Homemaking

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Making an RV a Home

There’s more to making a home out of an RV than just putting up pictures or changing the curtains. You need to engage your other senses. I think that the way a home smells is very important. It has taken a long time to rid Miranda of her generic and still slightly mothbally RV smell, but today I finally succeeded.

I stayed in and did hand laundry, baking (muffins and a loaf of bread), and general cleaning of the rig. When I came in from swimming a few moments ago, I was greeted with the scent of lavender and yeast and was flooded with a sense of peace and well-being.

Peace and rest at length have come. All the days long toil is past, and each heart is whispering, home, home at last.

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A Beautiful Spring Day!!!

WOW! It’s sunny and warm out, with just a hint of a breeze. (In all fairness, yesterday was a beautiful day, too, but I had more important things to do than enjoy it. 🙂 ) The entire park is out and about doing things outside. This weather seems to have also motivated everyone to do laundry. I think I’m 30th in line. 🙁 I would just wash at home in the Wonderwash as it would not be a hardship to spend a few hours outside doing laundry, but there are too many clothes to dry indoors and exterior drying is not permitted.

I finally swapped my winter clothes for spring/summer items, so I have quite a bit of ironing to do. Thankfully, the laundry room provides an ironing board, as did the park in Oliver, so I can continue to keep Miranda an ironing-free zone. 🙂

I took advantage of the beautiful weather to wash the toad, something I haven’t done since I arrived in Oliver!

I also topped up my new batteries, something I had to do for the very first time! I wish I had known during the winter that I wouldn’t need to top them up until a gorgeous spring day as it’s a lot of work. I have to remove five screws and manoeuvre the batteries into position, so it takes about a half hour in a very uncomfortable position to check the water levels. I would have saved myself a lot of numb fingers had I been able to predict the future. 🙂 Yes, a battery monitoring system is on my list of desired items at some point!

My cats have also been enjoying the weather seeing as birds like the cedar hedge behind Miranda. They also like to sit up front and ‘chase’ squirrels to the back by following them from window to window. It makes me think of the portrait subjects jumping from frame to frame in Harry Potter. 😀

(A tip for those RVing with cats: if you’re sitting in the lounge one day and noticing that it’s drafty, check to see if one of your cats cranked open a window in the cab!)

Speaking of windows, I opened a few today (ah, fresh air) as well as a two overhead hatches. I’ll be stowing away the hatch foam covers in my final step to fully dewinterizing the rig.

(There’s a FLY outside one of my windows. Between that and the robins I’m ready to concede that Mother Nature really does intend for winter to be over!)

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Doing Laundry in an RV

Had some ‘unmentionables’ to ‘hand launder’ (using the Wonderwash of course!) this afternoon. It’s been pouring rain out all day, so stringing a clothesline outside for drying is out the question. I guess my only other option was to open up the laundry rack in the middle of the kitchen or dressing room and trip over it all day, right?

Here’s an RV tip: make use of its versatility:

laundry

My laundry rack squeezes in perfectly between the dinette benches and the table stows away in the cab.

It’s been damp in here the last few days (what a shocker), so I fired up the electric heater, which effectively turned the dinette area into a drying room!

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Adopting a New Grocery Chain

One of the things I found very difficult in my cross-country RV journey was figuring out which grocery stores to frequent. Grocery prices out here are a lot higher than they were in Gatineau/Ottawa and every grocery store I visited left me feeling rather ill with sticker shock. I learned very quickly that Safeway, a major chain out west, is the worst price offender and I now avoid it at all costs.

Oliver had two supermarkets, Supervalu which was neither super nor offered any value for the dollar, and Buy-Low, a discount store with decent prices (for a small town), if poor selection. It was in my infrequent trips to Penticton that I discovered Save-on-Foods. Their prices were also very high, but if you join their (free) discount club and shop wisely, you can get very, very good deals. Since I moved to south Surrey, I’ve been alternating between the nearest S-o-F and the Super Walmart, which has a huge grocery section. Walmart is the place to go to get basic groceries, but it’s at Save-on-Foods that I find the little luxury items that make grocery shopping so much fun:

Two of my favourite food groups in one (Guinness cheddar!!!)

Two of my favourite food groups in one (Guinness cheddar!!!)

On a recent shopping trip, the cashier took a moment to better explain the rewards program to me and let me know that there is a scanner near the door that prints out personalized coupons. The more you use your card and shop at Save-on-Foods, the better the coupon selector becomes at offering you bonuses you will use. Today, I got a handful of coupons for products I buy almost every week and which were on sale, offering me a double discount!

I like that the discount card can be used at other businesses, like Chevron gas.

Some RVers have written in their own blogs that one of the things they dislike about RVing is having to relearn how to grocery shop at every new town, but I find that half the fun of traveling is scoping out the local grocery store for products you don’t have ‘back home.’

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Great Cutting Mats for RVers

One of the great products I picked up at the RV show last month was a set of flexible chopping mats.

I had three cutting boards, none of which worked in Miranda’s kitchen. The first was too small, the second one the wrong shape, and the last too big.  I was in the market for a big cutting mat that I could use over the stove cover, which I could stand up in one of the sinks to dry, and which wouldn’t take up much room. I was also in the market for hot pads or something similar, on which to rest hot pots. Can you believe that this is what the perfect solution looks like?

cutting mat/hotpad

cutting mat/hotpad

I had initially planned to roll up the mats and stuff them in a cupboard, but they fit beautifully on the BBQ lighter hook!

A side benefit of these mats is that you can create a sort of funnel with them to trap the food and guide it into the pan without it scattering all over the place.

Tonight was the first time I was glad that they come in a set of two. While I chopped up some melon on one, I was able to rest an extremely hot dish on the other. Both have been in use since the RV show and have been subjected to cutting, burning, and rolling, with no evidence of ill use whatsoever.

This amazing product costs less than 2$. Amazon sells them for 1.95USD, but I picked mine up for 1.50CAD at the RV show (where things were slightly cheaper than retail). What a bargain!