Our house was built in the early 1900s on the edge of the Loretto Mine in rural Upper Michigan. We have three bedrooms, but only one of them has a 3-foot-wide closet. We have storage shelves and cubbies in every nook and cranny. The basement is full of beehive boxes and canning jars and bins of outgrown clothes. I am constantly rearranging and reorganizing to try making our space work better for a growing family. We know we could move to a bigger home, but this acreage on the woods and river means more to us than a mansion ever could.

Our two younger boys share the bedroom in the photo above, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve minimized clutter and tried making their bedroom a space that could breathe. But every time I do it, they fill their shelves and beds with treasures — stuffed animals, favors from bday parties and church events, drawings of beasts they’ve dreamed up with giraffe legs and three heads. Sometimes my mama heart is exasperated by it all. What are we doing in this tiny house? How does so much STUFF find its way in? What’s going to happen in a few years when these three boys are all teenagers and want their own space?

Other times, like this morning, I catch a glimpse of my kids that stops me in my tracks. Look at these two in their tiny bedroom under the eaves of a cozy house on a Dead End street. Look at them surrounded by soft blankets and plush friends, with a bestest buddy sleeping soundly just a couple feet away. Look at their heads tilted toward one another. Look at the snakes woven through the headboards, the crooked lampshade, the little boy-ness of it all.

How could I wish for something more than what is here before me this November morning?

There’s a sign in the hall at the top of our stairs with a poem about the kind of love that grows in little houses. It has never felt truer than it does today.

May I never forget.

💛 Stacy