The Cultivated Home Journal

During one move, when we had just three little girls, we read The Little House on the Prairie series. I love the way Laura Ingalls Wilder demonstrates natural curiosity, a desire to contribute to her family, and healthy satisfaction with a job well done. When we first approached her series, we had a month in a short-term rental in Alaska with nothing to do but read The Little House in the Big Woods. It was the perfect book for us: a family with three little girls who were moving and finding joy in working together. By the time we moved into our home, we were aching to sweep floors! 

This started a pattern of housework—and family read alouds—that was truly satisfying. We took our time learning to do things right, and to this day, my twenty-year-old still admits that scrubbing is one of her favorite things to do. Natural satisfaction in dealing with dirt is not something that is native to my nature, so when I started this process I was trying to teach myself as I taught my kids—and learned from them. Learning to love to work.

There is something about stories that helps ease life’s lessons. When our circumstances are swirling over our heads, it helps to open a book. Those winds fade as we read about someone in a parallel circumstance. When we close the book, our perspective on our situation adjusts to the horizon. We are better able to see the big picture. 

During this move, from Stuttgart to Williamsburg, our children’s needs were different. Even our youngest child will work when invested, but our kids have never been without a home for so long. I wanted something to help hotel living feel like a luxury. We read aloud The Family Under the Bridge, about an elderly man who befriends three homeless children living under a bridge in Paris. 

Now we are reading The Mysterious Benedict Society. Two of the children read this book in Stuttgart and suggested it as a read-aloud. Surprisingly, even these two who had already read it are invested in reading it as a family and are willing to read aloud while we take turns opening boxes. 

Both of these books are about children who are not in their own homes. Both sets of children create family in unexpected ways. 

When the boxes arrive, things arrive broken. And it’s okay. These books have helped keep things in perspective for all of us. We have a home, we have family, and we have superglue. We have felt that our family isn’t broken but is growing stronger from the bumps along the road. This is the power of the right book at the right time.

In the scrapbook from my college years, I have a note written on a Franklin Covey 7-Habits planner page. This slip of paper had been repurposed to doodle my life dreams, my ultimate bucket list. A few months ago, my children were browsing the scrapbook and they noticed this list. Along with visit all 50 states and write a book, I have an entry of particular interest. The children laughed as they showed me the entry: “Take my kids to Europe…heck, live in Europe!” We all delighted at this, as we were going on year three of living as a family in Southern Germany. 

This morning, we move into our new home. While living in Williamsburg wasn’t among my college-girl dreams, it has been a growing castle in the air since we visited it years ago. This is the place of our more grown up family–the place our children will marry from, the place our grandchildren will visit. Retirement is in view. After living in a foreign country that was a dream in so many ways, this is the home where our deeper dreams will come true–the dreams that really matter to us. We’ve never intended to be transient. We’ve tried to see each home as a piece of our lives that really matters. This home is the home we’ve looked forward to as the one where we finally settled down–or at least is that last stepping stone to settling down. 

We’ve been brainstorming what we truly want this home to be for us. Not just what it looks like, but what it means, its role in our lives. The last few years were about physical healing and rejuvenation. These years, we hope to accomplish some of the goals we’ve worked towards our whole lives. As I’ve recently shared, our time in the hotel has been a pause from everyday living that we’ve used to map out the next phase of our lives. We’re dreaming what we want it to look like and feel like. This is a process we’ve refined over the last several moves and it’s remarkably satisfying. In Europe, we created “tour packages” of what we wanted our time to represent for us. Here in Williamsburg, it’s more like dreaming lifestyle choices. The options here range from history buff to coastal wildlife exploration to full time calendar family. Believe it or not, our options feel even more limitless than when we were planning our time in Europe! But maybe we’re just more practiced at the art. This is a phase we highly recommend to all families: pre-dream your life in 2026.

The dream phase is not just happy sentiment. It is actually a scientific, research-backed principle–and is proven to yield results. When I was attending graduate school, learning the truths of education from some of the best minds in the world, one of the truths that stuck out to me was to dream—except they phrased it like this: start with the ideal. When we were designing an educational program, one of the first questions we would ask was, “what is the very best way to learn this?” The process doesn’t stop at the (sometimes unrealistic) dream. We also deal with the raw and ugly constraints. You’ll need to know that we will fully address these difficulties–later. But first, we dream! This stage of design is when all of the constraints are set aside. 

Imaging that the constraints are gone: funds are unlimited; time and energy are endless; the world revolves around fulfilling your specific goals. Starting with the ideal is a delightful practice–setting aside all of the frustrations to imagine what can be. 

Right now you are probably thinking how unrealistic that is–and in a way you are right. We get to that, but the first stage is to trust the process and allow yourself to dream. My professors taught me that this often helps us see solutions we would overlook if, from the first, we put ourselves in the midst of difficult realities. As a designer, the dream phase actually makes it easier for me to deal with the difficulties that arise. It makes facing challenges feel more like a game. As a mother, I’ve found that this technique to be one of the most effective towards intentional parenting. That is probably why this is one of my favorite educational truths: start with the ideal, move to the real. 

Let’s go back to our move to Europe. When I first heard we were moving, I was overwhelmed. I was facing some major health challenges and was struggling to meet my family’s most basic needs. I didn’t know how our family would survive with the added burden of negotiating life in a culture I didn’t understand and a language I didn’t speak. But I reminded myself that I had always wanted our family to live in a foreign country, and if we didn’t do it now, our children would miss out on an incredible opportunity. We didn’t really have a choice in the matter at that point, so I decided I would set aside my overwhelm enough to hope our kids would get something out of it. And then the Lord reminded me: I am an educational designer. If I wanted living in Europe to be an educational experience, I would have to approach this adventure as an educational designer does–by starting with a dream. We sat the kids down and we asked them what they hoped to get out of our family’s time in Europe. We shared with them that it was a bit of a game, start with the ideal, and that we were just taking some time to use our imaginations. If the sky were the limit, if you could create your perfect vision of your time in Europe, what would it be? Goosebumps, right?

The last two weeks in the hotel, we’ve been doing the same thing. Cultural opportunities, sporting events, educational opportunities: we want to do them all! I admit that I’m doing the same thing with wallpaper samples and Pinterest boards. I love them all! And then we prioritize. We’re not ruling any of our options out right now, we’re just choosing our favorites. And just as happened with those educational programs I designed many years ago, ideas start to emerge from the chaos. Ideas that feel just right: the ideal. It’s amazing how our minds slowly evolve as we select our most valued options. We’re still not saying no, it’s just that those less desired options seem to fade into the background. Into maybe. Or someday. We have a higher goal now, bigger ambitions to aspire to. Dreams to fulfill.

It’s the honeymoon phase of the design process, and it won’t last forever. Once we start overscheduling our days, joining our clubs, and pasting on that finicky wallpaper that looked so great online we sometimes realize we have just made a big mistake. The first big trip in Europe that my husband and I took—finally traveling to France—our car broke down just inside the German border. The dream had become a nightmare. The car was dead, our towing insurance had lapsed, I was covered in hives—and I didn’t speak a word of German!

How does starting with the ideal help when the real is falling apart? Next time we will share how we managed our expectations while facing a very messy reality. We’ll also share, step-by-step, how you can start with the ideal and move to the real in your own life. 

For now, pick one thing coming up this week—something that matters to you—and dare to start dreaming.