Month eight of RV living has brought out the creativity, especially in Gary. What about me? Well as our RV becomes overrun with backpacking gear and Appalachian Trail prep, I couldn’t take it anymore. Things that have not been used just had to go and our RV, Ruff Road, was in need of some better organizing.
RV Living Yields Creativity- Gary the songwriter!
As you may know, Gary is a musician and a very talented one at that. He plays the guitar, bass guitar, and piano. No we don’t have a piano in Ruff Road but we do have multiple guitars. Comment below if you need or if you have guitar storage ideas!
Creativity! This month he has been busy writing lyrics and music to songs. We needed a theme song for our very young YOU TUBE channel. He has now cranked out three songs and the instrumentals will be used for background music on our channel. No music copywright issues here!
We will be posting more on our YOU TUBE channel. Right now, we have a couple dog videos up just as a test plus one campground review. The dog videos are short and funny. Our YOU TUBE channel is RUFF ROAD RV LIFE, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHRpIFHJItKn3X_7DKY77Mw?view_as=subscriber
Having the freedom to be creative through music, writing, singing, and photography has been a bonus of retirement. We are loving having the time to use our right brains to create.
RV Living Can Lead to Clutter! Clutter Control-Purging and Organizing
This month’s challenges were an overstuffed clothes closet, clutter due excess gear clutter on top of the regular clutter and an ineffective dirty clothes receptacle. They say if you haven’t used it in a year, it has to go. I think in a small space like an RV you need to assess the clutter more frequently.
Decluttering Clothes Closets
Gary had already gone through his closet and made a donation pile. He was ahead of me. I faced my clothes closet- it contained the remnants of my walk in closet from my big house life. It seemed I was always cramming, and I do mean cramming, my clothes in any nook or cranny I could fit them in because my cute little organizational square clothes totes and other containers were overfilled. In addition, unstuffed items would fall out when I opened the door. Now I probably wouldn’t have jumped right into this project just yet but in addition to this I now have backpacking gear taking up space. This caused me to re-evaluate the other items, especially items that seemed ineffective, unnecessary or unused.
I took everything out of my closet. Next, I went through each clothes container and pulled out items I haven’t worn or wasn’t planning on wearing. I did accumulate a small pile to donate along with some of the baskets and an old drawer I was using for storage containers. They were not the best use of space. So not only were there too many clothes stuffed in my closet but I did not utilize the space effectively. In the small space of an RV, optimizing space is a must!
Organizing Tip: Make a diagram of your closet. This will help to quickly see where infrequently used items are stored.
Making More Floor Space
Next, I looked around my bedroom and the items taking up floor space. I had tried a tall Thirty-One double hamper for awhile. It came from the big house but was too big so I gifted it to my daughter. I then tried a smaller Thirty-One tote I had on hand as a hamper. It wasn’t working out either because of the location being hard to reach. I discovered that it was a perfect fit for my closet. This tote became the holder of my bike shoes and equipment getting them off the floor and out of yet another tote they were housed in. Now I had the most effective storage in my closet to hold all of my clothes except underwear and work out clothes which are stored above the bed. As a result of reorganizing this area, we gained some much needed floor space in our bedroom.
Dirty Laundry Solution
What about our laundry though? We now store our dirty clothes in store recycle bags. Gary has one in his area. I have one hanging up on my purse hook. We have a third one stored in the shower for any nasty laundry. This is a new system so we’ll let you know how it works out. So far so good.
Let us know if you have any laundry solutions. Share on social media and subscribe to follow us on our journey.
Follow Sharon’s Appalachian Trail prep and hike on our Backpacking and Hiking page: http://ruffroadrvlife.com/appalachian-trail-section-hike/