in right this moment. Filled with boxes, random table junk and no art on the far wall. The boxes on the left are new pendants and the boxes on the right go to the Pedraza kitchen.
No it’s not exactly pin worthy. But it does make me excited. I have big hopes and dreams for the lighting situation in our dining room and I know once we have a free moment to figure it all out, it will be a space I love. And the Pedraza project is something that we are RIDICULOUSLY excited about. To see a friends house come together and create a space you love for people you love is priceless….so you may see a whole bunch of Target boxes but I see the opportunity to serve others….and that is WAY more beautiful to my eyes 🙂
Ugh…my office. It’s constantly rotating messes. The desk can not stay clean to save it’s life. The plants are struggling to not die. My mom even told me….Katie, I feel really sorry for your plants. Like I spend time thinking about them.
Those were actually words in her mouth. And this is while she is watering them…because she knows I forget.
The desk is always loaded down with fabric (I just can’t stop!) and photo equipment (I just can’t stop!) and yes….things for my fifteen month old’s first birthday….that we just haven’t stopped long enough to celebrate. In our defense, he was sick frequently this summer so we didn’t want to throw a party for a sick baby. You may see this and think #momfail….but I think I GET TO THROW MY KID A PARTY! Some people don’t get to do that! And I have dust on my desk crap because I get to play with my kids and bake freakin’ delicious cookies (not from scratch but dang it, we added the eggs and butter!). And I have photography stuff everywhere because I get to capture my kiddos whenever I want. And so yeah…it’s not perfect looking but I know that it’s fugly because other things…well, they just can’t wait.
The most messy room in the house has to be our kitchen. Nope….our zombie fridge still doesn’t work. And we don’t have time to fridge shop because our weekends are filled with baseball and family and a very exciting birthday party (hopefully very very soon!).
The desk is just something we CAN’T get a grip over. Jeremy likes to pile. I like to keep every scrap of the kids homework. My mother in law likes to send us duck visors. It’s just always our problem area. If my house was a female body, this is it’s thighs. And ya know what…I’m okay with it. Sure it bugs me. But on the flip side….we don’t have any collection agency bills in that pile. That’s awesome. We get to send our kids to school for FREE. That’s awesome. We have parents that care so much about our family that they send BOXES them of fun things all the time. That’s beyond awesome.
And yes…our sink….it’s always in a state of overflow. Jeremy says that it’s because I am a pan user. I like to use a lot of pans when cooking. He jokes that I could be making a one-pan meal and use seven 🙂 #overachiever
But the simple fact is – THAT IS A BOWL OF MEAT. A freaking large bowl of protein…boston butt to be exact….and we get to eat as much as we can stuff in our pork-lovin faces. And those dishes? We have a magic machine that does the cleaning for us. And I get to look out those spider-web filled windows at my kids playing in the backyard.
Speaking of kids…this is our cleaned family room….complete with one pant less kid and one half done ottoman and a kiddo eating a deck of cards (fiber anyone?!). This is normal. And yes I would consider it clean. It’s not completely destroyed and at least nobody is crying. The thing is – its not picture perfect to anyone else but me….and to me, it’s pretty much amazing. I mean…just look at the joy in his face over a two of hearts. Nobody gets that excited over a deuce!
Last but not least is our garden. A long lost project that we spent a great deal of time on before it screeched to a halt. There were plumbing issues. And when I say plumbing issues…I mean…we don’t have plumbing out here. So the grass we had removed is grown back in, our garden beds were never finished and the fence was never built. I never even got around to planting the tomatoes. One rogue plant was stuffed in the corner of the bed and somehow grew through the pot into the bed and now is fruitful.
I’m gonna end our tour on that note….a rogue tomato plant who just didn’t give up. Isn’t that the message with these messy-real-life tours? To me….it doesn’t matter how your garden looks….whether it be imperfect or picture ready….you can still thrive. There will be weeds to pull and plumbing issues and sometimes it looks like everything else in the world around you is progressing. You may feel stuck in the corner, with broken appliances or a cluttered kitchen but let me promise you….through it all, there is fruit. There is progress. There is a silver lining (or a juicy red tomato) at the end of this thing. These homes we have…they are meant to be lived in….they are here to SERVE US. To give us a safe haven. To give us a spot for a bowl of meat or rice or ramen. To give us a place to lay our heads and rest. And most of all…these places we call home….they are wonderful not because they are pinterest ready but because our hearts are. Our perspective can change how they look and make them more than beautiful…it can make our homes PERFECT.
