Full-timing isn't for the faint at heart

So when we started this adventure, we really thought we'd stay in the RV maybe 2 months. After all, the deal we got at the resort was buy one month, get one month free. Bonus! It took Patrick approximately 5 weeks to get a job here in Tampa, and we really thought we'd probably extend out that stay in the RV one more month, just in case we didn't hit the goal in the first 8 weeks. But when they emailed to say he was starting this past Monday, suddenly we had to decide what our plans were.

It wasn't that we weren't already talking about extending our stay here. Most of this park is full of people who have lived in their RV's for years. The guy and his wife next to us are on year 17 in that same spot. Other people around the park that we've befriended have celebrated 6, 10 and even 12 years in their rigs. Which is great. Except. Well, they're in much more than 310 square feet. Some of these rigs are 45 to 53 feet long with multiple slides (some even have 2 full bathrooms in them). You're talking 450 square feet and up. Like I said before, my first NJ apartment was the size of a two-car garage, and it's do-able with that kind of footage underneath you.

But what we're in now is comparable to a walk-up in Brooklyn. I take that back, as I've actually been in an efficiency in Brooklyn with  more space.

So when the discussion came up seriously the other day as to whether we stay or not (since we are almost at our 8 week deadline to decide), we looked at each other trepidatiously and began discussing it.

Besides the size, there are several things that are different from house living. Let's start with the good, since I'm a mostly optimistic person.

There is only 310 square feet to clean. Yay! As Nana so truthfully told my husband when I married him, I hate cleaning. OMG. I hate cleaning. Let me say that again. I HATE CLEANING. It's not that I don't do it. It's not that I don't do it well. As  a matter of fact, I probably do it well so I don't have to do it again any time soon. But I hate it. So 310 square feet is perfect for me. It takes me 3 minutes to sweep the floor with the broom. It takes me 5 minutes to Swiffer it. Vacuumming takes about 8 minutes. The hardest part is making the bed because of how our camper is set up, so that actually takes about 43 minutes just to get the sheets on.

This is a diagram of how our trailer looked when we bought it. Do you see the master bedroom in the photo below? See those cabinets on either side of the mattress? Yeah, that design sucks. Let me say that again because it's the truest thing I've ever said - EVER. THAT DESIGN SUCKS!!!

You literally have to fold the foam mattress in half with one person on each side of the bed holding the sheet on for dear life, and then slowly, ever so slowly, roll the foam back until - dammit - the flipping sheet snapped off again. (Yeah, that's how it goes for 43 minutes. You want to talk about being too pissed off to sleep?!?)

But I digress.

What else is different in full-timing? Well, laundry. I was skyping with Jaryd just yesterday and as I gave him a tour around our humble abode and showed him what we've changed out, all the poor kid could see was clothes hanging around the cabin. Being that you can't have clotheslines outside due to aesthetics, we have to hang everything inside. So first thing in the morning on laundry days, I trudge over in the heat to the laundry room (we have 4 so we have a good selection of them) and I do our loads, bringing back the shirts and dress pants to hang dry. In our houses, we had metal racks we put up in unused rooms and let the clothes hang dry behind closed doors. Not in the trailer. Oh, no, if there is a place that I can put the hook of a hanger, there is a piece of laundry hanging on it. So most of the day and evening on laundry day is nothing more than weaving your way through the jungle of hanging damp garments. Thank goodness, with our (sub-par for the RV size) air conditioning unit, they will finally dry in about 12 hours.

Oh, here's a good one. The toilet system.

If you have an RV, you know that there is a tank (called the "black tank") under your toilet that holds waste until you decide to open the valve to let it flush out. You also know this is NOT a septic tank and is nothing more than a an enclosed plastic bin hung by straps to the bottom of your rig. Onto this plastic box of 40 gallons, you attach a hose that leads to the sewer/septic connection for the park. (We have public sewer here, so no septic smell. Bonus!) In between the tank and the hose you connect, you know there is a knife valve that either holds in the contents of the tank or lets them flow freely through the attached hose. (Watch the movie "RV" with Robin Williams in it for what happens if this system doesn't work properly.)

Here is a teaser:

At any rate, if you have an RV, you also know that the knife valve needs to remain shut on the black tank (poop holder) until it becomes 3/4 full, lest you have pyramid poop clogs and all sorts of other nasty things happening to the most important system on your rig (let's not even discuss that right now). Plus, when it's 3/4 full, it does a full flush of the tank by the pressure of the water trying to exit the tank through one tiny little 3" hole, so you get a good clean tank. Well, the joy in holding a tank closed, as the manufacturer tells you do and as good common sense directs, also leads to smell. Yes, there are chemicals and bacteria to put into the tank. Yes, they even sometimes help. But we're in Florida. Not only are we in Florida, but we are in Florida IN THE SUMMER. It's 93 on any given day. It's mostly sunny, although we are in monsoon season, but sun leads to increased heat, and increased heat leads to, well, let's just say, Methane Buildup. Yep, that's right. Monstrous methane buildup in the black tank. So where does that smell go?

