Oh, it has been a delight this past month to relish in the fact that we are no longer living in the RV! Every day we find ourselves something new to be thankful for. We are now even watching You Tube videos of people who live or have lived in their camper or 5th wheel or vintage trailer. We sit and watch and nod our heads as to how we know exactly what they're talking about! We watched one today of a couple with 9 children who traveled for a few months in a 5th wheel, a very NICE one. I sat back and listened to the kids talk about how jealous they were because we didn't have some of those features in the RV we rented. Then I am quick to point out that we weren't sharing with that many kids and the fact the family spent most of their time outside of the RV and also never went through all four seasons in one. There are not a lot of jokes or funny scenarios in this post, just the realness of everyday life we experienced. There are several more pictures I want to share but need to research my archives and will add them later on.
So, here we are, unbelievably living away from the camper we called home for 8 months in our amazingly blessed Summer Town House. We can't seem to get a grip of modern things we once had been deprived of. The showers here are GINORMOUS! And the toilets, all 3 of them, don't have us banging our elbows or heads on the walls! (I know, a christmas show reference- although our kids want to watch The Elf all year and we talk about it often)
One of the most memorable luxuries we lacked was the need of quick, warm and unfrozen tap water.
I will just share about H2O today and maybe a few other quirky memories, but this being the 2nd most intense subject while in the camper through all the seasons!
Traveling in an RV can be a challenge on it's own but parking it on rented land and hooking up utilities sounds like a dreamy situation but....it wasn't something we were ready for. The owners of the RV hadn't lived in it but had only stayed a short while and never in the winter. We had NO clue what was coming our way. It was certainly the calm before the Storm.
The first week in the camper was not to bad. I was struggling with trying to make it feel like a normal home and making the kids feel like they were on vacation. They did seem to enjoy it but Mama wasn't starting to enjoy what was going on, I could insert an emojii here but I will refrain!
The weather in mid November was really nice during the day but it started getting really cool at night. That was normally when we would do baths for the kids and myself pre-camper.
We had been in the camper a few days and we all smelled like it too. Trying to get adjusted to life in a different way.
I decided to give the girls a bath in the tiny little tub, which was something we really prayed for since we had little ones. The first go of it ended up in a tub full of brown water. I quickly texted the owner and asked about what they used to winterize it and thought it was from some chemicals, but No. It wasn't that. I thought and thought and realized that maybe the water line just wasn't flushed out, not being used on the land, so I drained the tub and re ran the bath water. It was clearer but turned brown half way through. Ok, so I ran and got some baking soda and essential oils and added it. I got the girls ready to put in and felt the water....it was cold. The hot water had run out? Actually it never got real warm. What? I can't give my little 6 month old a bath in cold water or the lil' toddler either.
I primitively went to the propane stove and fired up my 'big' 2 quart pan and the tea kettle and waited for it to get hot. I then spend 30 minutes getting the bath "all ready". I quickly gave the girls a bath and then had my 9 year old just jump in for a shower followed by his sister.
I had never heard such hollering as I left my son in the shower to get cleaned up. He was jumping and screaming for me. I stepped in and realized that his shower had gotten cold before he rinsed the soap off and he couldn't remember how to turn it off. I told him to wait for it to re-heat. He got tired of waiting and it was getting really cool in the bathroom with the vent open so he just rinsed with cold water and stuck his head in the sink to get the shampoo out. His sister got in and is very dramatic already, ended up crying and sobbing because she too had run out of warm water. I told her just to get out, water would be enough to rinse off and she could take a bath the next night. I gave up on my bath that night and decided to wait during the day hoping the water would be warmer in the pipes during sunlight.
The next day I got in. It was such a primitive feeling like I was in nature taking a shower and looking up through the skylight in the tiny bathroom as the older two decide to have a dance party, shaking the entire RV. Yes, I screamed a little, okay, a lot. "Kids, sit down, I can't keep my balance, please stop the jumping, this is not a bounce house, you hear me, I know you hear me because these walls are made of cardboard". (they weren't really, but I imagined they were since they were very fragile and not sound proof. I had to leave the little ones strapped in their chairs in the table seats, since I could watch them from the shower while they eat their snacks so Mommy could get clean. If I let them run amuck they would try to open the exterior door and risk falling out of the camper! I got in and I felt just like the Elf. Like a ginormous giant trying to shower off in an elf sized shower. Not only did the water turn frigid right after sudsing up but the water pressure was like the drizzle of a garden hose. We never did get that improved while we lived there for the entire time. We never could get the shampoo our of our hair really well. In fact, it was so hard to get our heads clean we would often get those little "cradle cap" like crusties on our head. It really was horrible.
