I am a neat freak. I want everything clean and in its place. Furthermore, I have the nose of a bloodhound, so I can’t deal with a patina consisting of food, toothpaste, and dirty clothes. Step one to resolving this: the best boxes in the world! A few different companies make “Weather Tight” boxes. They have serious locks and the covers are lined with foam so smells don’t come out and pests don’t come in. For those of you who saw our house reno, you may recall these were used in our “kitchen” on the back porch.
For smell mitigation, I was originally going to use the same solution I use at home in closets and chests: baking soda and essential oils in a glass canister. Simply stir essential oils into baking soda (I use about 40 drops in approximately ¼ to a ½ cup of baking soda) and you’re ready to go. I’m a huge fan of peppermint mixed with lavender (equal parts). It’s fresh and light, and essential oils don’t have the chemical aroma. Plus, in the rare event that we are a little fancy, I can use the oils as perfume. I’ve also heard that pests and bugs hate peppermint. (Tony would like to remind everyone that tigers love pepper, they hate cinnamon.)
The downfall of this solution, unsurprisingly, was where the hell do I put the cannisters? They took up precious and limited cup holder space, and when one of my best friends advised me that Bath & Body Works makes “plug ins” for cars in my favorite smell, Eucalyptus Spearmint, the whole essential oils idea went out the window (not literally). So far, the car freshener is working well and my nose has not yet advised me of any dangerous aromas lurking in the vehicle to date.
I love planning and designing. This project felt like moving into a new house for me. I got to optimize where things go and organize our belongings in an efficient and sustainable manner – manipulating configurations and layouts – heaven. Now that we are on the road, we’re still playing with portions of the vehicle that aren’t as functional as we would like, but for the most part, the setup has been pretty great. We have been good about keeping everything in its place, making finding whatever you happen to be looking for very easy. Check out the previous post for the actual “infrastructure” of the build out.
To make sure we were comfortable with what we were packing (clothes and everything else), we started weaning ourselves off most of our belongings and using only what we planned to bring with us. I think we got lucky in that our original choices for packing ended up being exactly what we packed. Some of you probably saw the packing list, but for those of you that didn’t, here is a quick screen shot. It effectively categorized all of our belongings into a place (the fancy boxes, mostly). Then the packing began. We each only get one duffel for clothes…and yes, I’m getting by just fine…shockingly.
Right now, my favorite box is the “games box”. It comes complete with board games, books, knitting, a frisbee, and my journal. Just things to keep us busy when we are laying low at camp. Part of this trip is disengage from an “electronic” life. Obviously, we will do blog and Facebook updates at a minimum, but I’m trying to take a step away from the phone, computer, tv, etc. I think this box is lovely replacement therapy. I’m very excited for my journal, but I know it will be hard work to keep me after it. I’ve never been the journaling type…I’ll try and three days later I’m over it and it’s forgotten. I’m hoping I can be a little better on this trip.
Here are a few more “packing” pictures if you are interested!
"Purposefully Unrushed" 