To see even more home Keeping It Real Home Tours – check out these awesome blogs who are also participating!
Chelsea from Two Twenty One
Jenna from Rain on a Tin Roof
Chelsea from Making Home Base
Taryn from Design, Dining, & Diapers
Charlotte from Ciburbanity
Love this! Life is beautiful and messy. We have kids art exploding on our walls, too. I don’t even try to make it pinterest worthy. We just tape it right up, wherever the little artist wants…and I love it 🙂 Oh, and if I could make it just ONE day without stepping on a leggo or train, I would consider it a total win.
I follow several design blogs and this is the best blog post I have ever read. Thank you for keeping it real. It is wonderful to see all the beautifully staged blog posts, but your home is beautiful because it is lived in and you love your family. Great post!!
Katie, thank you!! I love you!
Love that you keep it real. A messy house is a happy house, a lived in house <3 All the smiles!
Thanks for keeping it real Katie! I also appreciate your positive & grateful attitude…whenever I get down, instead of complaining, I try to see the positive side of things. I try to think of at least ONE thing about the situation to be be grateful for. After awhile of changing your mental attitude, it gets so much easier to not sweat the small stuff! Anyways, have a great day 🙂
Thanks for sharing your perfectly imperfect home. You are so right that we get to live in these wonderful houses full of things that we need and many things that we don’t need. Life is a gift and people always come before things and houses and even gardens.
FABULOUS!!!! Thank You for keeping it real!
I LOVE this post SO much!!! Thank you for sharing.
We recently moved out of our house that we painstakingly remodeled with a flurry of projects to get it on the market. I finally had my Pinterest house for a few short weeks. But it made me sad, here was a great looking house and it didn’t feel like we could live in it. I was constantly nagging at the kids to keep it ready to show.
I’m very thankful I had the opportunity to realize a Pinterest house isn’t the way we want to live.
I still love Pinterest for all the inspiration and ideas. I’ll always have my after photos while my family and I enjoy the space.
Thank you for this. Seriously. Sometimes you get caught up in the Instagram worthy pics, and think “How do I compete?” and then you assume everyone’s home looks perfect all the time, except yours.
Thank you. Thank you!!!!!!
This post is amazing. Makes me feel better about how crazy my house looks with 3 boys under 3!!! Thank you for this post!!!
Love that you’re keeping it real! A messy house just means you’re living life. I think my house has only looked “perfect” a handful of times and for a short period of time only. Haha!
Katie, thank you so much for this.
Thank you all. I really needed this. I’ve been so depressed and unmotivated about the condition of my house for a while now.
You are just amazing! You genuine and honest and truly demonstrate that it is ALL about perspective. And having a grateful heart. Thank you for that reminder!
This weekend I didn’t cross a thing off my To Do list, but we played hard and ate well and went to the fair! And that is what really matters. Maybe today I’ll paint? Maybe we’ll play?!
Thank you for posting this! My house is a mess too!
Plus – I literally JUST bought those dining room chairs from Target. I’ve been eyeing them up forever and kept waiting for the right promotion for the right price…. so I just scored them for $50 each. And, I love that I can see them in a more natural light. Now I can’t wait for your lighting update in the dining room…because that’s next on my list!
Here’s what I see… I am WILDLY impressed that you have prepared food and have the crockpot out. Our sink looks identical, but sadly dinner is in the freezer waiting for the toaster oven! I’m also validated by the paperwork in your kitchen… I was JUST snapping our piles and wondering how the heck people can survive without piles. I cannot. I looks like a pretty loved space! xx
Thank you so much for being so open and vulnerable! It’s easy to keep this stuff hidden out of fear of judgment from others, but it’s so beautiful! I really needed this! Just last week I broke down in tears because I felt like I can’t keep stuff together. One of my two kids is constantly sick, we had a couple weeks late birthday party, laundry is piled up like crazy, the house just keeps reverting to disaster mode, and then people started posting fall porches…. We have no money, and I just felt so inadequate and like I will never measure up to those picture perfect images. It makes me feel like an impostor when I see those images and think that my home is one of my main passions and it continues to underwhelm me. It’s just so encouraging to know that other people who love their homes have to choose to let it be messy and imperfect sometimes too.
