Renos: The Living Room

Before the renos. We had the dealer remove the oddly-placed couch. Seriously, why the heck do the engineers put a couch kitty-corner to the TV? And that chandelier? Really? Madness I tell you! And that wallpaper is U-G-L-Y ugly!

The biggest problem with any RV: you walk in and you are extremely aware that you are in an RV. It doesn't look like a home. The couch is in the wrong spot, the eating area is built to sleep on, and everything is absurdly tight. Worse, all of the colours are terribly drab and unappealing, making it feel even more closed in. We wanted it to feel like a home for ourselves and Aurora; a sense of normalcy for everyone and a place we can be comfortable when stuck indoors.

Sunday Review: Establishing Residence in Canada

Clarification: This is advice to Canadians that want to RV full time. None of this applies to Americans.

A lot of people that aren't RVing full time in Canada but would like to do so avoid it simply because of the way our residency requirements work. Our health care and schooling are tied to provincial residency, so a physical address is mandatory.

Well, this isn't nearly as complicated as you would think.

Getting Our New Home

That's my wife's cat in a skirt and it gave me panic attacks in the middle of the night more than once.

We purchased our travel trailer in March 2019. We'd spent months looking at various models online and checking out many in person. The salesmen were exceptionally annoying, always steering us to new models when we specifically wanted used. Few if any of the dealers in Winnipeg had used trailers. The only way to get a used trailer in or around town was to buy privately; but we needed to get financing and that meant hitting up multiple banks, not just going through our own. The dealer we had to go through was a 3 hour drive from the city.

Round 1: Mice

There is a saying among wilderness survivalists: "Mother Nature is the world's most successful serial killer." As much as we enjoy nature, the reality is that most of us live our entire lives trying to keep nature at bay. Nature isn't just squirrels and flowers; it is also disease, floods, mold and rot, animal attacks, hypothermia, earthquakes and more. We love nature, but we underestimate it at our own peril.

Mice (and/or rats) are everywhere. They get into everything. This was one of Lyndsay's biggest fears. Not only do they carry diseases, but they can destroy an RV from the inside out by wrecking insulation and chewing through wires. She told me it would be an ongoing battle.

Meet General Drumpf of the Mouser Division.

The Grass is Greener

We've been living in our camper trailer since June, 2019. That's more than eight months, as of writing this post. Since then we have learned a lot. Such as how much nature wants to kill us. We've had cold, we've had mold, we've had rain and snow and ice. But that's all for other posts.

Choosing A Home

In 2018, we made the decision to live in an RV full time. The next step was deciding what kind of home we would be buying; and make no mistake, the RV is your home. The decision needed to be every bit as careful as buying sticks and bricks.

We had many things to consider. Lyndsay's experience helped a lot. She'd tried to live in something while building it and it was a disaster. There were bare minimums we needed no matter what; changes could be made while living in it, but it had to be livable. As we were low income, up front and long term costs were major factors. We had to take Aurora into account, unlike most of the full timers that we've viewed online. And it wasn't like we could go ask friends for advice. The biggest benefit of buying sticks and bricks is that there are tons of other people that do it and advice is plentiful. No amount of research and watching videos made by the glitz and glam folks can fully prepare you for such a decision.

About Page Added

I have written our about page, which has an introduction to each member of our family. You can find it on the right sidebar. Enjoy!

What the frak do you think you're doing!?

When we told everyone that we would be moving into an RV, not a single person believed it would happen. Plenty of eye rolls and "sure sure." We were both over 30 years old, after all. And broke. People don't change after the age of 30 and they sure as hell don't get to go on adventures when they're broke.