The youngest at the time of moving in the RV was 6 months old, and then the next one up was almost 2. It was a real concern of mine that I felt they weren't getting clean enough. I am always the Mom that worries about germs and making sure they at least get a good scrub down every other day with our Young Living Baby Bath soap. But, I had to let my boundaries go and give in to either stay warm or get clean. It was a tough choice and I certainly was able to prioritize the necessities from the comfortableness. This, in itself, is very humbling. It was great knowing we were out in the middle of the country but when we decided to go where people were, it did require an army to get everyone presentable and clean. I know most people do not mind if they have body odor or if there are stains on their clothes or even boogers in their kids noses...........but I really am concerned with these details. My grandmother always said, "We may be poor, but we don't have to look dirty". Cleanliness was next to godliness in some things, especially her home. It was not very attractive being an old farm house, but if her guests were coming you would find her cleaning two weeks out from the date of their arrival. She would micro clean from top to bottom. She said, "we don't have a lot, but I don't want our guests to feel like their stay was dirty". That lady would clean with boiling vinegar and her hands were always scratchy from the hard labor she did bare handed. I miss her so. I took on some of her training and thoughts of making sure the kids were clean and our home is even cleaner for guests and just everyday living, although I am not as extreme as I used to be before four children. HA.
Back to the camper....As for the kids, they never learned to like the shower and my oldest daughter liked to take baths but never go the water to stop turning brown. We never figured that out and over time it got less brown but would stay clear until near the end of filling up the bath water. We just limited the amount of water for the baths then. Also the little ones liked to throw water everywhere so not only do you have to mop up the water quickly inside the bathroom, it likes to overflow the top of the tub if you take the shower head and turn it toward the stall and will run on into the bedroom. Yes, had to mop up several of those fun little adventures. With the toddlers in the confined little tub, though, they loved it. They had not a care in the world, they just enjoyed throwing water everywhere so the entire bathroom would be wet from steam and tub water. It was really like taking a bath myself and the plus to this was I could bathe the toddlers and help get dinner on the table since it was within reaching distance from the tub, see....win, win! But don't you dare turn on any other faucet while someone is showering, you will be scorned!
Once we got the water temperature valve changed, which I will cover in a minute, I was able to do a quick shower off and then either another day or hour go back and wash my hair without losing warmth. It was crazy! to say the least. I'd say if it wasn't for the mission trip to Honduras, I don't think I would have been quite as prepared for camper showering! As the weather got icy outside our showers got fewer and farther between. Once you step inside the tiny bathroom and have to open the ceiling vent to let the steam out, plus the lack of insulation in there....you will find yourself looking for the quickest way out of there. I'll just be real honest here...there were weeks where I only took a full shower to go to church and halfway clean up twice a week. There were, honestly times when I didn't shave my legs for several weeks, ok, maybe nearly a month or so, but hey, I was freezing and insulated leggings can hide a multitude of hairy legs! (I will get into the weather in another post, y'all) The winter got REAL interesting.
I found myself doing dishes with cool water as well and had to boil water for that as well. My daughter was in bottles regularly so I felt they never got really sanitized. I would use the microwave to heat up water and steam them but had to make sure no other electrical item was running.
