Leah Massey is a homeschool mom of three living in southeast
Michigan. She and her husband/best bud of 22 years Tim think “normal”
is highly overrated, and revel in creating curious kiddos. Leah loves
helping others craft families of happy, confident lifelong learners.
You can find her blogging about her 20 years of homeschool experiences
at ourhabitathome.com.
“Normal” has no place in homeschooling or tiny living. Not if you want
to succeed.
The allure of tiny living for many people is the freedom to put more
emphasis on family and less on things. For a tiny living family, life
is centered on family and the time they spend together. Homeschool –
tiny home or not – increases that family time. You’ve chosen a life
of togetherness — and that’s awesome. But it doesn’t always
feel awesome! Why?
Because that togetherness comes at the cost of personal space.
In the same way that a tiny living family has very little physical space
separating them, a homeschool family has very little time separating
them from each other — no matter how big the house is! But the problem
isn’t so much about time and space — it comes down to our ingrained
sense of “normal”.
The good news is that once we change our perspective of “normal” in our
lives as homeschoolers, we can create an atmosphere of contentment for
living and learning.
What is normal, anyway?
I’m wildly intrigued by the concept of tiny living. My
binge-watching of “Tiny House Nation” is proof. I’m constantly amazed
by families who choose to live in as little as 10% of the space of their
previous home. Why would they do this? Why do they turn their backs on
what almost all Americans would consider to be a “normal” life?
Because they’ve chosen a completely different set of values by which
to measure their lives. And by their metrics, tiny living provides
the most success and fulfillment.
If you measure the success of tiny living by the standards of “normal”
living, tiny living fails every time. I mean, you can’t possibly have
separate spaces for every person, hobby, pet or whim under the same roof
in a tiny home. But that’s exactly what you expect in a “normal” home.
There’s no way to have all the same things in a tiny home as in a
traditional home. If that’s what you’re hoping for, you’ll never be
content. Anyone who tries to live tiny with “normal” standards will
be miserable.
The measure of a successful, happy life for tiny-living families is
completely different. Whether it’s the freedom to travel, having less
monthly expenses and therefore more time together, or a focus on outdoor
living, the metrics for valuing life just don’t fit with “normal.” They
can’t.
It’s the same with homeschooling. For a homeschool family to be
content, our metrics for valuing success can’t possibly be the same as
everyone else. We can’t expect to structure our lives the same way
we would if our kiddos were gone eight hours a day. But that’s what
a lot of us do. And the result is that all of that “togetherness” we
were looking forward to feels way less than awesome.
Measuring our homeschool success against the “normal” metric of a
traditional school experience is the source of so much of the
frustrations we feel. We can’t out-public-school public school any more
than you can expect a full-sized kitchen, luxury bathtub and a
workshop in a tiny house. If we try, we’ll be miserable, exhausted and
guilty all the time.
“Normal” is the enemy of contentment in both homeschool and tiny
living. We’ve got to redefine “normal” to fit our family’s
priorities. We need to get creative.
Redefine normal
Tiny living demands creative use of space. I am constantly blown
away by the multi-functional furniture designed to make the most of
these small spaces. When a flight of stairs suddenly transforms into a
closet and a workstation, I’m positively giddy. This level of
creativity is pure genius in my book. It’s so…outside the norm.
But in the realm of tiny living, this creative use of space is
normal. Why? Because when you’re working with a fixed, small amount
of space everything has to have more than one purpose. Your living
room will never be just a living room. Every room, every piece of
furniture, needs to serve multiple functions. That’s what brings value
and contentment to tiny house living. Who cares if it looks “normal”?
When you shift your metrics for valuing life, you redefine normal.
Successful homeschooling requires we do the same thing. We have to
redefine “normal” for our family’s living and learning to be content.
We’re not working within the typical framework of living and learning.
Our kids don’t leave us for eight hours a day, giving us time to get
chores and work done. They’re always there. They’re always
THERE.
A homeschooling family is working with a finite amount of time,
emotional reserves and mental energy. We need to design a life
where every block of time — every task — is multi-functional. It’s
time-efficient, all-inclusive, and massively educational.
A multi-purpose approach to living and learning is the key to
homeschool contentment.
A Multi-purpose life
We’re all working from a fixed pool of precious time and energy. We
can’t afford “unitaskers” in our lives. We don’t have separate time
for chores, home maintenance, errands and school. We just have
“Monday”…with the kids.
No need to worry, though. This is where the tiny living approach to
time and energy comes in. If you develop the mindset that life is
learning, you’ll be able to see all the ways you can “kill two birds
with one stone.”
Learning how to clean the house is a valuable life skill that our kids
all need. There’s no reason that can’t be worked seamlessly into your
day. By the time our kids finish a math lesson, they physically need to
move. So why not schedule in 15 minutes of tidying up together?
Your kids get to move their bodies, rest the “math” portion of their
brain and learn an important skill simultaneously. They’ll be learning
to follow instructions and work as a team while you get to check a chore
off your list. This is multi-functional living at its finest.
You can involve your kids in the process of meal-planning,
grocery-shopping and cooking dinner. They’ll learn about planning for
good nutrition, how to shop for a value and budget their money and how
to cook a comforting meal. You’ll be taking care of work that must be
done for the family and teaching your kiddos what it looks like to be a
responsible adult — all during “school” hours.
This is more than just simply assigning tasks. You as the instructor
have the job of making sure the learning part of this happens. But the
learning and doing are not separate concepts. You can
learn and do.
It becomes clear pretty quickly that when we work this way, there is
no “school time” and “chore time”. There’s just time. It’s
incredibly liberating, isn’t it? You’ll find that integrating all
aspects of your life into one pool of time and energy actually gives you
more time.
Plus, an amazing thing happens as you get closer to an integrated,
multi-functional life. Your whole family works together towards the
common goal of living. The mechanics of living become woven into
your learning. Your learning gets woven into the fun parts of living.
And all that togetherness that was feeling irritating starts feeling
awesome again. Contentment is once again within your reach. And
man, does that feel good!
Contentment is just a mind-set away
Once we release ourselves from the “normal”, traditional mindset
of what successful instruction looks like, we set our family free. Free
to learn whenever, however and wherever we want. When we create metrics
that reflect our family’s priorities we can craft the life we
actually want to live. This is where contentment lies.
I love listening to seasoned tiny living families talk about their
lives. Rarely was their path simple and painless. More often than not,
they shifted away from “normal” incrementally. Over time, they leave
more and more “normal” behind them as they move toward a lifestyle that
brings them contentment.
They do more with their fixed, small amount of space than many of the
rest of us will ever do within our much more spacious walls. And you can
just see their contentment.
As homeschool families, our mind-set will probably not shift overnight.
It’s not easy to break free from the mental constraints we we have of
what “normal” education and home life look like. But every step you
take to redefine “normal” to fit your family is another step towards
contentment in homeschooling.
Can you imagine waking up in the morning and thinking, “I’ve got this!”
— even if you’re tired and a little cranky? How comforting would it be
to feel confident that you and the kids will learn, the home will be
cared for and you’ll have some time to explore? How cool would it be to
not care that your life looks nothing like your neighbor’s? That’s what
happens when you redefine living and learning for your family.
Shift your mindset, create your own “normal”, and craft your personal
version of a multi-functional life. Do that, and before you know it
you’ll be inspiring other homeschooling, tiny-living families with your
contentment and confidence.
So…what will “normal” look like for you?
