Balance

I have a pretty good understanding of the importance of providing my children with balanced meals — even though I have been known, from time to time, to suggest having ice cream for dinner (although my daughter always points out that doing so wouldn’t be healthy and we ought to have dinner first.) When planning meals I am careful to include a variety of food groups even on the nights we have casseroles or one pot meals. I try, somewhat less successfully, to incorporate a variety of colors into the meals I make. For some reason I tend to create beige meals or green meals. Sometimes orange meals. Over a few days time we tend to eat our way through the rainbow, but on any given night there is a good chance the meal will be more monochromatic than one might hope.

But nutrition is not the only thing to consider when attempting to provide a balanced meal. When you live in a household like ours there are other matters to consider. I am pretty sure that a balanced meal does not mean one balanced on top of piles on the table.

Every night at dinner I battle the day’s accumulation of gunk on the dining room table. No matter how clear it was the previous evening, no matter that most members of our household have been out of the house for the majority of the day, there are always things on the table which don’t belong and very little room to sit and eat.

In defense of those I wish to blame, many of the things cluttering the table don’t have a proper place to go. (There is a reason J is confused when I ask her to clear off the table and then get angry when she merely moves things onto the couch.) My hope is that during this purge and reorganization of our home we will reclaim the dining room table, create homes for the items we create homes for the items we choose to keep and find balance for our belongings and our bellies.