Dirty Enough to be Happy

Once, when I was little and we were visiting the extremely clean home of a family friend, I noticed a plaque that read: "Dull women have immaculate homes." After asking my mom what "immaculate" meant, I only remember spending the rest of the visit thoroughly confused. This home was without a doubt immaculate, and I couldn't understand why this woman would call herself dull?

My own housekeeping quote-of-choice goes: "This house is clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy." (Followed closely by Mrs. Fussypants' "We can't both look good. It's me or the house.")

With two small children running about the place, my house is no stranger to dirt. I can't even tell you how many times a day I clean this one spot right here:

This is definitely the dirtiest spot in our house at any given moment on any given day. (Except, of course, when I'm taking a photo of it. :) But most of the time I don't mind. It's a reminder of how much LIFE we spend outside, and that's a good thing.

In fact, here's something I've been looking forward to for a while, and finally we got a sunny day to do it!

This is our old backyard fence. It's seen better days. We took it apart last fall to build a new one (in process!) because the dog who lives behind us finally came crashing through it to nosh on our tomatoes. Which we actually think is kind of funny, and it's a just a relief our son noticed him before he noticed our backyard chickens running free. It currently stands lined up like this near our garden shed, waiting. For ... something.

Well, today part of that something happened.

I pulled off about 10 of the pickets, grabbed an old can of white exterior paint (left in our garage by previous owners), said "kids, go get your smocks!" and we started painting.

After they were all dry, we got out the Sharpies, and ... Voila!

I just LOVE making good use of old things!