Homemaking

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Pay Day Surprise

My first pay day at the gas station is tomorrow, so I was given my pay stub today seeing as I’m going to be off the next four days. I knew that the cheque would be more generous than I had calculated because I no longer need to have extra money taken off to pay to Revenue Quebec (whee!), but the amount seemed really off. So, I looked at the hourly rate and discovered, to my great pleasure, that I’m being paid a dollar more an hour than I had been told at hiring!

A dollar more an hour might not sound like much, but it’s significant. At a 24 hour part-time schedule (which is what I’ve been having so far) paid at minimum wage I could not meet my fixed expenses. At nine dollars an hour I can. If I get up to 40 hours a week, then I’ll be able to live. It won’t be enough for the other things I need to be saving up for, spring travel and renos, but it would be enough to live comfortably for the winter and to travel. So, a dollar more an hour is extremely significant and I’m grateful. There was also a nice note on the pay stub from the owner.

Today is the start of a 4-day weekend that will end with a brutal 6AM start time next week. I had made a note to myself to come home with Doritos seeing as Croft and Norma left me tons of salsa, cheese, and refried beans, so celebratory nachos were in order. Well, ‘The Chip Guy’ came in today and pulled the out dated (still edible, but too old to sell) product, which we are allowed to take home. I scored four huge bags of Cool Ranch Doritos, more than enough to get me through all that salsa, cheese, and refried beans over the next few months. As Croft would say, life is good!

My happy mood was not spoiled by the fact that the auditor came in today. He’s the guy who goes around nitpicking everything and who gave me grief for a leaf on the floor. *rolls eyes*

Next week, I have two solo eight hour closing shifts to do!

It’s amazing what a difference nine days make.

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Home Office in an RV

Post updated on July 9, 2011: go to this post to see my current home office in an RV.

I was tidying up the study tonight and realised that it was the perfect time to post ‘before’ pictures of my home office.

This is pretty much what it usually looks like (give or take a cup or water glass and a few sheets of paper) when I’m stationary. When I’m on the road, everything is put away. It’s therefore very hard to work effectively when I’m on the move. The makeover’s aim in this area is to make the home office area of my RV functional at all times.

Just about the only thing that works in the current set up is the cubby hole of sorts at the end of the ‘sofa’ where I have my all-in-one laser printer/scanner/copier/fax machine and my box of files.

The first change I want to make is to put the bookcase on the other side of the desk to free up access to the electrical panel. You can’t see it in the pictures, but I have a shredder stashed away behind the bookcase. It’s easily accessible when I need it and tucked away when I don’t.

The second change I will make is to mount my UPS under the desk and make a hole in the desk through which I will feed all the wires. Changing to a wireless mouse and keyboard option is not an option, so the amount of wireage is here to stay. The other wires are for the USB hub, the iPod charger, the camera, the cell phone, the PowerBook, the calculator, the printer, and the main power cord for the iMac (whew!). What I would like would be to not have to unplug and put all those wires away every time I pack up but rather have them sticking neatly out of a hole in the desk ready for use with either the Powerbook or the iMac when I stop.

The third change will be to find a permanent home for my supply cubbies. As you can see in the pictures, each little drawer is labeled so I can find what I need easily. The top three drawers have ‘pens’, ‘pencils’ (as well as erasers and sharpeners), and ‘markers’ (everything from highlighters to sharpies). The middle two drawers have ‘tape’ (and related fasteners like glue and staples) and ‘scissors’ (and related cutters like X-acto knives). The single bottom drawer has ‘rulers’ (including a tape measure, and also a three-hole punch). My overstock office supplies like notepads, envelopes, the label maker, and paperclips are in bins in an the overhead cabinet. When I move, I have to put the cubbies under the desk, facing the wall, and wedge them in place with the over-turned chair otherwise the drawers fly out. I think that nuts and bolts would secure the cubbies to the desk while elastics in an ‘X’ formation will keep the drawers in place but I’m still pondering the aesthetics of this plan.

Fourth, I want to set myself up an in and outbox system, which will simply be a two or three pocket filer affixed to the wall between the old lounge bar/new study cabinet and the window. I don’t like to keep a lot of paper lying around, trying to deal with it as it comes in so that I don’t get a huge mountain, but I occasionally have some things in progress that are better being left out than being filed right away.

