What Having 4 Kids Does to a House

Up until a week ago, a set of back doors to our house looked like this:

And the doors looked like that for a long time with the broken handles.  Months and months and months (we finally replaced them last week)!  And if you're counting there are several things like that about our house.  I call it the wear and tear of having 4 kids!

Because kids are not gentle with things like door handles and then there's just the shear number of people we have coming in and out of doors compared with a family of 1 kid for example.  The more kids you have, the more wear on your home.  It just is the way it is even if you teach your kids to take care of the house/be gentle, which we talk a lot about.  

And I know things could be worse around here.  Rules like no food or drinks besides water upstairs, no jumping on the couch, no throwing balls in the house, and eat only at a table help keep things in better order.  But still, there are worn-out and broken things and sometimes they bother me.  I'm embarrassed when a guest comes over.  But, we don't always fix things right away because we are busy and because sometimes we decide we'd rather give our money away to people with true need than fix up our good-enough house.

A couple weeks ago we visited friends who also have 4 kids, their youngest recently adopted from Ghana, and I smiled when I saw a few broken/worn out things at their house.  Really it was the biggest breath of fresh air!  When I go to a friend's house where everything is perfect, I come home and notice everything wrong with my own house.  But visiting this friend?  Made me feel like we were just a normal family living life with sometimes bigger priorities than a magazine-worthy home.  I drove home smiling thinking that maybe my house ministers to people who visit by making them feel better about their own homes!