Just wanted to let you know that this is one of my favorite blog posts I have ever read! As I read this I am folding mountains of (clean) laundry, surrounded by this morning’s breakfast dishes that still haven’t made their way back to the kitchen, and I have glitter and glue still stuck on my arms from an impromptu art project that my 2.5 yr old undertook this morning. And rather than stress about the state of my house, this post reframed my perspective and now I am just feeing so incredibly grateful for the roof over my head, clean clothes to wear, food in our bellies, and sweet memories to share with my little man. Thank you so much for that, Katie!!
I’ve been reading all of the messy house tour posts today and I’ve loved them! Your garden makes me feel much better about the state of my backyard (it looks eerily similar!). Love your attitude about the mess too, sometimes I need to remember that my house is messy because I GET TO do projects, hang with my kid, and ignore the mess while we have fun. 🙂
I love this post. Sometimes reading all these blogs just depresses me when I look at my house, and then I see a post like this and think, ok! I’m not doing too bad, I AM normal! So, thank you for keeping it real!
Seriously…I just read “went to the fair” and was like DONE. That family knows how to live 🙂
xo – kb
This. This is what I have been wanting to see on blogs- what a beautiful space actually looks like when it’s lived-in. You’ve put so much time and money into making your home beautiful, and it IS. The beauty is still there even if it’s cluttered and unstaged. Thank you for sharing.
This is SOOOO what I needed to read this morning! This hit me with all the feels, and really helped put me in the right perspective. Love it! I hate that sometimes I need a mega reminder to be thankful for all the amazing things I’m blessed with in life, instead of feeling overwhelmed by all the things that aren’t done and need to get done. This was perfect.
This is the very best post I have ever read EVER. I work full time, have 3 kids and feel overwhelmed by the mess that I never seem to be able to keep up with. I also come from a family of freakishly clean homes where a woman’s value as a mother and wife is heavily based on her ability to keep a clean house. I constantly feel like I am failing. Your post came at the perfect time, I need to see the love and blessing in every spec of dirt or mess laying around. Thank you so much!
This might be my favorite post you’ve ever written.
“Our perspective can change how they look and make them more than beautiful…it can make our homes PERFECT.”
I think I need to write that down and place it on my fingerprint covered, dirty walls. 🙂
Thank you so so so much for this post. I have been so stressed about our home and making it look beautiful, and this was a much needed reminder that our home is here to serve us. And those that we love. Thank you for the perspective shift!
KATIE BOWER YOU WIN THE INTERNET WITH THIS POST. And I’m not a regular reader, because life. And I don’t have littles like you, but I do have teenagers with teenager messes and teenager-going-all-the-places-habits to keep up with. And I appreciate the perspective check this morning because it was just perfect. Thank you for taking the time to carefully string those words together to remind us all of what is important. Home. Family. Gratitude.
I totally get it! I’m a single mom of twin toddlers and by the time I get home from work and get dinner ready, clean up, playtime and bath time I’m wiped out! I have a super tiny house that doesn’t even have one thing updated or functional but I’m thankful to have a home for me and my kids. My house is zero percent blogger home or Pinterest and I’m ok with that. Sure I’d love to have the time and money to do some updates but that is not in the future for me right now. We all have to be thankful for what we have no matter what we have or don’t have because there are always others who have less. I’m thankful every day even if through tears at times 🙂 Life is full of ups and downs and we have to enjoy the ride!
Mom slow-clap. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, a million times. Both myself and my husband have been beating ourselves up(and each other, not literally – but good Lord, the bickering) about these EXACT SAME MESSES in our house for years. We just.can’t.catch.up. We tidy up for a party and it is only clean for that single 24 hour period. And to do so, we dump stuff in boxes and bags and find it again months/years later. And we have several rooms that are going to need repainting (because it’s been 10 years!) before they ever even got decorated in the first place. No drapes in anything but the kids’ rooms. Etc. and so on.
I remember very fondly my years of tidiness. And the years where each room actually had décor and curtains and lovely things. And I moon over all of Pinterest with all of the beautiful tidiness and décor. But that was before my lovely husband (messy is his middle name) and before my beautiful kids.
So to heck with it and I need to remember more often that it is okay!!!
So thank you again!
