Living Like Pioneers!

Lately I have joked with a couple friends about the fact that my family is living like the Pioneers.  Though our hardships are not even close to theirs I have thought of them often in the last couple of weeks.  Let me share with you our living conditions at the moment.

A lot of neighbors and friends have asked how it is that we can live in the half of our house that remains during the construction.  The original half of the house has two bedrooms, the kitchen, the living room, and the mud room.  Yep, that's right, all six of us are living in two bedrooms with no bathroom!  How can that be???  Well, here it is.

All four kids are in one bedroom.  Two boys, two girls, ranging in age from 13 down to 2 all share a bedroom.  I know, we must be NUTS!  It's tight and a little tense at times but so far they are all doing better than I thought.

As you can see my husband hung some curtains for privacy among the boys and girls.  The baby's crib is behind the door.  Don't mind the mess, it always looks like that!

It has been good for the kids to learn to live together.  They have learned to  respect each other's space, work out differences, and spend time together.  Now, my children are like other children.  There have been fights, arguments, and touching other people's property but for the most part is has been just fine.

The bathroom has probably been the hardest part.  A family of six with no bathroom these days can be a bit of an issue.  We bought a camping trailer last fall to use as a bathroom however, we discovered it had a bad water heater and it sprung a leak this winter.  So, off to the fix-it shop it went on the same day the bathrooms were torn out!  Poor planning on someones' part!! The shower part was easy.  We belong to a gym so we just hauled everyone to the gym to shower.  The toilet is another story!  We found a toilet seat online that snaps onto a 5 gallon bucket.  Pretty nifty!  So while the trailer was being fixed that's all we had for a couple of days.  We found if you put a little kitty litter in the bottom it didn't smell all that bad, though the kids weren't too excited about using it.  Could you hear us cheer when the trailer come home?!

Here's our makeshift bathroom.  Kind of a site but what can ya do?

The other thing I am without is a sink drain.  I do have running water in the kitchen sink but no drain.  We put a bucket under the sink to catch the water and I have to bail it out to the back field.  I'm gaining such an appreciation for simple things like sink drains and running water.  Things I don't normally think about day to day.

There's my nice blue bucket under the kitchen sink.  And yes, that is daylight you can see in the back of the cupboard.  My two year old figured out the other day he could open the corner cupboard and see outside.  He was delighted.

Whenever I'm having a hard day or want to complain I just remind myself that I'm only living like a Pioneer for the summer.  The real Pioneers live that way their whole lives!  I'm happy to be reminded of all the modern conveniences we get to enjoy and I'm glad my kids get to do the same!