Probably two weeks had gone by after moving into this wilderness camper when I called the owner and told her about the water issue. After each night off colder weather we realized something was wrong with the water heater. It is heated by propane so we knew it wasn't that. Turns out to be a super easy fix. Under the sink the tank switch was only letting the cold water through and not the hot water! Ugh, what? All those hours of struggling to do dishes, which was already crazy with all of us eating 3 meals a day plus snacks and bottles and NO dishwasher! We used a lot of camping paper plates and cups along with cutlery. A far cry from my pre-camper efforts to get rid of all plastic in the house........ugh. I felt myself cringe every time I had to revert back to my pre-knowledge of the effect of chemicals in plastics. I had wished I just hadn't educated myself on the topic so much, but now it was too late. You know the saying about sin- if you know something is wrong but you do it anyway, that sin, well I felt as though myself or the kids were going to feel the effects from using these camper style utensils for so long and I was going to be to blame. It really was hard. I will talk about what I kept in my pantry and the minimal cooking items I had in the cabinets. I really shock myself when I think about how I cooked all those meals with such little tools. Unreal.I guess along with the showers and washing dishes issue there was also the issue of laundry. I was going to the laundry mat about 16 minutes away and paying oodles of cash to wash all our clothes. I got to the point I told the kids to keep wearing their clothes until they smelled horrible, unless we were going to church! They naturally get super dirty just going outside ONE time so this was a major challenge trying to get anything clean from their closets.
I would go at night to do the laundry when my husband came home from work. I did try to take the kids with me but that wasn't so pleasant during the last of the 2 hour trip! We were on a budget so I didn't dry the clothes all the way and would bring them back to the RV and hang a clothes rope from one side of the RV to the other and around our master bedroom and just hang as many as I could, hoping they would dry out before breakfast. Since the humidity in the RV doesn't just evaporate without a dehumidifier, it was getting me NO WHERE fast. The kids would just weave their way through the laundry hanging up and find their way to sit down for breakfast. The girls suffered the most as they tried to eat their food while looking up at Daddy's underwear! And Landon complained all the time that he couldn't see the tv because his sister's underwear and socks were staring him in the face. Well, I said, at least you'll have dry and clean clothes by this afternoon when the sauna heats up the camper!
My husband had promised that by now he would have a little storage building complete and would hook up a water line and attach our washer and dryer. Ummm, well, it just wasn't happening! I managed to make it 2 months without a washer or dryer and the weather was getting pretty frigid!
Waking up in the mornings in the RV were so pleasant as the weather got cooler. We didn't need the heater because the sun would begin to heat it up by the time 8 o'clock hit. We'd just open up the windows mid December and let it warm itself up. It was crazy to say, but in January I remember days that it was 40 degrees and we would have the windows cracked due to the heat in the RV. We couldn't turn on the air conditioner in Winter, that would be ridiculous!Enough about the weather in this post, but I said all that to lead up to the cold weather causing some issues. The first freeze we got, I believe was on a weekday, Scott had already gotten up really early to replace one of the propane tanks when we turned the heater on and when he went to brush his teeth, well the pipes were frozen from the water spout outside to the RV inside the hose.
We called the owner and she quickly said she would get an electrically heated water hose to hook up if Scott could de-thaw the pipe. So, he got our hair dryer and managed to get the extension cord to reach from the barn to the RV and started thawing away, with a hair dryer! It didn't do so well, so he managed to get a small space heater and, well, it blew a fuse or socket or something. Quickly ruined the little space heater, but he got it thawed out.
I said to myself that day, and I'll never forget- "I will not live here another day if we can't keep the water warm inside."
Well, to my surprise, the problem was fixable and we again trudged on through the trenches with the warning of the first of winter. There was only one other day that the pipes froze and that day Scott blew out one of the outlets in the camper. I did get my laundry/storage/school room but my poor husband had the worst of time trying to get it finished. It was beginning to get dark in the evenings to he had little sunlight so he had to try and get it on the weekends. He finally managed to get it ready. He bought an instant water heater on sight and he wrapped a water hose with our previous summer of Pool Noodles and duct tape!! He had to super insulate all hoses outside to prevent any freezing. There were a few times I couldn't use the washer at night because the hose was a little frozen. I would wait until day to do some laundry. Any kind of wet towels that were left hanging would just smell moldy the next day, so I learned to put stuff outside, even though a little frozen, could thaw them out and throw them in the wash by noon the next day. Fun huh! Oh yes, so many great memories made here in the outback!
(I do have a pic of the drying laundry somewhere in my archive)
We struggled all through winter with water pressure but did have some steaming hot water at the faucets, even though short lived, we could get dishes soaking in the sink and learned to spread out the baths during the day so everyone could get a little warm water at a time.
Well, enough of water memories for today. I'll be addressing the weather, mold issues, and maybe will throw in some wild animal stories just for extra entertainment!
Please feel free to write your thoughts here, I'd love to read them!
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