Renovating Heart and Home

Hi friends, my intentions of posting on here more have fallen short. However, I wanted to pop in and let you know a little bit about what we’ve been up.

We’re currently in a season of renovation. And by that I mean our house is literally being remodeled but also I think the Lord is moving some things around in our hearts as well.

We moved into our home ten years ago and since then we have done absolutely nothing to improve it. Our 1950s dark brown kitchen cabinets were just fine for a while. . . but a few months ago my husband and I decided that it was time to investment in really making our house into our home.

And I think our cabinets agreed because literally right after we decided to do the remodel, one of our cabinet doors fell off its hinges as if to say, “it’s time, here let me help you. . .”

Let me be honest, I was not sure this would be our forever home. In fact, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, I wasn’t sure the Bay Area would be our forever location. I mean it’s the place of my birth and the only place I’ve ever lived but in my mind I’ve often thought we’d end up moving somewhere else.

But as neither my husband nor I have felt called to a new place (although we have been open to it), I personally have felt convicted to accept that this is home, at least for the foreseeable future and acknowledge that I have held back from being too rooted here and need to be more intentional about blooming right where we have been planted.  It is not lost on either of us how truly blessed we are to live in the Bay Area and we want to be good stewards of what we’ve been given. 

And so we began planning and dreaming and preparing because remodeling our house would mean that we’d be unable to live in it while the work is getting done. In April we started packing up and ordered a Pod for our driveway to store some belongings. And in early May we moved into a tiny one bedroom apartment that my husband and I are sharing with our two youngest.

So we’re giving tiny home living a trial run and I can say so far it’s actually pretty great. It’s been an interesting experience to have only about maybe 15-20% of our things with us and actually be just fine. We liked to think we were minimalists before but as we were boxing things up we realized that is just not the case, we own way too many things but at this point we’re really not missing many of those boxes.

We really have everything we need and this exercise in living smaller is truly a blessing. We’re still homeschooling, and honestly the few things I do miss are actually books because that’s my weakness, but being away from our home has also slowed down our pace a little. Because there are fewer options, we’re spending a lot of time reading or coloring or just talking. There’s usually some kind of wrestling match with dad and lots of walks with the dog.

And while we’re really excited to get back home in a few weeks, I don’t think all of the boxes will make it back inside. Taking inventory of everything that we have made us realize that we have more than enough space for what we really need.

While we are excited about things like new countertops and not having a blue bathroom with pink tile anymore (yes, I’m serious. . . don’t judge, it was like that when we bought it) we are also really praying about how the Lord might use our home to bless others as well. We want to be more intentional about plugging into our local communities and find new ways of practicing hospitality here.  

So that’s the update, now that we’re a bit more settled in our temporary home I promise I will be posting more on here because I do have other fun things I want to share with you all.

Plus I’ll definitely try to show you some before and after pics. 🙂

 

Hope you’re all doing well. Leave a comment or shoot me a message and let me what you’re up to friends!