Monday, November 8, 2010

What We Like (and Don't)


Parked in Charleston, SC

Well we’ve been living pretty much full time in the 160 sq. ft. of space allotted in our VW Rialta for about three weeks now.  Here’s a brief list of things we like and don’t like about it:

Like

Home is where we park
Life is simplified
Not having clutter
Freedom (though it’s quite scary sometimes)
Exploration, we’ve seen some truly stunning scenery
As winter gets closer, we’ve only gotten warmer
Cooking simple meals with a two burner stove
We don’t have a lot of clothes, hence it is simple to get dressed
We use our microwave as an extra cabinet rather than a microwave
It’s cozy
Friendly locals (more the further south we’ve gotten)
We can fit in most parking places in the city (only 22’ long)
We have a TV, but we don’t watch it (we watch the occasional movie or show on the laptop)

Dislike

Tolls
Staying at WalMart too much
The suburbs that we have to drive through to get to the Wal-Marts
Not having a sense of community – we miss our friends, and our local shops
Doing dishes in a mini-sink
Banging a knee or a head into something at least once a day
Having to move various items (ie. Fishing rods) to get to storage (ie. the kitchen cabinet)
One of us can sit while eating, the other has to stand (we’re sleeping on the dinette)

Things We Miss

The aforementioned friends and local shops
Unlimited hot showers
Laundry facilities
Dishwasher
Going out to eat more often – we’re on a very limited budget to be doing this
Being able to be “greener” (we had a worm compost at our house)
Grocery shopping for more than two days at a time
A couch
A kitchen table

--

All in all, this has been a great experience thus far.  We have our days where we look at each other and say “what the f*ck are we doing!?”, but the good experiences outweigh the bad.  In looking over our lists of likes and dislikes, it seems the things we dislike or miss are many of the conveniences that we take for granted when living in a house or an apartment: furniture, unlimited water on demand, etc.

Will we stay living in an RV forever?  No.  Our ultimate dream is still to live on a sailboat.  We are living in less space than the size sailboat we will eventually live on, so this has/continues to be a good primer for that.  In the meantime we will continue our travels on land, but keep the water in our hearts.

6 comments:

  1. I couldn't do it. Just couldn't. I like my roots, & they are thusly firmly planted. In the end, I think I envy you most for the traveling, since I enjoy that quite a bit. But living on the road in the way that you do I suspect would get tiring fast.

    Living on the water? Nooooooo. This Connell is terrified of the water.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great post! Since we'll be moving onto a sailboat it's interesting to hear your thoughts.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Keep moving forward everday is another day of expierence most people only dream about.Things will fall into place, and you will have an expierence of a Lifetime!! Love You Guys You Rock!! See you soon

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love what you're doing! I'm all for small space living and gathering experiences, not things. If you're heading into Western Canada (probably not until spring what with the cold weather up here...) I urge you to give us a call! Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks Gillian, and all for your comments!

    ReplyDelete