This is my third time moving onto the boat. The first time, in April 2005, was the easiest. It was just me and my stuff. My lack of knowing anything at all about what happens to stuff in boats under way, heeled over 20%, or stuff living in dampness for much of the year, made putting my stuff in a spot somewhere rather easy. Plus, since it was just me, there was nobody else's opinion about the appropriate home for such stuff. And most important, it was just my stuff. One person's stuff is, well, approximately half of two people's combined stuff. (I know, that's some fancy math!)
A couple of years after I moved off the boat, Scott and I moved aboard together. Since we'd traveled for months together on the boat already, we had gone through the major adjustments of having two people aboard and physically close to one another. But when we'd been traveling before, we did not need to bring our businesses, or our entire lives, with us. Most people's individual home offices have more space than our total boat, and we're fitting two home offices AND everything else in this single, small space. Last fall the boat began feeling quite small. But we adjusted. We worked, we sailed, we crammed stuff into lockers.
This winter I planned how this move back aboard would be easier. We'd bring less stuff. We'd organize better. I think, in my mind, the boat grew at least 50% from it's actual size. The first load of stuff back to the boat arrived with me on Sunday. By Tuesday morning I was quite happy with myself. I'd not only gotten everything put away, I'd also gotten rid of some things that just invited clutter and unsightliness. Tuesday however, Scott, and everything else arrived. The picture in my head of lockers not crammed with stuff, and shelves not having stuff piled on top of stuff, quickly disappeared along with my lovely "we're-back-aboard!!" mood.
We got most of the stuff crammed into places yesterday, and when I woke up this morning, I was almost surprised at how little stuff was still out just laying someplace waiting for a new home.
Scott says more stuff moved on the boat this year than has been here before. I'm not sure how that has happened. He says all those loads of stuff to Goodwill were things that had never lived on the boat to begin with and were just in storage. When I look around, however, I don't see anything that I never saw before. I recognize all this stuff. Plus, I KNOW I've taken things from the boat.
It seems there are few options. We can't just go out and buy a newer, bigger boat. Not for a while at least. And we can't magically make this boat bigger. Option three is to adjust once again. We can continue to weed stuff out. And we can continue to reorganize the stuff that is here to make it fit a little better, bit by bit. My goal today is to do that. Getting rid of even ten small things is a good start.
Don't get me wrong, I do love this boat, and I adore the boating lifestyle, but it is quite an adjustment, even after doing it twice before, to be on the boat full-time, not as a retired couple off sailing the ocean blue, or as a couple off for a weekend sail, but as a working couple, living full-time, on a boat perfectly suited for one.
Now, I've got a few projects that are patiently waiting for my attention today. I'll pick a bin, or pick a locker, and start paring it down once again. The upshot to it being a 30-year-old boat is that, when everything is put away, it is magically beautiful. It has all the old-boat charm that made me fall in love with it when I first saw it. It isn't hard to love this boat; it is just hard to fit all of life into it!
Cheers,
Mandy
No comments:
Post a Comment