In May 2022, we move into our sweet little house on our 5 beautiful acres of land. I kept thinking I would do a house tour as soon as I got everything set up how I liked it. Well, it’s been 3 years and I’m still not to that point- so I’m going to go ahead and do a house tour now- as is. Our house is about 1400 square feet with 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living room, a kitchen, a small pantry/mudroom and a bonus room. The bonus room truly is a bonus room and in the past three years it has been a living room, a dining room, a playroom and a bedroom- not all that the same time, but sometimes a combination of more than one! It’s basically a wild card room haha!
The funniest part about our house is that we aren’t afraid to do something a little “untraditional”. We actually have a couch in front of our front door- because it’s not a logical entrance to use from the driveway at all. Our neighborhood doesn’t have sidewalks and isn’t walkable, so people are only arriving to our house by car. We also made the decision last year to make the “bonus room” our bedroom. It just makes so much practical sense and even though the main back door enters in that room, we have just made it work.
Please note that for this house tour, I briefly tidied the house but didn’t clean up. This is truly what our house would look like if you came over on a random Tuesday night!
So, when you enter our home, you walk right into the pantry. Theo rigged up a shelf to hang coats and shoes and the pantry therefore doubles as a mud room! It’s a small space, but it packs a big punch!
Next is the kitchen- honestly my least favorite room of the house. We don’t have a designated dining room, so we eat at those long desks haha. I also don’t have a dishwasher and it’s a STRUGGLE to keep up with dishes! However, over the years I have learned that it’s good to slow down and learn how to do chores slowly and with intention. We do have plans to hopefully add an addition on to the kitchen- we will add an island with a sink/dishwasher combo and then the addition will be the dining room and a homeschool space.
The living room is probably my favorite room of the house- probably because it feels the most “complete”. I love the mantle and wood burning stove in the winter, and I love the light that shines in the windows in the summer. The view is incredible out this window no matter the season! There is a 1000 acre field right across the street and it feels like we live in the middle of the country!
Down the hallway are the 3 bedrooms- one for Tera, one for Orion and one for the middle boys- and a bathroom. The afternoon lighting in that bathroom is top notch haha!
And lastly, we have the bonus room- which right now is primarily our bedroom. We currently also have a treadmill, a desk, a large bookshelf, a piano, and a dining room table in there. And you know what? I sleep well at night with this arrangement, even if no one is pinning it on Pinterest! I would like to make a cozy corner with a chair and little table, a lamp and some cozy blankets!
Oh, I forgot about the laundry/storage room! This is right off our bedroom and has the washer/dryer, the HVAC unit, a chest freezer, an oil drum tank to heat in the winter, Theo and my clothes, a safe, a couple of storage items and our guest mattress/bedding supplies. We also have a bathroom off our bedroom (there is a little hallway connecting the kitchen to the bonus room, and there is a bathroom in there), but I forgot to take pictures of that.
So there you have it! I’m kind of nervous to post this, but I’ve had multiple people come to my house in real life and mention how nice it is to see someone/know someone who just lives in a normal house. I know that by most of the world’s standards, this is a mansion and we are so, so blessed to live in a safe, warm home. This is also one of the only two houses we’ve lived in with two full bathrooms! Of course, I would love to have a designated dining room and I would love to have a dishwasher installed in my kitchen, the boys say they wish they had their own rooms, and I wonder how all of my kids will fit in this house when their bodies are nearly full-grown, but at this point I’m not going to worry about that, and just take it one year at a time!
I love the song by Dan and Shay called “Bigger Houses”. I feel like I could spend a lot of time wishing that I had more/bigger/better– but truly what matters is who lives inside our space!
Used to dream about buying that bigger house
Sitting on top of some hill
Losing sleep about filling my bank account
Wondering if I ever will
But the older I get, I just care less and less
‘Bout keeping up with people named Jones
If you don’t fill it up with somebody that you love
It ain’t ever gonna feel like home
There’s always gonna be a higher high
You could chase for the rest of your life
Greener grass in the yard next door
Or a shined up Chevy, little newer than yours
You’re never gonna fill an empty cup
If what you got’s still not enough
The thing about happiness I’ve found is
It don’t live in bigger houses
I can hear the kids making little footsteps
Running down the hallway upstairs
I can see the dogs playing in the back yard
Through the kitchen window right there
Maybe life’s kinda more ’bout a swing on the porch
Holding her while the sun disappears
Why would I wanna be anywhere else in the world
When my whole world is sitting right here?
There’s always gonna be a higher high
You could chase for the rest of your life
Greener grass in the yard next door
Or a shined up Chevy, little newer than yours
You’re never gonna fill an empty cup
If what you got’s still not enough
The thing about happiness I’ve found is
It don’t live in bigger houses
No-no, no-no, no-no
There’s always gonna be a higher high
You could chase for the rest of your life
Greener grass in the yard next door
Or a shined up Chevy, little newer than yours
You’re never gonna fill an empty cup
If what you got’s still not enough
The thing about happiness I’ve found is
It don’t live in bigger houses
The thing about happiness I’ve found is
It don’t live in bigger houses
Your house reminds me a lot of the house I grew up in. We had 6 of us and only one bathroom. My step-father was a builder so our rooms often underwent minor changes. Our living/family room became my parents bedroom when my younger brother and sister could not longer reasonably share the same room. My stepfather built a door and turned it into a bedroom fairly easily. If I think of what the house looked like when we moved into it and what it looked like by the time we sold it (after I was married and had moved out) it hardly even looked like the same house though the footprint of it never changed. There were many walls put up and moved and taken down through the years as we kept reworking the space we had to meet our needs.
Someone once told me that our house in Tera was “decorated with love”. It was such a sweet compliment. I love the reminder that it’s who’s in the house, not the stuff.
I LOVE seeing a normal house:)