A few pictures

Sometimes, it is hard to believe that we all live VERY comfortably in here.  Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy the tour.

This is the slide-out in the “dining room”

The slide-out view of our “living room”

Our bed is through a doorway in the front.  We have removed the tacky shower curtain that was once used as a door.  We do have limits and a certain level of decorum to uphold. We may live in a trailer, but we are not trashy!

 

Our spacious kitchen!  It really has ample space, when you get creative.  Notice the convenient covers for the sinks and the stove, they allow us to utilize the entire area as counter space!

One son’s bunk on top and the bottom bunk is the “playroom”

Another son on the top bunk and the other on the bottom bunk.  Each boy has his own “room.”

 

The bathroom, really the only thing I would like to change about the entire trailer.  Mostly because outside of the shower, there is almost no room to turn around.

This concludes our tour.  Thank you for taking the time (about 15 seconds if you are here in person) to see the place we call “HOME!”

Laundry Day

In our 2700 square foot house with a nice Maytag washer and dryer set, laundry day started at sunrise and ended well into the night.  We average seven to ten loads of laundry a week and find it easiest to complete it all in one day.  The task of laundry day requires someone to be home all day, which is a nightmare for my wife, and more impressively it necessitates remembering to keep up with it (or risk two days of this drudgery).  Nevertheless, this is a task that has to be completed by every family, including ours.

Since leaving our castlette, laundry day has changed a little.  Did you know that most travel trailers do not come equipped with laundry facilities?  We have to find another way to complete this task and two options are available.

Option one: Laundromat
This option is quite the learning experience for the whole family.  Five 30lb washers are full of our clothes and all the free drying we need.  We blaze through our laundry at top speed and have ten loads of laundry washed, dried, and sorted (we no longer believe in folding) in under two hours.  While at the Laundromat we have been able to eat dinner, buy some “fresh “ fruit from children wandering through and attend an ESL (English as a Second Language) class.  On this evening, I think we were the only people in the place who speak English as a first language.  Spanish is most prevalent, but there is another which I cannot identify at all.  Since when is laundry day a cultural experience.

Option two: Campground facilities
Again, we have seven to ten loads of laundry per week.  Six top loading washers put a good dent in that, but we need more!  It is close to our home and open twenty-four hours a day.  With a thirty minute wash and a forty-five minute dry, our laundry is finished in under one and a half hours.  That is actually only true if laundry day comes every five or six days.  The downside involves finding assorted unmentionables in our laundry that belong to complete strangers.  Oh well, finders keepers!

Our intention was to minimize the number of articles of clothing that each person has in the trailer.  We reduced our total number of clothes dramatically before moving, but we are still hemorrhaging clothes.  We have said this downsizing is a process.  While everything we own now fits into 390 square feet (our travel trailer and a 10X10 storage unit), I still feel we have too much stuff, clothes especially.

Top ten reasons to live in a travel trailer

1. 290  square feet of family togetherness.
2. It is like we are on vacation everyday.
3. I can go from the living room to the dining room then the kitchen without moving a muscle.
4. I can roll my lawn out in the morning, roll it back up in the evening and never have to worry about mowing it.
5. From the time we decide to go on a vacation to the time we are on the road (bags, food, and house included) is only one hour.
6. Two words: Bug zapper.
7. I can talk to anyone in my home, no matter which room they are in, without raising my voice.
8. Today they are strangers, tomorrow they are our neighbors
9. The concern my wife had that certain aspects of our life made us look like red-necks is no longer relevant.
10. “Kids! Get in we are moving!”

