As the eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted my last blog post experienced some technical difficulties. My apologises. I can now add “having a dodgy internet connection” to my not-so-great things.
So, to recap, this is a list of great things about living in a small tin box, sorry caravan, and some not-so-great things. With 4 months of tiny living under our belts here’s my 5 great things.
Great thing No. 1 – Less stuff
I don’t like stuff. Pointless bits and pieces. Yuck. And with 3 small girls around, stuffs everywhere! Fortunately, living in a caravan means we literally can’t have much. There is no room. Yeah! The flip side of my minimalist attitude is that the girls collect anything and everything; stones, pebbles, twigs, leaves, leaves and twigs made into little boats, trash they find on the street (“but it doesn’t have a home daddy, let’s take it home.”)
Great thing No.2 – We get outside…a lot
It’s fantastic. Unless it’s raining, which it is at the moment. But apart from when it’s raining, it’s great. Out for walks, cycling, running, grass, fresh air, the sound of trees in the birds, just lots and lots of outside.
As a side note, has anyone else taken there kids out for a run? Good lord. What a drama.
Great thing No.3 – Seeing each other, everyday!
So, this could in truth have gone in neither category but I feeling positive today. And most of the time it is wonderful. Particularly so if you fast forward or rewind to being a working family and only spending 2 hours together a day (1 hour in the morning which consists of you shouting at them to get ready for school and the final hour of the day them shouting at you about, well, anything).
Great thing No.4 – 5 in the bed in the morning
Now, bit of a trend here, this has the flip side of never getting a lie-in. But I’m being positive…at the moment. So, woohoo, yeah, everyone in bed. It’s 6am. Yeah, bring on the day!!! No, honestly it’s lovely. A few books. A bit of a chat. Finding out all about Flossy’s latest nightmare (she saved me from dragons at the beach last night, which was a great relief).
Great thing No.5 – Hopefully having less of a negative environmental impact
Heating a caravan, for starters, is less impactful than heating a 4 Bed house. Plus having less stuff I think helps. Marvellous. We’ll be having Greta Thunderberger around for nut roast on bamboo plates before you know it.
So, that’s all the great stuff. But what about the stuff we don’t stick on Facebook! The rubbish stuff.
Not-so-great things No.1- Cleaning out the toilet
Yuck. So, everyday I have to remove the “cassette” which collects the toilet business and get rid of it. Not so much fun huh. Fortunately, we have a blue liquid which breaks things down a bit and improves the olfactory experience a little but not completely. It also creates a greenish liquid. I can assure it will be some long time before I will enjoy mint-choc-chip ice cream again.
Not-so-great thing No.2- No lie-ins
I think if we’d thought about this in advance we would have stayed living in a big house with very thick walls. But we didn’t. So, once one person is up, we are all up. Rubbish.
Not-so-great thing No.3- Washing Up, all the time
As I might have before mentioned we don’t have much stuff. The flip side to that is that you have to wash up a lot. Seemingly all the time. Breakfast finishes. Wash up. Have a snack. Wash up a bit. Lunch. Wash up. Snack. Wash up…you get the picture.
Interesting fact. Actually, let’s just say fact. We use 40 litres of water a day (mainly through washing up!) Crazy stuff huh.
Not-so-great thing No.4- Making the bed everyday
I know we all make the bed everyday but our bed is also the lounge and sofa. So we have to strip the covers off, store the duvet and pillows away, rearrange the cushions to make the sofa again, and push back the pull out slidey gig thing. And of course we have to do that again in the evening. Doing it everyday does get a bit irksome (word of the day alert, word of the day alert).
Not-so-great thing No.5- The rain and the hail
It hailed in the night earlier this week and it made the most god awful noise. Similarly with rain although not so bad. Also, to compound matters our awning (the tent that attaches to the caravan) is at the wrong height. So, if it rains in the night we periodically need to push the rain off to prevent it collapsing.
So, there you have it. A little peek into life in the caravan. But rest assured the good things out weigh the not-so-good…at least for now!
Up, down 