Years ago, I had a vinyl made (yep, it was a thing) and put this saying over a doorway in our home. It reminded me, as a mother of two young children at the time, that we were actively living in our home - it wasn’t a spread in a magazine, it wasn’t a showcase for all the ‘things’.
Instead, our home was just that: OUR home, and we were busy living in it. The kids’ toys scattered about, dog hair on the floor, homework on the counter, dishes in the sink because I was too tired last night, a DIY project on the dining room table—everything that you don’t see in a curated Instagram post.
Life can be messy, chaotic, and stressful. Our home reflected all of that at times, but the quiet moments were ‘loud,’ too. Those were the early mornings when the house was exhausted from the busy-ness of the day before or the afternoons before the kids would rush through the door after school.
The loudest ‘quiet’ moments happened later, when the kids were young adults making their way in the world. Sometimes, the absence of noise doesn’t result in quiet; it merely provides space to lean into the best parts of the noise.
Recently, someone said their wife looks at Architectural Digest magazine, points at a picture, and says ‘THAT’S what I want our house to look like’! As we were talking through this–knowing I’ve had the same feelings after scrolling Instagram or Facebook - I came back to my little vinyl reminder.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting our homes to look like the inspiration we see in magazines and online. The issue is when we forget to honor what defines our family and sets our home apart from the rest, when we forget that we are actively living in this home. Remember, a flat two dimensional picture never tells the whole story!
Our homes are the keepers of our stories: the growth chart on the door, the ding in the wall when we were moving Aunt Ida's sideboard into the dining room, spots on the hardwood floor when sparks flew from the fireplace, that corner in the kitchen where my daughter and I had some really hard conversations, the deck where our son fed a wayward seagull pickled herring (can’t make that up!)
Our stories are as different as our homes, as different as we are–why are we so inclined to make them look like everyone else’s?! I will take the messy, complicated, emotional, angsty, quiet, beautiful moments in our home over a glossy magazine spread any day!
As cheesy as that vinyl may have been, I loved it because it reminded me that it was OUR home and–right, wrong, or otherwise–we were LIVING in it.