“Livin’ in a van down by the river”

Throughout our married life, when times were difficult, my wife and I have discussed the novelty of getting away.  I always borrowed a line from Chris Farley’s SNL character, motivational speaker Matt Foley, and quipped, “…and we will live in a van down by the river.”  Well, that has always been a fun game we played until the day it was taken seriously.  You see, with all of the turmoil we had been through and questioning we had been doing, the idea of packing our family (Us, three boys, a girl, two dogs and a cat!!) into a van and escaping sounded like a relief.  Maybe, then, we could live our life with the quality we desired.
Here is how my wife recounted that evening of July 15th to our children:

We’ve always joked about how we would love for Daddy to quit his job and live in a “van down by the river” so we could just “live on love” and spend time together. We do believe that if “a man does not work, he does not eat.” 2 Thessalonians 3:10, so Daddy would continue to provide an income, but the idea of “living simply” became so refreshing, so liberating, so free….this is when the idea was born. I said to Daddy, just fantasizing, “Wouldn’t it be so freeing to sell everything we have and live in a van down by the river?” He said “YES! I’M SERIOUS!” Of course we decided we would live in a travel trailer, but we began to fantasize about our life with 6 plates, 6 cups, 6 bowls, 10 books, 3 toys per kid, 7 outfits per person, no yard work, no huge spaces to vacuum, no yard full of weeds, one toilet to clean, spending TIME with each other and you.

While still a fantasy at that time, the excitement grew quickly.  The only problem we now faced was the absurdity of our plan.  Who would do something so stupid, and better yet who would still be friends with that person.  Besides, normal people would never do such a thing, right!?

A trip to Kohl’s

Wednesday July 15, 2009 is the day that changed everything.  It began innocently with a trip to Kohl’s for my wife and a few friends.  The plan was to enjoy a little shopping and the recently opened Chick-fil-a for lunch.  She had no intentions of buying anything at Kohl’s, but as her friends proceeded to swoon over the cute outfits for their babies, she felt a surge in the pit of her stomach.  The ache one gets when the want and the should no longer align.  She wanted an adorable, probably purple, outfit for our four-month-old daughter, yet she knew she should not buy it as our budget was on hiatus.

She called me while still in the store and a tense conversation regarding the status of our budget, bank account balance and income ensued.  Devastated by our inability to freely make such a small purchase, the discussion began that forever changed our lives!  Here is her account as she wrote in a journal for our children:

I began to realize that Daddy works just to pay for our house and utilities! I work taking care of our home and spend so little “quality time” with you because of it. I am always stressed out about picking up all the toys, washing and folding numerous clothes, washing huge amounts of dishes (that we don’t really need). The grass in our front yard is dead and dirt is present in places where there is supposed to be grass. Weeds surround the backyard.

More, more, more, we wanted more.  More clothes?  No.  A better house?  No.  A bigger yard?  No.  Nicer cars?  No.  A better income?  No.  We had finally realized what we were looking for and it was priceless.  It was in front of us the whole time and we could not see it.  We wanted each other.  We wanted to have fun with each other as husband and wife.  We wanted to enjoy our children, not just raise them, but be with them as they experience life and learn from us. We wanted, needed, quality time.  It sounds cliché and rather trite, but it was very true.  The problem we now faced was, “How do we structure our life so that we live with quality?'”

What started this mess?

At this time, we live in a thirty-two foot travel trailer.  That may not sound too odd on the outset, but wait, you will soon understand the novelty of such a venture.  You see, "we" are six people.  I am a thirty-one year old with a master's degree in Social Work.  My wife is thirty years old, college educated, and she choses to stay home and rear our four children.  Our children came quickly, and in some cases surprisingly, in under six years.  (Our oldest is a six-year-old boy.  Then, 20 months younger is another boy.  Next, another boy came 34 months later.  Finally, our blessed little girl came a staggering 15 months after her brother.)  Needless to say, our home is always loud and seldom without a swarm of activity.  Therefore, the question must be asked: "What would provoke such a family to chose this lifestyle?"

The decision to live in this manner truly was a choice.  With the current troubling economic situation, we have encountered families who have been forced into similar situations and others just trimming the fat.  While you will see that economics plays a role in our decision-making, it is not our guiding principle.  Our financial situation was becoming strained due to our continued desire for more.  More of what?  We wanted something, something we did not yet have.