Living an Organic Life

It's been an intense few weeks in the Dean house.  This past week has really been the climax.  This spring has given me the chance to enjoy conferences and sales, time in the garden, visits with friends old and new and lots of busy family moments but this past week we topped it all off with a major home renovation.  As such we have been up early, up late and going full speed the whole time.  As we have been pulling apart and making a mess and then slowly rebuilding, I have been carefully looking over the things that we have been adding to our home, so many items from places scattered over the globe and here they are united in my home to serve as a new kitchen.  I have often wondered who has paid the price for my cheap Ikea kitchen.  Was is workers?  The environment?  I wish we could be more natural in our selections but alas much of life is like this. 

Don't we all want to eat organic everything, be fit, spend lots of time in the sun breathing in fresh air but instead we clutter our days up, overspend on so many things, cut corners and find ourselves often "a day late and a dollar short" often being torn in many different directions, trying to make things work. 

All of this reflection that I have been doing while helping to swing the hammer here and there has been more about life than food.  We, the Dean family, want to live a more organic life.  I'm not talking about buying all natural foods and cotton socks that never saw pesticides but living a life that is more natural.  We want to love to spend time with our kids because that is the way that family should be.  We want to enjoy doing things together: working and playing and everything in between.  We want to live to love and to love to learn and to learn to live.  I don't want to separate my life into compartments: the learning box, the living box, the play box, the hard working box.  I want it all to fall together in one mucky natural mess.

And so when people say, "You did a kitchen renovation with your kids around!"  I can say, "Yes, we even did school for the whole week too."  That's because, though we did do much of the usual reading, writing and 'rithmetic, we also measured and sorted and read instructions and worked together to create and build and accomplish.  We visited benevolent friends who offered us a meal when we were not likely to do well at creating one ourselves.  We learned to be gracious and thankful and to use our manners!  It's been a pretty busy learning, working, playing time and a time that will furnish us with many memories to keep as souvenirs of this excellent family adventure.

Finally this evening I found some space to sit, I found my tea stash, I found my living room which had been buried by the chaos.  I am looking forward to tomorrow's birthday party for the baby of the house.  Though we aren't eating pesticide free broccoli I am enjoying my organic life and hope that you will enjoy some naturally mucky moments too.

Loving the greenery.

Cori