Happy campers!

Well it has again been quite a while since I wrote here. Meantime we have been away in the camper van, attending a fantastic weekend of ukulele festival at Cheltenham and then spending a week or so in the Lake District camping out at my Dad’s (well, me and hubby were camping out… sleeping in the van…. son was in house).  I will blog about the festival and holiday and what happened on our return separately in a while. For this post, the focus continues on the whole issue of downsizing/minimalism that I was last blogging about.

I have to say that I was far happier in the camper van than I am now back here at home. Not only because we were away on holiday… but because I didn’t feel weighed down by a house and its contents. In the camper van the space, and the modicum of possessions we could have in it, was manageable – I have come back to a messy cluttered dirty house and I hate it.

I have now been ill with M.E. since 1993 and the amount of housework I can do is practically non-existent these days. My husband works full time and looks after me and after our adult son with learning difficulties, and so his time for house cleaning and maintenance is severely limited, particularly if he wants any time to actually have a life as a person in his own right and not a carer.  My son will try to do household tasks but it takes an awful lot of prompting and direction, which can be exhausting for me. 

This house comprises two bedrooms in use, plus one that once was a study/hobby room but is now largely a junk repository, an upstairs bathroom, a living room, a kitchen, a hall, stairs and landing, a downstairs loo, a porch and a back porch. All the rooms are full of possessions, furniture and appliances needing to be cleaned, tidied and looked after and of course the rooms themselves need cleaning and the house maintaining and decorating. Then there’s the garden, which currently most closely resembles a jungle and needs a machete to negotiate.

Most of which we managed without quite nicely whilst away. It’s surprising how little we took this time.

The camper van is effectively a bedsit on wheels… one multi-purpose room to be cleaned, tidied and maintained instead of eight or nine living spaces with different purposes within a house.

The camper van can have its drawbacks… for someone with restricted mobility and painful joints and muscles the seating choices are really not wonderful, and for my husband not having a fixed bed is a pain since he is the one having to manhandle the rock and roll seating to bed conversion every night. No shower or bath, no freezer, no washing machine, no dishwasher, the barest modicum of electronic entertainments provided you have access to mains hookup.  And the cooking facilities are very minimal. And in the winter we might be cold as it is not a winterized vehicle (though with space blankets on the windows and a small portable heater it’s surprisingly quick to heat the space).

It is of course luxurious compared to a tent… which is what my son was living in during the festival weekend as the camper van only provides one double bed and really enough seating/living room for two. Had we been towing a caravan as well he would have been hunky dory. But he is looking at different future housing options than we are.

Drawbacks, as above, acknowledged, it is workable to live in one short term and I think actually workable longer term. It is perfectly viable to strip wash all over daily and wash your hair in a bowl in the sink, keeping all non-negotiable toiletries and your wash gear in a plastic lidded tub (as we have a portaloo, strike bathroom off list of necessities), the shops are open most days to buy fresh or canned food (strike freezer), there are cheap cafes (strike full oven and microwave), there are launderettes (strike washing machine and tumble dryer… by this point, strike whole kitchen), and if you keep re-using the same couple of bowls, cups and plates etc and washing up as you go there is no need for a dishwasher. There’s minimal storage and no shelving of course, but with a strict limit on clothing and bedding, and if you were happy to carry on in life without knickknacks, memorabilia, masses of books, dvds and cds and a mass of household paperwork, it’s workable.

So that brings me on to entertainment… well in these days, as long as you have electric hook up and can figure out an affordable and workable means of mobile access to the Internet (which we’d gone without, until we got to my Dad’s and were in reach of his wireless) there’s not much you actually need miss out on if your vehicle is your home.. the modicum of gadgets is enough. I already do most of my “tv watching” via iplayer on the lappie or my ipod. Music, films, books, games… all are available in forms that can be stored/read/played on these gadgets and can thus take up next to no space without limiting your choices. (Photos can of course also be kept electronically and can replace most physical mementoes). And of course there are still libraries should I want an old fashioned book with pages and colour pics, or I can pick a book up from a charity shop or boot fair, look at it/read it, and then re-donate it. I can find a knitting pattern or chords for a ukulele song on the Internet… I don’t need books for those. If I can fit a couple of ukes in a cupboard somewhere I’m sorted. There is a whole world of theatres, festivals, cinemas, pubs with karaoke etc out there for my entertainment. I will not be bored living in a moveable residence!

If I were a keen gardener I expect I would miss working in a garden, but as I am too poorly to garden, spending my life living in fields/campsites proffers enough prospect of greenery and wildlife to satisfy me. In fact more than I can have at home since I cannot maintain my garden to make it pleasant to sit out in, and on a run-down squashed council estate with some problems with neighbours I couldn’t enjoy it much anyhow.

Now consider the additional options we would have if just we as a couple were living in a caravan towed by a camper van… the camper van would provide transport for everyday life and a means to get where the caravan won’t if on a break, a little extra storage and a spare bed when needed, the caravan would add to the mobile bedsit concept the luxuries of a fixed bed with it’s own space, superior seating, and superior cooking arrangements, plus a small shower and proper toilet area, and possibly winterization.

And it would still be a more maintainable space than a house…. And we could move in the space of a couple of hours if we found we had nightmare “neighbours”. Only someone who has experienced problems like that can appreciate the freedom and peace of mind that one last fact alone would represent!

I really, really, REALLY can’t wait!