PackRat 101

One of the most difficult things I have found in downsizing into an RV is the issue of my hoarding skills.   How the heck can I keep them finely tuned if I have no place to put anything?

Last September, We were forced to move from the RV back into the house. Of course, we had lived in here for 3 years before that so there was a well worked out “packing density” that allowed us to have what we wanted and needed… out of sight.  But once in the house, that was slowly dismantled over the ensuing months as we needed various things in there, like meds, sleep gear, vitamins, Katie stuff, tools, cosmetics, underwear..etc. The initial offloading took 54 trips just to get the stuff that we knew we had to have in the house. That was over a 3 day period (I counted because no one would believe we had that much stuff in here).

Trying to get the RV reloaded in 2 days was impossible without shortcuts and assumptions.  The shortcuts were mostly in the form of piles of things stuffed into grocery bags, boxes and pockets.  I figured that once we were setup here, I would take the time to sort it all out and put it back…. uh… NOT!  Even on my best days, my memory was not up to that task so thus far, the packing density is quite low. There is leftover space over, behind, under and inside of other things which must be compressed if I am to get all of these things back in here. Today, I launched into phase I.  I started with the rear overhead cabinets which hold most of the office and records related items. I had previously found a bunch of shoe box type plastic containers with lids that just exactly fit the space.  I had packed most of these but many were still a mixture before we moved into the house.

Today, I pulled them all out and collated the contents into specific bins for specifically related contents. e.g. program CDs, RV related CD/DVDs, USB related stuff, Audio stuff, Network stuff, Pet stuff (2 containers), etc.

That work eliminated 2 boxes and 3 grocery bags and it is all behind cabinet doors. More important, I can now find my meds on demand.

However, as you can see, there is still a lot more to go through before this will look like a home instead of a pack room.

Merrily had a great day, too and takes her first on the road drive, tomorrow. She has now done all of the current practice field exercises at least once and did quite well on all of them.  I think this is going to work out very well.

ttfn