Love it. Remember your link up parties for pinterest projects? Can we do a link up party where we all post a pile of junk??? lol. #pileparty Thanks for keepin it real!!
I love this. I struggle with our house being messy but when both parents work, there is only so much time to spend with the kiddos. So thank you for showing me that my house doesn’t have to be perfect all of the time and there are way more important things to be doing than cleaning the house and also reminding me we are normal 🙂
Love this x1000! Thank you, Katie!!
Thanks so much for posting this. As a new blogger, I don’t know what takes more time…editing photos or cleaning so I can take the photos to begin with! I love what you said about your house serving your needs and being a symbol of everything you have to be grateful for!
Loved it . . . you made my day!!
Love it! It’s so nice to be reminded to look at the mess with a blessed perspective, instead of a defeated one. Thanks 🙂
I love this post! When you post things like that little cafe corner reveal or the “countdown to XXX” art project, I truly think to myself: How long before that little desk becomes filled with junk mail or “stuff to put away”. And I also wonder: “is she really going to keep up with countdown calendar each day”?? Nobody has time for that, at least in real life! #dreambig 🙂
Anyway, thank you for posting this–I love it! I love to see that everyone is real and not Pin worthy at all times.
Long time reader, first time commenting. And just to say: thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for this post.
THANK YOU for being real! As a mom of three under 5 and new house we’ve recently moved into, this was a fresh of breath air! Pinterest and home blogs are great for inspiration, but sometimes its easy to forget that there is a mess just beyond the camera frame. Thankful to have the messes made by my little people 🙂
Freaking awesome! Reminds me of my home.
Loved these “real life” tours today… and switching “have to” for “get to” is life-changing! Thank you for sharing! 🙂
This is what we all need!
xo – kb
Oh Katie! What a great and much needed post!
My favorite was the kitchen desk. It looks so much like mine. Last week, I finally tackled it and started organizing it into piles. I’m trying to find the perfect thing to organize it via Pinterest and it’s very discouraging! Well, my desk is cleaned off but my dining room table is covered in piles of all the stuff that came off the desk!
I call my desk “my Monica’s closet” (from Friends). I’m pretty organized but that is my Achilles heel!
Katie, thank you for doing this! I know that blogs show just the best of the best, but it sure is easy to forget when I go home to my own cheerio filled, toy scattered, laundry piled house. A little reminder is much appreciated in this world of retouched, photoshopped, airbrushed perfection we live in. I checked out the bloggers real life houses and just kept thinking – they do that too! Baskets of clean, folded laundry. Yep! Dishes and school papers and piles of who knows what. Oh yea. Dead, almost dead, and barely hanging on plant life. Another yes. Isn’t amazing in this great big world how we can quickly be reminded that maybe most of us are a lot more alike than we are different? New house, old house, stay at home blogger mom, working professional mom, Georgia, Colorado, girls, boys, we are all just trying to do our best to take care of little ones and live a productive life with a little fun along the way! I appreciate the goodness that you put out into the world Bower Family, thank you!
Thank you!! Thank you thank you thank you for posting this. I’ve been so down on my cluttered house recently and seeing your beautiful home in its natural state was so comforting and, in a weird way, inspiring. I love that you’re so honest and real – please never stop being you.
Oh I am laughing so hard and nodding my head so fast I might get whiplash! Thanks for being so honest and real! I have five kids so I know exactly what a “real” house looks like too. Tonight the kitchen table is so messy there was no place for the kids to eat and I was so tired from seeing patients today I didn’t care so we ate at the island (half of us standing…) lol
Amen Katie Bower.
I love this post! Instead of painting my daughter’s room, I opted to lay on the couch with her and watch “My Fair Lady”. What’s one more day of not painting when I’ve been painting that room at a snail’s pace for the last month. Eh, it’ll get done…one day. Thanks for showing off the reality! I love it! Happy week to you! Toodles, Kathryn @TheDedicatedHouse
This is awesome! I’m not even kidding…last week I was thinking, “How in the world do they do all they do with four young boys? How do they have all that energy?” I have three boys and I remember just being exhausted when they were little. You guys are doing amazing things! Serving others, spending time in the moment with your kids. Keep up the great work and thanks for keeping it real! Blessings!
I really needed to read this today. Thank you!