Theoretically, the smell should come back up the system and go out the vent pipe in the roof the RV, venting peacefully off into the atmosphere, like it does in your house (yes, methane vents out of your roof from your sewer/septic system through the vent pipe in your walls. Don't get freaked out by this.).

Guess what? As in any other realm, there is a far leap between theoretical ideas and actual experience.

In two days, even with stuff added to the tank that is supposed to control the smell, Holy Lord, does that methane stink!?! I keep a can of Febreze over the toilet and when I'm flushing with one hand, I'm spraying with another. By day four, when we reach 3/4 full, the smell can knock you out. Now granted, when you first empty the tank and close the knife valve, before you even go to the bathroom in it again, you are supposed to fill it 1/4 full with fresh, clean water. This water helps dissolve the special RV/boat toilet paper you are supposed to use to avoid nasty clogs and, like I said before, keep the pyramid poops from forming (YOU DO NOT WANT PYRAMID POOPS! If you get them, you pay the entire cost of the RV to have someone come in and change out your black tank. At that rate, just dump it on the side of the road and write it off because no one is going to deal with your pyramid poops.) So the smell isn't so bad for the first day, or even the second day, since we've got city water here and it's treated. But come visit me on day 3 and you'll wonder if you'll ever go camping again...

That leads me to a funny story about DeShawn, one of our foster kids, and our summer down the Jersey shore, where the methane leaked into the trailer for 2 weeks while we were up at home. DeShawn was the first one to bound into the RV when I opened the door and if you've never seen a fairly dark black kid go in dark but literally come out GREEN, it's a laugh riot. That's not to say I tortured my foster kids, but hey, he was just shy of adulthood, he was taking that risk on his own.  And I thought the 5 of us standing on the outside of the camper still were going to pee our pants from laughing so hard.

At any rate, please don't let me scare you off. Like I said before, there are up sides to living in a rig. Other than the lock breaking on the door that needed fixed, the plastic water pipes bending and cracking, the leaky valves at the sinks and tub, the kitchen sink seal that dissolved with age and had to be replaced, the fuses that blow pretty frequently and leave us without lights, the storage space that only holds about 7 days worth of clothes for each of us, the metal steps that have rusted in 6 years and are slowly breaking off from the RV, the random water leaks in torrential rains, the hot water tank that only holds 6 gallons of water, the need to tighten the stabilizer jacks once a week so you don't rock and sway yourself off the hitch stand, the fact that you have to turn the AC off to use the microwave, coffee maker or the convection oven, and the walls that are only 2 inches thick so you hear everything around you and everyone can hear you if they're close enough, it's actually not bad living.

We changed out the J-sofa (named for the jackknife action of it, and not because my son Jay used to sleep on it) for a dual reclining loveseat and we tore out the dinette to put in a dining room table that we are using as a double desk. The rocker chair you see in the photo is now on the patio outside and we put up a screen room with a nice 7 piece iron set with cushions that we bought off Craigslist. Patrick's plan is to put a fairly large TV out there and make it a man-screenroom. The outdoor kitchen is set up with a pantry cabinet, 2 grills and a prep table, with a toaster/convection/regular oven inside the RV under the microwave. We use Patrick's monitor on it's swing arm when what we want to watch is online instead of on the regular TV. And we've moved in as many of the comforts from home as we could. Even most of my 20-year-old houseplants survived the trip and are in front of me on the desk enjoying the UV rays coming through the slide windows.

So I guess we'll probably stay here another year. That said, we've already put some stipulations on that. For example, if Jaryd (and Nori) were to move back with us, we'd have to get a rental unit of some sort. Or if this rig finally gives up the ghost, being that it's meant for weekends a few times a year and not the steady pounding of daily living, we'll definitely have to find something more permanent. But for now, we're comfortable. And we've gotten to the point where we know things are going to break, sometimes on a daily or weekly basis, so we're working around those things.

After all, we do have a pretty nice yard where I can plant flowers and shrubbery, and they'll let us put up a deck and install patio stones to expand our outdoor flooring area. And the amenities in the resort are very nice - between the pool and the landscaping and the boat launch and the clubhouse and most of the people who work here, not to mention the activities schedule. And on top of it, staying here is half the price of renting, which is great because we could really use the break to pay off some bills that have accumulated over the last couple years.

So, after all our discussions, I guess it's safe to say we'll stay for a while...methane smell be damned, of course!