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Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Full time Motorhome Life: Interior Deep Cleaning

We are out of the motorhome now but I had a revelation about housecleaning that I wish I had had while we were still living in it. The last year we found ourselves overwhelmed with 'stuff' and any effort made to clean consisted of moving piles from one place to another, cleaning and moving them back.

It really was a two person job and as Walt's health slipped away and I continued with my age old health struggles we found ourselves completely overwhelmed. The laundry, the dishes, the electronics, the wires and cables, the gathering Christmas presents for the kids, the barely started and them abandoned craft projects - it all took on a life of its own and we felt powerless to budge it.

After moving into a house where we had room to stage the unpacking and reorganization in a room other than the main rooms - living room, kitchen and bedroom. And even though it was exhausting the process seemed much cleaner.

And then I thought 'I wish I would have thought of taking everything out of the RV once or twice a year and then doing a swift and deep cleaning of the inside.' With everything out I'm sure the two of us could have cleaned the whole inside very well.

While the stuff was outside we could have had a stuff keep or not keep process together. Also outside there would be enough room to hire someone to help. We always liked to find young legs to be climbing the stairs over and over or have enough people that you could just hand things up.

We always maintained a 5x5 storage unit wherever we lived and we were very disciplined about no putting more stuff in there than would fit in our tow vehicle when we moved.

In retrospect I think when we lost control of the stuff we should have moved some of it to storage to be dealt with when we felt better. But hindsight is 20/20 and we couldn't have known that Walt would eventually have to go on disability retirement.  I know the reason we guarded the storage so much was we had to be ready to move quickly if necessary and getting rid of extra stuff at the storage complex can be time consuming and restrictive.

I did find Freecycle to be a great tool to keep stuff moving out of the RV interior. The disposable life is a difficult transition. I imagine it must be close to Buddhism where I understand the suggestion is that only by relieving ourselves from attachment can we gain enlightenment.

Our lack of attachment wasn't complete though because we did maintain a storage unit back in Colorado, our starting out point which hold all of our house contents. We haven't seen the stuff for almost four years so other than a few key items we don't remember what's in there.

So my point: to deep cleaning removing the contents will speed things up and sorting and decision making will seem less overwhelming. Just be sure to watch the weather and get tarps and bricks to put over the stacks if you'll be leaving them outside overnight.




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