Finally, I  will be sticking my family photos to my walls rather than have them sit on top of the cubbies where they must be put away every time I travel. I have thus far avoided sticking too many things to my walls, but now that I know I’ll be here for a while, I don’t mind. I’m just going to wait to paint first. I have used 3M command picture hanging strips (check out my comments to this post as ‘TravelingRae’) with great success and will continue to use them during my renos.

These pictures show that it is possible to have a complete functional office in an RV if that is something which is a priority to you. I’m lucky in that I have a whole room to devote to my home office (even though the office is concentrated in a third of the room), but I can imagine a similar set up in a spare closet (class As actually have those!) or a dining area.

My study is the room in Miranda that works best for me and which will need only very minor structural tweaking, with the most major changes planned being cosmetic. I’m very glad that I had the good sense to buy an RV with this room in the back rather than trying to do double duty in the living room or bedroom of a class A.

I’ve thought a few times about how a queen-bed layout in this room would have given me some better storage options (like mini-wardrobes), but, ultimately, the twin-bed layout with overhead cabinets has given me a much more open room better suited for conversion to a study. Behind the desk, on the opposite wall, is currently the base for a twin bed over which I have a drawer in which I keep printer paper. That drawer will soon be sent to another part of the rig (and the paper relegated to an overhead cabinet) while the base (which is like a big storage trunk) will be dismantled to give me space to put in a dresser. A Queen-bed layout with cabinets against the back wall only would never have given me so many options for the room’s layout!

This room’s fantastic functionality has inspired me to do great things with the front room’s tiny footprint. All in good time!

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Appliance Joy

Here is a stock image of my newest toy. I don’t have room in the rig for it yet so it’s still in the car ( 😀 ):

danby

No, it’s not a microwave! It’s a DISHWASHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just cannot believe that I own a Danby counter top dishwasher at this point in my life!!! They are worth about 300$, so I planned to do my renos and get one next winter.  Browsing the For Sale ads on Craigslist this week, I found TWO of these on sale! One was in Campbell River for 120$, which was still too pricey for my current financial situation. But the other one was in Cumberland, 50km away, for 70$. Even counting in gas, the latter one was a bargain that I couldn’t disregard. Since I won’t be buying groceries this week, I put my grocery money towards the Danby. I love it when things work out that way.

It’ll be great doing the renos with the dishwasher in my possession since I won’t have to guess how it would fit in a given space. It would have sucked to create a nook for it that wouldn’t work and have to start all over again. As it is, I think that my original idea was good, but will require some tweaking since the unit is a bit deeper than I expected. I’ve also  been advised that it gets really hot when it’s in the drying cycle. Since I usually just open the door instead of going into the drying cycle, this last bit might not be important, but it’s still useful information. One thing I will have to be careful about is plugging it into a socket that is not on the same circuit as the study as it is a 1260W unit, meaning it’ll draw almost 11A and cannot therefore operate on the same circuit at the same time as the microwave, vacuum cleaner, or printer.

Having had a dishwasher for one year, I know just how radically my life is going to change. I hate washing dishes. It’s the most onerous task in the universe; worse than scrubbing toilets or doing laundry. Being single, I have to do everything around my home. Why not let an inexpensive machine deal with the one thing I resent the most? I know from my experience living with a dishwasher that I’m going to cook more and eat out less. Needless to say, I can’t wait to set it up! The best part is that I have space for it, even if the space doesn’t exist right now. By keeping my rig relatively decluttered, I can, as I wrote in my ebook Sorting It Out, make room for things that matter. Until I find a human dishwasher, the things that matter include a Danby countertop dishwasher. 🙂

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Improving a Bare Room

I have a confession to make: I can’t remember the last time I saw the floor in the toilet room.

It’s crowded in there, with toilet paper stacked on one side, paper towels and kleenex stacked on the other. Today, I took a huge step to making this room prime storage real estate.

toiletroomshelf

The shelf is at exactly the right height to fit two rolls of toilet paper stacked on top of each other and is still high enough for a tall person to get up comfortably from the toilet.

I went to Home Depot to get some brackets to affix the shelf to the wall. This was my strangest Home Depot visit ever seeing as staff was super helpful! My first stop was to get the door catches for the over fridge cabinet (2.50$ total) and I hadn’t been two minutes in the hardware section that a helpful clerk was directing me to the door aisle. Next stop was braces and after finding what I wanted, I started to look at screws when yet another helpful clerk came to see if I needed help. I didn’t think I did, but this guy was clever and he managed to take me from ‘I’m fine, thanks’ to ‘I’m looking to screw something into motorhome paneling to hold a shelf’ in about thirty seconds. He talked me out of screws and braces and suggested I use an adhesive. So, having a tube of No More Nails at home, I left with my door catches only, having saved about 5$. Finally, I wasn’t even at the cash yet when a cashier waved and told me she could help me. Very, very, very strange. I noticed last year that service out west is better than out east and that seems to be holding!

