VACUUM FOLLOWUP AND KEEPING TRACK OF WHAT HAS TO BE DONE

 Saturday night last week husband had an idea.  He took one of our older vacuum cleaners, opened the bottom of it and took out the roller.  He then plugged it in and tried to vacuum with it – it works fine without the roller – no roller, no hair problem.  We did find out, which I am sure we knew and forgot over the years since it was used, that the on/off switch is broken on the old vacuum – it is on if it is plugged in – better than being turned off when plugged in.  

We returned the other vacuum we bought.

Husband figured out how to attach hose and floor shaped piece to a small wet dry vacuum we have.  Between the two – we can vacuum as much as we need to.  We only have 3 rooms (office, studio, and teddy bears' room – aka spare bedroom)which have carpet so the floors mostly do not need the roller brush that is the problem with the hair.

And if he will use the vacuum cleaners – yippee for me.  I mostly do the cleaning in the house (and in the RV).

Speaking of our little RV – we went out today with a print out of the list of what we need to have in it for a trip.  While we pushed our July 4th trip back to last week and then pushed it off until July 4th, 2022, we still want to get it ready for a trip, even if only a day trip.  (Moved it back to next July as easier than calling each time we decide we are not ready to travel plus we know we have a reservation for then as they normally fill months in advance.  We can make reservations for trips between now and then as we go along and decide we are going.)

In normal times we keep a lot of common items in the RV – hand soap, shampoo, dish soap, suntan lotion, toilet paper, paper towels…  In March 2020 when husband was in a panic over the coming pandemic and lack of available items in stores, we took many of these items into the house in case we needed them.  Oddly, when he looked through quickly a few weeks ago the holder piece for the toilet paper holder was missing and we bought a new one as we knew we had NOT taken that into the house.  

I have the list and check it before each trip we take just to be sure.  Much of it is items we pack for specific trips – clothing, jackets, shoes (though we keep slippers in the RV), snacks, chargers for everything we bring, plastic bags of all types and sizes, and so on.  In this case we were just checking what items normally stored in the RV we need to replace.  I made notations on the paper as we ran down it.  We found out we need to buy new toilet liquid (goes into the tank to help dissolve the tp and get rid of odors and help make what goes into it into “liquid”).  I put it on the shopping list.  

So now we know (though I am sure we will miss something) what has to go back in in addition to what we put in for each trip.  

In addition to the check list mentioned above, I also have a small checklist of what we need to make sure that when we leave our RV space each day we have done what we need to do – disconnected and put away the electricity connection and the cable wire which we use to connect the RV to the connections in the site.  I also list the water/toilet connections although we generally don't use the water connections at all (we fill the clean water tanks before leaving home) we do need to “dump” the sink and toilet water tanks before we leave our last morning at the campsite (on longer trips also during the trip once or twice).  I have reminders to check that curtains are open around the RV (closed at night for privacy), decorations we put out have been taken and stored, things inside the RV are shut off and put away in place so they don't move about while driving – don't want a plastic box coming at one's head if one has to stop short for example.  Jackets and sweatshirts back in place on the third seat and seat belt around them to keep them there.  Cabinets have to closed and the closures snapped closed to hold them close while driving and so on.  I have all these items listed on this smaller checklist and I check off each item or note that it was needed to be needed that morning with an “X”.  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
If you do something repeatedly – make yourself a check list of what you need to do it.  I use a computer spreadsheet – easy to change if needed and easy to print out when needed.