Day 49 - We haven't really traveled yet, but today is the 49th day of living in our humble trailer. We have planned to leave several times. First, we were going to head straight up to Shenandoah Valley, VA and see the sights and history of the NE and then work our way back down the Eastern coast. Several days before we were scheduled to leave, Hurricane Sandy hit the NE and we were thanking God that we had not already headed that direction. Then as we sat back and reevaluated our calendar, we realized that we didn't have time to get too far away from Central Florida. (Hannah and Jacob have orthodontist appointments the week after Thanksgiving.) So we decided that we would head into the panhandle and see the sights up there.
I am amazed what all Florida has to offer. You would think that two native Floridians would have done a little more in our own backyards, but I think that we could spend an entire year in Florida and still not see it all.
Some things that I have learned in the past 7 weeks:
1) "It's my kitchen. Leave it alone." - Danny had an chance last weekend to fix himself breakfast. I had taken a rare opportunity to sleep in. He made himself some cream of wheat. I believe that I may have been asleep for 1 hour while he scoured the cabinets looking for everything that he would need to properly make his porridge. While searching the cabinets and moving things from one space to another, he devised a plan...a plan to make things 'better'. By the time I got up, he had it all figured out. He would build a cabinet 'here' and we could move that 'here' and if we just did 'this', it would all be better. I explained to him that there was NOTHING convenient about living in a travel trailer with limited storage and six people and he should just leave it the way that I already had it. I had a system that worked pretty well for me. (OH, and on a side note, I ate his cream of wheat. It was very good.)
2) "There is NOTHING easy about living in a travel trailer with 6 people." Storage is very limited in our home. The manufacturers have tried to make up for this small detail by giving you additional storage in odd spaces. For example, both bench seats at the dinette are hollow. You remove the cushions, lift the top and WAALAA, extra storage. Same goes for the bed in the 'master suite'. Of course, you need to plan out very carefully just what you want to store in these areas because getting to them is NOT going to be easy. One example...Hannah has, I believe, the largest wardrobe in the family. In order to try to accommodate her need for so many changes of clothes, I gave her two baskets and told her that we could store them under my bed. It seemed like a great solution, until I realized that every day and every night I would have to go to my bedroom and lift my bed while she decided what to wear. I soon realized that anything that was going to be stored under the bed needed to be 'excess' and items that we would 'rarely' need. (Hannah now stores her clothes in the largest of the three closets in my bedroom. I have told her that if she can fit it in there, she can keep it. It is much like a can of sardines. Be very careful opening the door.)
And lastly, (for now, anyway)
3) "The oddest things, bring me pleasure." One day I had Danny show me how to empty the 'black water' tank...just in case. (For those of you who don't know the terminology, we have three tanks: fresh water, this would be our fresh water storage if we were 'dry docking' and not hooked to a water system (like we are here in the park), grey water, this is the water that is disposed of down your sinks and bathtub, and then black water, this would be the water (and other things) that are disposed of down your toilet.) I had watched a very detailed youtube video (a link for the truly curious) on dumping your tanks, but I wasn't comfortable with just that, I need to see it and do it for myself. I know, TMI. But I've got to tell you, there is something very comforting knowing that your black water tanks are CLEAN.
I am looking forward to Tuesday. It will be good to actually be on the road. I told the kids that this week they needed to be studying caverns, the Civil War, and BATS (not sure that I am looking forward to that one).
No comments:
Post a Comment