Katie, you are so awesome! I love your positive attitude and how honest and real you are. What a breath of fresh air for us, and a great example for your boys.
Katie Bower, I just like you. Top notch post.
Thank you for this! We moved into a new house last December, and it’s a lot more space than our previous 950 square feet, but like any new home it still wasn’t finished. My goal is to have all the lingering projects done by the end of the month but I needed the reminder that that unfinishedness and that normal messy is okay 🙂
I loved your honesty about the homework papers. Easy tip that I started doing, because I finally embraced the fact that I’m not a scrapbooker – I got a 2 inch binder and filled it with page protectors. Whenever my kids bring home things that I want to keep I put them in the binder. Just slide them into the page protectors and then I take a Sharpie and write the name of the kid and the school year/age on the top right corner of the page protector. I just keep filling it until the page protector won’t hold any more, then start a new one. I can stand the binder up and it just looks like a binder, but inside things are somewhat organized and waiting for those days down the road when my kids will want to see what they did. Later on if I want to start a box or something I can just take the page protectors out and put them in the box for each kid. Easy peasy! You could have a binder for that school year sitting on the desk next to your coffee maker and just file stuff right into it as it comes in, then at the end of the year take out that set of page protectors and put them away in a special box and start a new set.
I’m a new mom and new home owner going through our first big home improvement project. I so needed this post right now, thank you. I feel better in my soul.
You Rock! Your blog makes my days brighter!
<3 <3 <3. That is all.
I love you so much more now! Since I started blogging, I feel like my home is so deficient because the lighting is not great, it has not been staged by an interior designer, my guest bedroom is a storage area, and my basement….(lets not even go there). It is so refreshing that you show a beautiful, yet normal house to help us feel like we are not alone. Thank you for the reminder that there are more important things in life than a stark white, clean, perfectly staged home 🙂
Love this home tour 🙂 I have a home decor blog as well and people ask me if my home actually looks like that… well technically it does-ish. I have photographic proof that at one time my home was “Pinterest” ready. But, not everyday! It takes a lot of mess to get to the pretty with decorating your home. It takes a lot of mess to have kids create (and display) their art, happy childhoods mean messes. A lot of mess to make a good dinner. Life is messy, but so beautiful! I love your captions of the pictures, so funny.
I loved reading this post. I’m retired now and so the house stays relatively clean and tidy. But I remember when playing and reading and being outside was more important. Glad to see so many young mothers, even those who are working at home taking the time to enjoy life and their children. Thank you for sharing. P.S. I don’t have a dishwasher so my guilt comes from a sink of dirty dishes. Now I don’t feel so bad when someone with a dishwasher has them in the sink too!
How I needed to read this! We are buying a new house & packing & trying to figure out where or things will go in the new place. I’m so excited to decorate with new furnishing & linens that aren’t given to us or handed down. It’s overwhelming! My 4 year old is a ribbon-wearing Tasmanian devil & I want SO MUCH to keep the toys under control in the new place, but I have little real hope that this will occur. My husband, whom I love so much, wants to put a reclining sectional sofa in the family room which makes me want to gag. Thank you for reminding me what is important in my new home, my family. I can compromise on a reclining chair. 😉
How do you keep your white floor rugs clean? I want one for our family room but I’m scared of how long it will make it with us.
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! Katie-You have no idea how much I needed this post. With a hubby, a teenager, and a 1 year old, my house is never straight, never clean although I am in a never-ending state of trying to make it that way. And for my Type A personality, that is pure torture! It does my mama’s heart good to see that other mama’s are facing the same struggles! Thank you for keeping it real with us!
Thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you for this post! Your honesty, perspective and priorities are truly beautiful. It’s so easy to let – as the saying goes – comparison be the thief of our joy, when in reality, all the things that clutter our homes are simply the byproducts of a full and blessed life. After all, when our kids grow up, are they going to look back and remember a few stray boxes here and there, or will they remember the times we spent together playing and sharing meals and creating adventures?
Love this! Great post, and I love the positive spin you put on it. A great reminder to be grateful for the little things. Thank you for this!
If that’s a Peace Lilly in your office, it might be getting too much sunlight. They like to be away from the window. It’ll perk right up and also turn a very dark green if you give it less light. 😉
I have looked through all of the home tours (great idea, btw!) and I have to admit yours is my favorite. This is my 1st time to your blog, but your positive spin is what hooked me. Thank you for reminding us of the good things our messes portray. And right now, I have painted pumpkins on the bar that are drying and butterfly art that has taken over the table. All due to this house being full of toddlers. Wonderful, isn’t it?
