The end of another month

It was the end of another month and I stayed up last night finishing up our budget. It wasn't what I had hoped, but I know it could have been worse =)

This month we got my homeschooling area into order and our bedroom. I am thankful for both and I'm thankful we were able to do both for far cheaper than I expected to. We will likely never get a $3000 bedroom set made of real wood that would be beautiful. There's just too many other needs when you have a family of 5+1 dog. But, for around $200, my husband got a Malm dresser from IKEA and a mirror to go over the dresser I have. I replaced the knobs on my dresser with silver ones to match the 1920s wardrobe that I bought at a garage sale for $20 and painted white (I just didn't have enough time to refinish it otherwise) and I replaced the knob on the closet door with a white one from Eli's old dresser. Chris' old dresser went into Sami's room and Sami's into Eli's. A lot of moving around, but it worked out well. The room fits with the rest of our house. It's not out of Better Homes and Gardens (which by the way did you ever notice that the people in that magazine all have no kids or one kid?), but it fits with the rest of our house and all my clothes are finally in a place. For the past 4 years, I just had this to hang my clothes on. It was functional, but I didn't like looking at my clothes all the time. I'll take a picture of my "new" old wardrobe soon. It is a blessing to have a place for things.

Downstairs we got a 5 x 5 Expedit cube from IKEA and it is now filled with all of my homeschooling materials. It is a blessing to have a place for everything. It's also a blessing that now my chalkboard has a home so that Sami can practice writing her letters everyday with chalk on it and I don't have to pull it out or worry it's going to tip over.

It's a funny thing about organizing. It always seems to cost a lot of money =) to do it. But, I'm thankful for these two projects. Our ideas started out big (!) and then scaled back and scaled back again and in the end were just right.

One friend said recently to me that the way we keep our homes reflects the environment we want to create for our kids to grow up and live in. I feel calmer inside when everything has a place where it belongs =) And my home feels calmer.