June 2016 – Our Family Chatter

I like a clean house.

There is something relaxing about sitting down after my toddler tornado has gone to bed and seeing everything in its place.

Many of you are going to roll your eyes at me and dismiss me as a crazy woman, but I don’t care. Memes like the ones below aren’t hard to find and seem to be the popular opinion. While they are 100 per cent true and I laugh at how true each one really is, I also know keeping a somewhat tidy home is a possibility for me as well.

Having a toddler tornado is messy but if you can ignore the mess until he’s sleeping, a toddler tornado can also be a ton of fun. In the photos below I had just finished my daily workout and my tornado had gotten into a variety of things while I was kicking my butt and working up a sweat. The first photo was markers, that ended up on my face and shoes and the second photo was play-dough, small bits of it I am still finding around the house.

What’s fun about these situations is watching my little tornado discover things and be creative through mess. I have learned that creativity and learning isn’t something you can box up and keep all neat and tidy, which means messes happen.

But messes can also be tidied, opening the door to more options for creative play. I have noticed that when the tornado’s toys have been put away and organized he has an easier time choosing something new than when they are strewn all over the house. Maybe it’s just because he’s looking forward to making a huge mess again, but I like to think it’s because he’s been given a clean slate.

So for most of the day my house does look like a tornado hit it. In addition to the toys and lately, blankets, all over the house, the dishes are rarely done until after supper and my bathroom is not cleaned as frequently as it probably should be (Don’t worry guests, it’s always cleaned right before you come!).

But after my toddler tornado goes to bed and my chubby infant (16 lbs at 2 months – chubby may be an understaitment) is happy enough to be put down, I start tidying. Sometimes it’s overwhelming because the tornado has hit every room in the house but once I get started in never takes more than 20 minutes to tidy things and put things back in their places.

I will not feel guilty for liking a clean home. There’s already so much moms start feeling guilty about and this will not be one of those things for me. So if you, like me, enjoy the serenity of a tidy home – go ahead, take some time to make cleaning a priority. Do what makes you feel sane. For me, it’s toys in their baskets and a hot coffee in my hand.

Today will forever be remembered by me as the day the skyline in Grimshaw changed.

While I have resided in this town for only a little shy of six years, the seafoam green grain elevators that defined the skyline in Grimshaw were always a welcome sight.

I distinctly remember noticing them when I first pulled into Grimshaw on September 5, 2010. At that time there were two. My friend and I had just completed a cross-Canada road trip (Check out our journey – Day 1, Day 2, Day 3) from Ontario to Alberta and along the way we were impressed with the number of grain elevators along the way. These tall buildings define the skylines in many small towns across the prairies. Grimshaw was no different.

Sask Elevator — A grain elevator in Saskatchewan, and my beautiful friend Amanda

However, with changes in both the farming and rail industry, these old wooden grain elevators have become more of a liability and less useful.
Grimshaw lost the first of its remaining elevators in 2014. It was the oldest of the two and long-ago abandoned. It was also where I chose to have a few wedding photos done because while it was worn down, it was beautiful.

Wooden grain elevators are slowly disappearing from the prairies, and while I understand that not every one can be saved, I still feel sad to see both of Grimshaw’s disappear. According to Retroactive, a blog about Alberta’s historic places, there were 1,781 grain elevators in Alberta in the 1930s. In 2012 there were just 130 left on railway right of ways. As of today, another one has disappeared.

Photo by Dayna Erichson, taken June 1, 2016

A short while ago my co-worker shared that as a child when her family would be on their way home to Grimshaw from a summer road trip, her mom’s response to the question “are we there yet?” was always “Look for the elevators.” She then expressed disappointment over the fact that she would be unable to say the same thing to her own children.

These elevators are a piece of our small towns’ histories. They’re a place where many of the founders earned their incomes, a landmark that made people know they had made it “home,” and a beautiful reminder to the non-agricultural folks of how our towns were built.