Some of you will not care. In fact, I suspect most of you will read this and think, “Well, there’s five minutes of my life I will never get back.” Yet I feel a real need to post it simply because when we were in the process of researching this adventure we gained a wealth of knowledge and wisdom from other full-time families who were willing to share organization photos with all of cyberspace. Hey, they didn’t fear boring their readers so why should I? Besides, I happen to know at least three of you are at this very moment squealing and clapping your hands and running to the kitchen for a fresh mug of coffee to enjoy while you relish a whole post featuring label makers and color coordinated cabinet bins. You know who you are.
I’m sorry, Trace....I didn’t have time to actually color coordinate anything. RIP, Roy G. Biv.
Anyway, I finally decided that if I wait for the day I can do a whole post on how I organized the entire Bob T I will never get it done so it would be better to break it into two or three parts. Three of you are thrilled. The rest of you have been duely warned.
So today’s post is all about the cabinets. Let’s begin with a short physics lesson, shall we? Remember how a fellow full-timer told me that to put your home on the road is to subject it to a 7.4 magnitude earthquake? That means things fall out of cabinets if they are not firmly anchored. A fifteen ounce can of beans becomes a battering ram that will either break or force open (usually the latter) a cabinet door allowing all the other contents to go hurtling to the floor. So, short of velcro-fastening each and every can of soup and box of pasta, what does one do? WE GO TO IKEA, BABY!
The other product commercial I will do here is for Tupperware. When we had a regular house with a walk-in pantry I did the whole “Custom Kitchen” thing, or whatever they called it. It is really just a LOT of coordinated stacking plastic containers with nice clear labels (!!!) you add yourself. Some of it stayed in storage back in Florida, but most of it came with us. The fact that it stacks and is labeled is what makes it so essential. Meal preparation would be a downer without this. When we have been hiking all day and it is time to cook I do not want to hunt for ingredients. Why would I have to hunt in such a small space, you ask? I wish I knew. Perhaps because when you go to cram a normal life's worth of stuff, even one greatly pared down, into 300 square feet you end up putting things into illogical locations (blender in cabinet beneath coat rack), simply because that is where it fits. The result is that none of us can remember where anything is and it is so bad we finally made a list on my iPad called "Where I Put Stuff." You do what you have to do.
It's quite freeing.
-Jenni