Just in case anyone was wondering - after a week my head barely hurts if I touch where I hit it last week. ( I mean if I touch my head where it was hurt, not the board I hit it on.) My dad, a man of great wisdom, would say - “If your head hurts when you touch it, then don’t touch it.
The worst part of a trip, to me, is when I come home I have to do everything I didn’t do while away (and, of course, things I didn’t do before we went away). Husband never understands this idea.
We are pretty good at emptying out the RV when we return home - I have a system. There are two plans for emptying it, the regular plan and the “its raining and we can’t bring it all in plan”. In the normal plan, I start packing stuff and husband becomes a beast of burden running it all into the house. I am basically working in sections in a circle around where I am standing in the RV. First is the refrigerator, followed by food in plastic boxes in the cabinet. Husband will unpack the refrigerator items into the one in the house. I shut off the refrigerator in the RV and put a thick towel under the freezer section just in case any ice buildup melts and drips. (It does not have a separate freezer section, but a “cold” box as refrigerators did in “the olden days” - like the 1950s. Ice cream purchased in the evening will be soft ice cream when eaten at 2 am - cold soup beyond that. I take the batteries of the refrigerator thermometer and its remote read device.
The towels are added to the laundry bag of clothes and when the bag goes into the house it is tossed down the stairs to the basement. I pack the clean clothes (we always over pack - doesn’t everyone) and bring an extra day or two of clothes in case something happens to something we are wearing while away and we need to change clothes unexpectedly, they go into the other laundry bag and go by the stairs in the house so they go up the same night. Jackets, sweatshirts and such are taken in loose. Shoes are put into supermarket/Walmart shopping bags to be taken in.
Husband will take various laptops and other devices into the house in a couple of trips. Similarly he will take in my embroidery holder. The “last minute bag” is pulled out from under the bed and the items removed from it go back into it. This trip we also pulled toothpaste and such as we don’t want to leave them in all winter - we did that the first year and they did not survive well.
Any items we purchased while away and stored inside the main part of the TV are brought into the house and left on the table to be sorted and stored. (Hey, I just noticed that sorted and stored are anagrams - the same letters rearranged - is why they go together so well?)
On the “third seat” (seat behind the front passenger seat) we have a pocket with a folder in it which holds papers we pick up during the trip - tourist handouts, maps, local tourist magazines, and such, as well as magazines we brought from home to read - they go in similar bag to the shoes.
Assorted spare eyeglasses (reading, sun, etc.) that are needed and/or kept elsewhere are removed from the glove compartment as are the snacks I keep in the front door map pocket in case of a glucose low for either of us while in transit. In there is also the coupon holder from our car (if I need, for example, tissues while away, why shouldn’t I have the coupon with me to use) and the travel related coupons we brought with us. My old Palm and Blackberry cell phones which come along for the trip for other features of the phones have to be removed also. The EZ Pass (to pay tolls electronically) is removed from the windshield and stored away.
The various curtains in the RV are closed. The lights are shut off and the RV battery is shut off.
Between trips with items I had for him, husband has removing items we purchased and stored in he back of the RV (technically under the head of the bed) and adding them to what is on the kitchen table in the house.
I stop and get the mail from our mailbox on the way in. If it is a short trip and we did not stop the newspaper (yes, I still get and read a newspaper) I will bring them in also.
If it is raining - the food and stuff in the last minute bag go in and not much else unless it is needed.
Now I enter the house kitchen . I have to sort what has come in - food which does not need to be in the refrigerator goes on the counter. Food that goes in the refrigerator should already have been put there by Robert. Clean clothes, laptops & similar, mail, shoes, and such are put on the stairs or adjacent to them to be taken upstairs. Jackets and such are put in the front closet - or at least over the post at the foot of the stairs in the front hall. And the pile of stuff on the table.
The stuff on the table has to be sorted - stuff to go upstairs, stuff to stay in the kitchen/dinning room, stuff for the basement, stuff for our studio - or the garage workshop. I sort them into shopping bags and try to at least get them into the room they belong in - or hang them on the door knob to outside if the item goes outside.
