If you step into my home on any given day, you will most likely not see perfectly clean floors and walls or even clean children half the time. My home is not a museum, it is a place of learning and growth! Sometimes that growth is not pretty! I dream of a perfectly organized, clean home with children who behave all of the time but evidently my children don’t dream that same dream:).

If there’s one thing that stands out from my childhood it is that regardless of all the fighting and chaos that went on in a family with 8 kids, I always felt loved and at peace in our home. My mom never gave up making our home feel a little bit like heaven even though us kids probably made her life feel a little more like hell.

Here are five things I have learned for making home a heaven on earth even when hell seems to be knocking at the door!