I’m now giving the glue time to cure before I load the shelf.  I’m not putting anything heavy up there and the shelf is wedged in tightly, so I’m sure that the adhesive will be enough to hold the whole thing up, even under driving conditions. Time will tell.

Total project cost so far is $0.00 seeing as I had the glue and supporting pieces and Croft told me I could help myself to his plywood scraps. 🙂

When I get around to trim, I’ll add some to the front of the shelf to give it a nice finish. Paint will also happen sometime in the near future.

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Makeover Kickoff!

As funds present themselves this winter, I plan to begin a complete makeover of Miranda to fix her little imperfections, make her reflect my personality, and combat some of the wear and tear on a twelve year old RV not designed for full-timing. I’ve been planning this makeover for six months now and have determined which projects will be done in what order, as funds avail themselves. I could luck out with work this winter and get enough funds to do everything, or I might only end up doing a few things, but as my favourite architect says “A good house is never done” so I will content myself with what I can do to make Miranda more livable.

My first project was one of the more blurry items on my to-do list, one of those problems that can only be resolved when you’re staring at the solution. I hadn’t been at Croft and Norma’s more than an hour when Croft was showing me around the workshop and casually told me that I could use some doors if I found a purpose for them….

What a waste of space. :( Most RVs I've seen have a cabinet either above or below the fridge. I have no idea what Glendale intended for this space; it's too high for a microwave. I've been storing two baskets up there, but they are so cumbersome and need to be taken down when I drive.

What a waste of space. 🙁 Most RVs I’ve seen have a cabinet either above or below the fridge. I have no idea what Glendale intended for this space; it’s too high for a microwave. I’ve been storing two baskets up there, but they are so cumbersome and need to be taken down when I drive.

This is where I paused for lunch while waiting for glue to dry. :)

This is where I paused for lunch while waiting for glue to dry. 🙂

These doors just about match my other cabinet doors!!! Once I've painted (*g*), the difference will hardly be noticeable. When I made my initial measurements, I thought I would have room for two doors, but they each wound up being about a half inch too wide. This turns out well, though, since I was worried about finding latches secure enough to make me feel comfortable that the doors would not open while driving. Now, I have only one door to worry about and I can secure fragile things, like the blender, behind the fixed panel.

These doors just about match my other cabinet doors!!! Once I’ve painted (*g*), the difference will hardly be noticeable. When I made my initial measurements, I thought I would have room for two doors, but they each wound up being about a half inch too wide. This turns out well, though, since I was worried about finding latches secure enough to make me feel comfortable that the doors would not open while driving. Now, I have only one door to worry about and I can secure fragile things, like the blender, behind the fixed panel.

This is the new cabinet with the door open. It will be easy to access items stored behind the fixed panel.

This is the new cabinet with the door open. It will be easy to access items stored behind the fixed panel.

Using only materials Croft and I had on hand, I now have an over-fridge cabinet!

To keep myself honest, I decided that I am going to detail how much money I’m laying on this project. Total cost so far is $0.00. 🙂 I used some 1X2’s Croft had lying around to build the supports for the fixed panels. For the fixed panels, I dug deep into my large pass-through compartment to get the boards for the other bed. Now that I know I won’t be selling Miranda and will most definitely not be needing those boards any more, I can use them for my projects to keep a matching finish throughout the rig. I used Croft’s nails and my own screws, his wood glue and my own braces. One thing I was especially grateful to have access to was his brand new table saw! Works great, Croft! 🙂 It’s amazing how much more quickly a project goes when you have a table saw instead of having to fight with a combination of a jigsaw and miter saw!

The project’s not quite done, but isn’t far off. The space wasn’t even remotely square, to my immense surprise, so I decided that it would be easier to add trim to cover up gaps than to try to cut the particleboard exactly, something I know would probably be impossible to do. I also need latches for the door to keep it closed. Neither items are particularly expensive and I’ll pick them up next time I’m out and about. The final thing is to get a door pull, but that will wait until I’m much further along in the renovation process and know exactly how many more pulls I’ll need seeing as they come from Lee Valley and are cheaper when bought in bulk, plus I’m sure I’ll need other goodies from them.

I’m very pleased with how this project turned out!