This is it! Moving in the trailer.

When we realized that we couldn't afford to live in a conventional manner, we resorted to the next best thing to living in a tent. A travel trailer!

We bought a used 2015 Keystone Laredo. At about 30' of living space, it's the size of many living rooms. It has a small but very useful kitchen with a small fridge (one learns to jam things in), a good amount of cupboards and since we removed the dining set that came with the unit, we found room for our beloved little butcher block island that has proven its worth many times over already.

We had decided to put an Ikea storage unit where the dining set used to be until Glen remarked at how heavy that unit was on its own, not counting the many baskets full to the brim we were going to store in it. So we ditched that idea and ended putting a narrow table we had built out of our former coffee table that we had planned to use as a dining option and put plastic bins with baskets on top of them. I do intend to paint the plastic bins black to make them disappear so to speak.

Preparing for the move was a ruthless task. We had to sell, get rid of, almost all of our possessions. Anything that wasn't going to be useful on a daily basis was put on the block. Even sentimental items lose their importance when you don't have room for them. This purging makes you realize how we sometimes burden ourselves with "things" thinking that they make our life better or make us happy when all the while we end up packing and unpacking all this stuff with every move and having to find a place for them. For me, it was a revelation of sorts. I really don't need much to be happy. "Things" don't make us happy. A good life rich in experiences makes us happy. Family makes us happy. You get the drift.

Moving was a whole other experience as we ended with much more than anticipated. Every time we would bring a new load of boxes and bins to the trailer I would panic. Where am I supposed to put all this? The move took longer too as we had to do many, many runs with the truck (a F150 Ford that we bought to pull the trailer) to get everything out of the apartment. Like always, at the end I was putting every and anything in unmarked boxes just to get them packed and it ends up a big mess at the other end. At the same time we would prepare boxes to drop of at Value Village. One of the good box must have been taken by mistake to Value Village as I am still missing some things - utensils and a few other small items. At the end, we found room for it all and we're quite comfortable. We did however gave away the two large very comfortable recliner chairs that came with the trailer and replaced that with my little Ikea cart that holds my cookbooks, the printer (a new small printer to replace the huge one we had) and some general office stuff. I also brought in my grooming table (I kept all my grooming equipment in case I can make some money on the side with this service) put a tablecloth on it and voila! We have a dining table/desk/office space. Great! We eat outside most of the time but on a rainy day we can turn that table around and we can both sit at it comfortably. Sweet! Double duty is what you want of the furniture in a trailer. Our coffee table is a trunk I had won at a horse show and it also offers a lot of storage.

Here is a picture of our unit. Glen is so happy to have a truck! He actually washes it regularly.

I think I will be modifying quite a few things in our new home. I already removed (with great difficulty) the crappy mini-blinds and the valance from the kitchen windows to replace with a recovered valance and a fabric panel lined with black-out fabric to repel the heat and cold that can be rolled up or let down as the need arises. That brought a little more color to the inside. I do intend to recover all the other valances and add curtains as extra insulation for the windows. I'm already preparing for the colder season! We do intend to go south at the end of October but the weather can start to be pretty cold and nasty before that. I also want to paint all the walls and get rid of that dull beige color that is all over. I can see myself trying to recover the sofa also. All this should keep me busy for a while.

I'm still amazed that we found room for everything but I did forget to mention that the truck bed is also filled with plastic bins full of stuff we won't be needing regularly but want to keep - like our winter clothes, extra dog coats, collars, etc. our tools and painting supplies, beach paraphernalia.