It’s the little things …

Some of the little things we do to make our nomadic lifestyle easier and our chores more predictable.

It all starts for us with routine and predictability. We (read Ross) finds that routine and predictability is king for our (his) nomadic long term travels. We have routines, systems, patterns, procedures, controls, responsibilities and above all else precious little tolerance for non conformance … and that suit us (again, read Ross). On a serious note routine ensures every thing is onboard and secured. One person cant do everything all the time, and we don’t want to discover 6 hours and 500km down the highway that no-one put the milk away or wound the TV antenna down … or in case didnt close the hatch that contains our expensive camp chairs.

Call it OCD or just a PITA but its important to know that everything is packed away, and packed away properly. If we chance across an interesting looking track heading off the bitumen we just want to head on down, and we absolutely don’t want to have to stop in order to re-pack the van first.

There’s only two ways to pack a caravan, careless abandon and conscious organisation. The efforts the same, the only difference is just where you put the stuff. We’re packed for offroad all the time, and we frequently find those interesting looking tracks. Packing becomes second nature and it’s very reassuring knowing everything is fine and as a bonus everything is always in the same place when you need it.

Everyone needs to know what their responsibilities are, and everyone then does a cursory double check of the others jobs. We have friends who have a novel way to level the playing field. If something goes wrong, or isn’t packed correctly it’s not the fault of the person who’s job it falls to, but the fault of the person who didn’t double check it. We have a few laws, and an important one is all tasks are done to completion. You wind one drop jack up, you do them all. You lock one cabinet/drawer door lock, you do them all. You wind the awning in, you engage the arm lock, and tighten the thumb screw.

Tips for the caravan toilet
Pantry and cabinet storage

We use any plastic containers, and kind a plastic containers such as vogurt containers, ice cream containers, purchased containers … whatever combination suits the size of the shelf and ultimately what’s going in the containers. Glass doesnt go with other glass, and everything is rationed out to snugly fit into the containers which reduces movement, separate fragiles, and eliminates spillage.

The fridge door and the door buckets are the fridges weakest point. In the fridge we do exactly the same thing as the cupboards. Plastic containers on the shelves, shelf dividers in the door buckets and chunks of foam to fill any gaps. We are sparing how we load the door buckets and where possible put items like 3 litre milk containers on the hinge side.

Unhitch or not on a overnight stop

[bg_collapse view=”button-orange” color=”#4a4949″ icon=”arrow” expand_text=”Pantry Storage – expand info” collapse_text=”Show Less” ]

Possibly poor follow on from the toilet hatch, but here we anyway. We use empty 1 ltr ice cream and yogurt containers in the pantry to store breakables such as bottles and jars etc to keep them upright, stationary and stop them banging into each other.

[/bg_collapse]

[bg_collapse view=”button-orange” color=”#4a4949″ icon=”arrow” expand_text=”Unhitch or not on an overnight stop – expand info” collapse_text=”Show Less” ]

[/bg_collapse]