<a href="http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/room.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-261" title="room" src="http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/room.jpg" alt="" width="463" height="347" /></a>
<h5 style="padding-left: 330px;">Photo by Jason Berg</h5>
<strong>Do you know what would make my life much, <em>much</em> more comfortable?</strong> A nice, big two-story addition on the back of our house.

Our back yard is plenty big, and we have it all planned out. On the first floor we'd gain a half bath, an expanded dream kitchen, and a cozy den with a fireplace. Upstairs we'd add a master bedroom and bath. We'd have lots of storage for our way-too-much-stuff, and the five of us wouldn't have to vie for our home's ONE bathroom, which would surely make us smile at each other more in the mornings. In short, life would be <em>perfect</em>.

But it isn't going to happen. At least not right now. Not when we're in the throes of this economy, with our savings account not nearly as padded as we'd like and our daughters' college funds almost non-existent.

<strong>So we're making do.</strong>

That phrase immediately takes me back to <em>Little House on the Prairie</em> books. Ma Ingalls was the Queen of Making Do. She would have a little paper parcel of white sugar and another of white flour, and maybe a few apples down in the cellar. Pa would happen to kill a rabbit on his way home from the fields, and Laura and Mary would scavenge some scraps of paper and cut something pretty out to decorate the table with, and voila! They had a feast. Even in the worst of times. (And, of course, there was always Pa's fiddle music to make it festive.)
<h4>Different struggles, similar tactics</h4>
It's hard to really romanticize my family's attempts to "make do," the way I always romanticized the Ingalls family, out on the harsh prairie.

The general approach, though, is similar. <strong>It involves taking stock of what we have, and determining what we need. It takes creativity, ingenuity, planning, and everyone pitching in ideas, time and sweat equity.</strong> And it's <em>very</em> rewarding, just as I imagine it has always been for people who find ways to do more with less.

Besides the Bathroom Problem (sorry, it just seems to deserve capitalization), the biggest issue in our house is that two of our three girls have to share a bedroom. I could write a whole post about why I think it's great for siblings to experience sharing a bedroom. I could also write a whole post about what makes it less than ideal.

But the point here, right now, is that we have a five-member family in a three-bedroom house. Some of us have to share. Period. Jason and I set a fine example by stepping up first and volunteering to share a room. Then we had to figure out how to divvy up the girls, and how to make a bedroom that used to belong to just one girl work for two.

We cobbled together a temporary solution when Jason and his daughter (H) first moved in, and the middle and oldest girls shared. Then we devised a new plan a year later, when we switched things up and the biggest (H) and littlest (S) girls shared. It was working OK. Sort of.
<h4>Devising plan B</h4>
Actually, with every passing day, our 12-year-old was increasingly less thrilled with the English fairy wallpaper border that was here when I bought the house. Oh, and our eight-year-old never wanted to have her friends come over because she didn't have enough space in her room to get her toys out and really <em>play</em>. That's no fun.

When Jason and I realized our dream addition wasn't going to happen in 2009, we also knew the bedroom situation wasn't sustainable long-term.

So we put our heads together, sketched out a plan, and looked in catalogs for ideas (at kids' rooms so over-the-top perfect they're laughable, but we were still able to find some great color combinations and things to do with paint). We set aside some money for a cool IKEA freestanding shelving unit, which can serve as a partial room divider, giving each girl her own sense of space.

This was our big painting weekend. It felt good to have a low-budget, methodical project with rewarding results. I love working side-by-side with Jason, listening to music, telling each other stories from our past, then sitting back after a long day and admiring our work.

Today, all three girls put on their painting clothes and got involved. I actually thought having them "help" was going to drive me mad, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. They were so eager to learn paintbrush techniques, and so happy to be a part of the transformation that is taking place.
<h4>No real hardships, but still—important lessons</h4>
I know that many, many people are making do with much less than we are. I don't want to make it seem like I think we're enduring real hardships over here. I certainly don't want to belittle all that we have, or the many struggles of others.

<strong>But still. I'm very glad about all of the things our children are learning through this process.</strong> They're learning problem solving, brainstorming, and how to sketch out ideas. They're learning that wallpaper is no fun to remove, but that skillfully working a paintbrush and roller can be a lot of fun. They're learning that working together on a project, as a family, can be just as exciting as having a game night—and it might even be a richer bonding experience.

And most of all? <strong>They're learning that having a dream of what "perfect" might look like is a fine thing, but that doesn't always mean you can just go out and put an addition on your house.</strong> What you <em>can</em> do, though, is choose to re-engineer your concept of perfection, make do with the resources you have, and feel richer in the end, because of it.