Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Housekeeping

When we were land dwellers, a schedule ruled our lives. Because I had to be at work early Monday morning, any cleaning I had to do was done on the weekends. Cleaning, laundry, shopping, yard work, and considering that it's holiday season, I would have been doing the shopping and baking and decorating thing as well. All on weekends.


Now that we're not land dwellers, a schedule doesn't rule our lives, at least not very often. We still have the occasion that we're meeting someone or we have to provision the boat for a departure but, for the most part, the days sort of blend together. Laundry gets done when it needs to get done, same with shopping and water hauling and gasoline buying. Now cleaning? That's another thing altogether. Cleaning gets done whenever we get tired of looking at it. Since you're in such a small space, you get to look at it up close and personal. A lot. Even with it in your face all the time, sometimes it's hard to get motivated.


Today while Tim slaved away trying to make some progress on the strengthening of the bimini mounting so we can install the solar panels, I decided to make myself useful as well and tackled my list of small, routine jobs.


  • Cleaned out the sump box (I truly hate this job. It reeks.)
  • Cleaned out the sump pump filter (This may be worse.)
  • Cleaned out my pot and pan cupboard.
  • Put new seal on the fridge lids.
  • Defrosted the fridge.
  • Put away the bunch of supplies we just got in from Amazon (filters, water purifier, etc. etc.)
  • Started soaking our shop rags (we can't wash them in a machine anywhere since they're greasy).
  • Did a trash run.


Might not seem like much but in a small space all this took 8 hours. And on a Tuesday, no less.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I'd have never thought of taking a bus to buy groceries, until being carless in St. Augustine. I now understand the time factor better. Yesterday we took a bus schedule from the marina and went to the intersection of the Blue and Red routes. No bus stop. I called the bus line (a private company as I learned) and was told to go to a specific place, blocks away, and the bus would be there in 45 minutes.
Long story short, the bus wouldn't return from the destination shopping center until about 8PM.

We came back to the boat and opted for this morning.

Hours will be invested in the effort to buy groceries and boat parts.

Your comments are so on target.

Unknown said...

Have you folks, cruisers, thought about trying to use the Uber app to get rides in cities. What about connecting with former cruisers turned land lubbers? Blog followers? If you were tied up along the TN river, near me, and asked for a ride on a specific day, I probably would make an effort to accommodate you. Don't be too proud to ask for a hand. I'll trade grocery runs for a boat ride!

Deb said...

@John- Yes, we do often use CLODS for rides but in the end it's a financial thing. The bus in Coconut Grove is major cheap. $.25 for the whole circuit one way. In addition, we need the walking exercise since we've been sitting on our arses too long on the boat. When we have a major provisioning run like we will before we leave for the Bahamas then we'll make use of a ride service or cab.

@Alex - there's an app called Transit which works in all major cities. You open the app, it determines your location, and it tells you the closest bus and the time it will arrive. We use it like crazy! Glad to hear from you. We were getting a little worried by your blog silence but I take it you got your engine worked out ok.