But of course this is just the first step. The next day I will have to go through the mail- shred the junk mail, pull out and check bills, collect bank statements (if any) to reconcile, magazines to where they will be read, and so on. We will also go to the Post Office and pick up the mail which has accumulated in our box there, which also has to be sorted.
Food in boxes will have to be stored - I tend to do it slowly and use what is in the boxes. They are basically snacks so I use the cereal which was not used on the trip instead of storing it away, use the tea bag from the ones I brought with us, etc.
Since this was our last trip of the year that we will make with running water in the RV, I said to husband that I presume we will winterize the RV this week - he said we could wait. For those who might not understand this, in areas like this where it can get close to freezing and below it, the water pipes and valves might freeze and break. So we have to run a non-toxic anti freeze, made for this purpose for RVs and boats, through the water system. This keeps it all from freezing, but also means that we cannot use the system as that would be adding water which could freeze back in the system. Well, the not so cold weather we were having and were to have is to change by this weekend. So the winterizing must be done this week.
In addition, we needed a small closet type shed to keep our snowblower in by our side door. (It is currently in the garage workshop and not only does it take up room, but if it snow we have to shovel our way to the garage and clear a path in front of the garage door so a shed near the door would be very good to have.) Last year we waited too long to buy one - they have to be assembled above a certain temperature so that plastic gives and bends and does not break in the assembling. Husband kept forgetting to order one from a well known home store and finally decided this was it. We wanted to order one to pick up at the store. The program would not let us as it said the store already had “one”. So we went to the store. It took about an hour and a half for them to find the shed, get someone to take it down from the top shelf (maybe 20 feet or more up), us to take it to the register and pay for it (well, husband did while I got the van), have no one come to help us load it, realize the box inside the sealed plastic was soaked, find the assistant manager again, get the other one (yes, per the computer they had one, but actually they had two), and get someone to help us load it. It then sat in our van on the driveway until we could assemble it.
Monday was too cold, Tuesday it rained. (And of course we went and voted Tuesday.)So today we assembled it - mostly. We had to get the huge box out of our van - we managed to push it so it was in the rear of the van (behind the back seat) and on a work stand and unloaded. Today was already getting colder so we took all the pieces into the garage and turned on the hanging space heaters to keep the plastic pieces warm and pliable. We moved our car to the curved part of our driveway, then backed the RV to the spot the car normally is so we would have room to work. Somehow we were able to assemble most of the shed. Husband then got ill from bending over, as he does, and had to go in and go to sleep for awhile. I finished getting the roof ready to go on - screwing parts onto the inside of the room, putting things into the body of the shed to hold the roof in place, putting the handles on the doors. (The doors were about the worse part of the assembly except...) When it was all done, I went and woke husband who after about a half hour more, was able to come out and we put the roof on - yay! The last thing which had to be done and is a problem is two metal bars have to be slid into the roof and across into the sides to hold the front end of the roof on - we got one in, then gave up and will try again tomorrow as it was getting colder and dark.
Remember he said that we don’t have to winterize this week when I said I assumed we were going to? Tomorrow we will be winterizing the RV.
Luckily when he said that we would be doing these “little chores” today and tomorrow, I managed to write checks for all bills due out on Friday and figure out how much we have to transfer into checking to cover them - it is all finished and sitting in my “out” box for Friday.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK - When going on a trip - even a short, relatively local one as we take - try to be as caught up as possible before the trip. Try to plan when you will catch up on bills, other paperwork, unpacking, laundry (I am doing a week and a half’s laundry tonight and tomorrow night), and such, when you return.
For those who are Veterans or who are still on active service, Friday is Veteran’s Day here in the U.S. and is a holiday for many of those who live in the World War II allies countries (Armistice Day, Remembrance Day...) as Saturday is November 11, I thank you all for your service to your country - whether the U.S. or other. For those of you still on active service, I wish you a safe tour and return home.
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