Well, now that the weather is turning nicer - finally - thoughts turn to vacation. Since we had the bedbugs we will no longer stay in a hotel (although we don’t know that we got them there, many other possibilities). We instead bought a very tiny RV.
This is not one of those behemoths one sees on the road that look like an interstate bus nor one of those cute things with the overhang over the front seats, noooo. This is a Chevy 3500 van conversion. You know, those vans that tradesmen use for their tools. It is, as I like to say, cozy.
The bed when made up - and we keep it made up as is it hard to make it up, takes up over a third of length of the van. The front seats turn around to sit in at night. Between the two there is a mini kitchen behind the driver and a toilet cabinet behind the passenger seat.
Why am I writing about this? If you have think you have a small space with no place to put things - the RV is about 20 x 6.5 feet on the outside and, unlike Dr. Who’s Tardis, it is smaller on the inside. So to be very generous we have about 120 sq feet inside and it is 6 feet 1 inch inside in height - except where it is shorter. I am 5'1" and hit my head frequently. With the bed made up there is about 5 feet by 2.5 feet of walking around space inside.
Now imagine a house that small, with limited storage, and everything in it has be stored in such a way that when the house is moving (especially at high speeds on bumpy roads) the stuff will not move around and will make as little noise as possible. Noise can drive one crazy when one is driving and it is “bam, bam, bam, bam...” all the way. It takes much planning to get everything inside it as we are not minimalists!
When we first got it and looked at the storage - 3 small overhead cubbies over the bed, a small size cabinet overhanging the foot of the bed on one side (with the TV attached to arm on the rear of the cabinet which banged a lot until we figured out how to tie the frame holding the TV together and keep it from moving), small size cabinet under the 2 burner propane stove, 2 shelves with doors on the fronts of them over the “kitchen”, a closet about the height of a shirt with holes for 12 hangers, an overhead drawer over the driver and passenger seats, and a couple of shelves which have a high edge so small items do not fall out . Of course we also have 2 map pockets and the glove compartment and the seat back pockets of the van. Outside there is a compartment, perhaps a foot tall any maybe 4feet long, along the bottom of the driver’s side which holds the electrical cord for hook up at RV parks and has room for similar related items for setting up the RV. There is some storage under the bed about 2 feet deep from the back door of the van and inside there are 3 small cubbies under the bed - one also has one of the water tanks in it and the other the jack for the wheels. Since we keep the bed made up we have additional storage under the bed in what would have been the aisle between the two bench seats which turn into the bed. There is a third “car” seat behind the front passenger seat and it has storage in its base.
At first I planned it all out very well and I managed to get everything we thought we would need into the RV. I bring lots of plastic store shopping bags - good for garbage and also great for stuffing in the assorted compartments around stuff we bring to keep the stuff from moving around. Normal logic has nothing to do necessarily with where things are kept other than items used outside are stored in the outside compartment or inside the rear doors, food items in the cabinets around the kitchen area and items which need a refrigerator in the tiny one it has. Over the several years we have had it we found much of the items we anticipated needing we did not need and have brought less and less to the point that I sometimes have to move items to other cabinets to fill them enough to keep items from shifting and making noise. It never occurred to me when we first got the RV that I would have too much space, I could not figure out where to fit everything!
One of the reasons the RV came to my mind right now is that today we are doing something called dewinterizing. If you live in a cold area you know that in the winter water pipes can freeze, well imagine if the water pipes were in a completely unheated, barely insulated house. In the fall we have to get all the water out of the pipes, tanks, etc. and add a non-toxic antifreeze made for this purpose. Now that it is spring we have to get the anti-freeze out of the system and sanitize the system against anything which might have grown in it during the winter. This involves filling the 2 clean water tanks and running water through the water lines until the antifreeze is out - the antifreeze is pink, so the lines are run until they run clear - sink, inside shower, outside shower and toilet. Then the tanks have added to them a bleach and water mixture - just a touch of bleach - ½ cup in the larger tank and 1/4 cup in the smaller. Then water is added to finish refilling the tanks. Today when we did this we had not used a gallon of water out of each tank and when we went to add the water and bleach we had to run more water out of the lines to fit it in. Then the fun part - we back down the driveway and stop short, up the driveway ditto, several times to mix the bleach and the water. Then the easy part - we then let it all sit for 4 hours to sanitize the tanks.
After the 4 hours - or more - we drain the tanks. Since this is clean water we can just unscrew a cap on the bottom of the RV (guess who gets to crawl under) and the water drains out onto our driveway and into the street. Now, I say “just unscrew” - the drain points to the side of the van that I am sitting on when I do this and is right next to the side. So, especially when bleach is in the water coming out, I have to unscrew it (with my left hand as that is the direction it points) and when the water starts spurting out as the cap comes off - get up as quickly as an overweight 60+ year old woman can to avoid getting wet. When we put the cap back on, if it is while the driveway is still wet from the water I let out, I side on a plastic garbage bag to keep dry. We then refill the tanks and run the clean water through the lines to get rid of the bleach smell. (Not too much run through the lines or we will have to “dump” the grey (sink and shower ) water tank and the black (toilet) tanks and we have to drive to the next county for that, so we run just enough through. The clean tanks are then drained again. Now the instructions talk about doing this multiple times to get rid of the taste of bleach in the water. We have found that rather than waste water, when we go out the first time we bring water in bottles (which we fill at home) to drink and by the end of the first trip the bleach taste is gone. The bleach has long ago changed to water and is safe to use or even drink, even with the taste.
Today we got to the refill the tanks after the bleach part. We have a problem when we do this. The rear tank, which is smaller, seems to have a problem with the bleach having been in the water in it, and will not fill. When the water is put in after the bleach water is let out, the water spurts back out. There seems to be an air bubble formed. My husband has made a long thin tube to deal with this, which lets us fill the tank from the bottom and allows the air in the bubble to leave. This seems to only happen when we are doing this. We had to do it in the dark tonight. We still have to deal with the bleach water in the hot water tank tomorrow.
So, next time you look around your house and think you have too little space and too little storage think about this - there are couples who live full time in these tiny RVs - with large dogs!
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