The best 😉 Those are the real treasures in the house!
xo – kb
This makes me so happy I’m crying. It is so nice to know that I am not alone in having un-Pinterest worthy messes throughout my home. I start to look at those beautiful pictures of homes that are clutter free and wonder “what am I doing wrong?” Thanks to you I now know that I am doing alright. We may not have everything dusted and put in it’s place, but we have kids art gracing our walls and forts in our living room that inspire all kinds of great adventures. Thank you for keeping it real and for putting such a lovely positive spin to everything.
Thanks for this post! Great to see that in real life you are like the rest of us. 🙂 Wondering if you could expand on the garden issues? Those beds were so lovely! Do you mean that you dot have an outlet for the hose in the back of the house? Seems like a good DIY project for the future?
Yeah so we had a hose hook up on that side of the house but we never used it – we just assumed it was turned off on the inside…but low and behold, the control is drywalled up somewhere and nobody knows where. We can completely destroy the basement to try to find it but that seemed like a waste of money. So then we thought it would be a good idea to have a new line run from the street….but then we found out that the cost for that would be $3K. So that isn’t happening. So now we are at a stand still until we figure it out. We want the garden but the water is a necessity.
xo – kb
Great post!! While I know that all the blogger posts with perfectly photographed spaces isn’t “real” life, I still get that tinge of jealousy. Love to see some of your lived in spaces with NORMAL messes. What’s the deal with the fridge though? How do you live without a working fridge?!
We have one in the basement kitchen…so it’s not a total sacrifice 🙂 I just like to say that I’m getting my leg workout in 🙂
xo – kb
This is so heartwarming and truly touched me. I loved the reminder to think beyond what would be “perfect” and be OK with the moment I’m in. I have a toddler and cherish our time together before bed and in the morning… more than I want to be cleaning. Thanks for the reminder to just be how we are, strive for greatness, but also allow ourselves some grace. Well done.
This post is really beautiful. I enjoyed it so much and I’m glad for you that you have such a joyful perspective and share it with others. Your home feels like a happy, welcoming, warm place to raise your family!
LOVE this tip! I’m trying it
This may be my favorite Bower Power post ever. My house looks more or less like this on any given day. I love looking at the beautiful pictures on Pinterest and home blogs but comparison is inevitable and I suppose it’s never fully hit me how big a part those images have played in making me feel like I’m failing by having a less than magazine-worthy home, yard, holidays, craft projects, etc, etc. Scrolling through this post felt like such a relief. I could physically feel the tension ease. Thanks for sharing. Wish more bloggers kept it ‘real’ every now & then for perspective.
I love love love love love this!
I love your “clean”, I love their smiles, I love your heart and perspective!
Precious precious messes. They are beautiful.
Hugs!
~Analene
Thank you! I laughed and related while I read this. We’ve been in our house for twelve years. I help others make their houses beautiful, but mine is currently and permanently in flux!
I needed this today. Beautiful home, and beautiful perspective!
I LOVED this!!! Especially after just getting in a huge fight with my mom over the fact that I really want a third child and she thinks I don’t have enough time in the day to have 3….all because sometimes I don’t fold all of our laundry. I let it sit in the dryer or the chair….until I get around to it. And she thinks it’s nuts. I try to tell her that plenty of working moms have the same problem….and it’s totally normal to not have a perfect house 100% of the time. Thanks for making me feel normal! 😉
Yet again another wonderfully honest amazing post!! It’s so easy to get caught up in the land of perfection with the shiny internet and then sometimes think you are less adequate because you have an overflowing sink. I love your descriptions of what you see and how it truly is positive. Thanks for being open are perhaps vulnerable with this post.
This. This is why I will always love your blog. I have a love-hate relationship with Pinterest and blogland right now. I can’t stop stalking it because I love all the ideas for how I ultimately want our home to look, but the reality is that in our season of life with two boys 9 and 5, it just ain’t gonna happen! And that’s ok. So amen to the spider webs in the windows and the never-ending piles of papers everywhere. Nerf bullets are my new favorite accessory because they are the true sign of our happy home.