Look around you. If you’re home, what do you see? What do you feel? What does home represent? If you’ve never thought about it, think about it for a minute. Here are some helpers:

Home is a place of safety where no one bothers me.
Home is lonely.
Home is dull and boring.
Home is an investment.
Home is a chore.
Home is more work tacked on to the end of the day.
Home is noisy and unfriendly.
Home is demanding.
Home is a break from the world.
Home is where the garbage is.
Home is where I change my clothes and personality.
Home is a work of art.
Home is a war zone.
Home is my magnet.
Home is the last place I want to be.

When I was a girl growing up, my home was a work of art. It was the thing my parents loved best. I was an ornament in their museum. Ornaments don’t have needs, of course, so in the rare instance when this ornament had a need, my home became a war zone because I was in the way of the first priority. I lived in seventeen different beautiful and elaborate homes in seventeen years. At nineteen I ran from the last place I wanted to be. Surely not an auspicious beginning.

As a young woman, married and ready to buy a home myself, I thought I wanted my home to be a work of art too, but I quickly found that it’s expensive to buy museum pieces, and in an active home with real children, not ornaments, museum pieces break with a speed not unlike the jet -sound combination.

Somewhere early I discovered that a work of art is a relative thing. Art is something very personal and very subjective a lot like wine. Is a pricey bottle of wine really “good” if it tastes like gasoline to me? It’s the same with art. If you like something plain and simple, that simple something can provide the same joy to the heart that a financially or tastefully out of range something might never provide.

I settled my scope on children’s art – my children’s art – to fill my walls and grace my home. When I framed a couple of my children’s art pieces as a Christmas gift for my husband, my home suddenly took on a new reality – a workshop. The idea that a home is a work of art changed overnight to the living model of “a work in progress.” I really like the idea of home as a workshop because workshop allows kids to do, to discover in a safety zone a million things they would never discover otherwise.

Today my home is still a workshop. It’s filled with tools of discovery and baubles and ornaments and toys and colors and interesting odds and ends on a mixture of old and new furniture where my family can relax and enjoy life. The furniture is comfortable and plentiful and the floors are mostly bare so spills and crashes that naturally happen can happen without too much damage. There is something to look at in every spot in all twelve rooms and it changes frequently and unexpectedly especially when one of the little little drags it out to play with and discover something they had never seen before.

And in the process of learning myself, what have I hoped to teach my children about home? Home is very much a part of self. It’s a mirror of what is going on inside the head. If home is a competitive thing, a race to some imaginary financial or collective finishing line, then home is going to be exhausting to a child who lives there. If home is a museum with furniture and art work numbered and untouchable, like my growing up homes, then the child is going to search himself for numbers and wonder about being a part of it all. If home is a place that says clearly that “This is just more work, a chore, another thing to get passed,” then it’s going to be an unfriendly and uncomfortable place for a child.

Establishing a home that is comfortable for children is harder for those who have enormous expectations. Keeping up with the best house on the block, or the idea of what our parents had for the established couple back in the seventies, eighties or nineties is often not possible today. Young people don’t make enough money to copy their parents lives, nor do they have the time.

I think my daughter, Molly, has the right idea at the turn of the 21st century. She lives in a neighborhood where there are children. She wants a home where her three boys can play, can invite their friends and where she can manage their very full lives. Her boys feel comfortable at home and freely come and go always finding things to do and entertaining themselves inside and out – and so do the other kids in the neighborhood. Molly’s home is a kid friendly zone, and Molly is a kid friendly mom on the block. It works.

Does home always need to be spotless and run on the clock? In a time when we as Americans have become as casual and open as we’ve become, it seems nearly senseless to manage dirt and mess with much more than a casual eye. Some people meet the challenge of busy and mess with the “one room in the house” approach. One room remains clean at all times in case the priest arrives and can’t think to move the mountain of toys off the chair in the corner.

I remember what I called “close down time” when at a particular time in the day, probably somewhere close to 4:30, we stopped everything for the day. Today, young mothers seem to stretch the afternoon right into the evening, and stop time has become closer to 6:00. But any stop time that is established is helpful in putting toys away, cleaning surfaces that need it so that the workshop idea is tidied for the next day of discovery.

I think today the primary thing to strive for is “warmth.” Children want to play in an environment of casual rules and endless possibilities. They want to always be close to mom or dad, have an eye on the world outside, be free enough to spread out their toys within the family activity, and know that someone will recognize what they do with a smile not a shout.

While you are wondering about what your home represents, think about what children are gleaning from you and your home. New Years is coming soon!

Next time, food in the home and what it means.