My Small Entryway and the Beauty in the Process

As always, I’m excited about this week’s post! I’ve been learning a lot since we began doing projects in our house. Although, this lesson has been one of the best for me personally. It’s not a lesson on using a tool, or how to paint a piece of furniture, it’s more of a life lesson. It’s no surprise to me that this lesson was taught by my children. Does anyone else learn from the small and innocent people in their lives? I learned this lesson when we decided to redo our small entryway.

The main challenge our entryway posed was its size. It’s small. That being the case, we had to be intentional about the design to ensure the entryway met our needs. So we created a list:

hang coats
sit to take your shoes on or off
put purses and bags

After the entryway was complete I threw a mini party. We did it! We had a home for all the coats, a beautiful bench to sit on; built by one of my husband’s uncles, which also houses bags. I couldn’t wait to start using the new entryway and see how wonderful it was!

After a couple weeks, I noticed all my kiddos were leaving piles of their stuff on the floor. They left book bags and coats on the floor even though we put a coat rack up. I began analyzing what was going on. Why wasn’t it working? I mean, we are talking about a 6-year-old, 3-year-old and 2-year-old here. (6-year-old is my niece, whom I each day after school.) I probably needed to be more consistent and remind them to put their things where they belong. We just finished the coat rack a couple months ago, so they aren’t well-practiced. THE COAT RACK!!

How in the world could I expect them to hang anything up on that coat rack?! I placed it on the wall for grown adults. As many kids as adults live in our home; and assuming all goes well with the adoption, there will actually be more kids than adults in our home. What was I thinking?!

At this point, it would be easy for me to get frustrated with myself. First, I could start by questioning my ability to design and then I could go all the way to “I’m a terrible mother!” I wasn’t even thinking about my children. However, as we complete spaces and projects, I’m learning something small yet profound. The projects may not be the way I envisioned, and they may not be done in a timely fashion. But do you know what they are? They are further and better than they were the day before. Progress.

One of my favorite pastors used to say, “Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot.” What he was saying was, it’s a process. In other words, we don’t just wake up one day and discover we’ve moved from one place to another. We have to take one intentional step, then another, and another in order to get to the new place.

With that in mind, whether your progress is in designing a small entryway, being less angry with your children, intentional living, less time on your phone, or you name it, great success lies in the progress. Every day you take a step closer to the goal is a day to celebrate. Let’s celebrate the steps; the progress. Let’s stop being so hard on ourselves and giving ourselves excuses to quit before we’ve even begun. What if we considered it a success just to be moving in the direction of the goal?

This lesson has helped me choose not to beat myself up over the coat rack. It’s opened my eyes to see how far the entryway has come. That being the case, I’m going to add another coat rack, however, I’ll put it low enough for the kiddos. Also, I will build a Dutch tulip tray. My hopes are that the shoes will end up in the tray under the bench instead of on the rug in front of the door. I can’t wait to finish these projects. The progress is beautiful! The process is fun! Let the process of progress teach us. No matter what you’re working toward – “Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot.”

I’ll be posting my entryway progress, so keep checking back to see if the new coat rack solves the problem! Does anyone think the kiddos will be hanging their coats on the new coat rack? Am I just dreaming?! As always, thanks for stopping by! I appreciate your support!