There is dust in my house. I am not a designer or a decorator. Nothing in this place looks like it crawled from the pages of a Pottery Barn catalog of even the pages of Country Living magazine. I am not Martha Stewart and frankly, I don't care if my carpet is stained.
My home is full of second hand furniture or pieces we've re-purposed over the years. My pantry is a cabinet that was repaired and once owned by my father-in-law. My daughter's changing table now holds bakeware and kitchen towels instead of diapers. My couch is lumpy and a tomato soup color but my dogs love to sleep on it and drool on the pillows. It's okay.
I think the most expensive things I own are my computer and my cell phone and everything else was on sale or salvaged from Craigslist. We're frugal people, and we have learned that material things aren't all there is to life. We spend our money on experiences and food, pets we love and spend time with, and basic necessities, not flat screen tv's or expensive cars. In fact, both our vehicles are over 10 years old, but we're less than 4 payments from them both being ours.
I'm not a slob. I spend as much time as I can cleaning to keep our things and place in comfortable condition. We vacuum each day and straighten up, but there's perpetually dishes in my sink because we cook at home and there's laundry in the hamper because we are blessed with clothes to wear.
I am grateful for my dirt. Pine shavings in the hallway from the garage means there are chickens in the yard laying eggs for us to eat. Grass clippings on my driveway means I have a large yard to enjoy. And dirty socks under the table mean we worked so hard yesterday we were too tired to carry them to the hamper. Don't worry. They'll make it there today.
I wish I could keep house like something out of Real Simple and that my garden had leaped from the pages of Organic Gardening, but, honey, we are working here, so if you don't like the dust and fur, well, then you just head back to town. We're busy living life and taking care of what's important, each other. This isn't IKEA and we're not on some TV set. Things poop here and we clean it up. This is the best I can do. This may not be a big or expensive place, but it's my own and it's comfortable. I put my feet on the coffee table. I work hard to have what I do and won't be ashamed that it's not storybook perfect.
There's soil and straw and spiders and weeds. There's love and there's mouths to feed and always more work than there is daylight, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.
It may be small, but I love my farm.