Getting Ready for the RV: Organizing

It's like Tetris, but with containers.

Lyndsay should really be writing this one. She organizes and I make a mess. Whichever part of the brain deals with that, mine broke.

Part 2 of getting ready for the RV (and much better written - apologies for Thursday's post) is organizational skills. Even after downsizing you still have to fit more into your tiny little home than it was ever meant to carry. You have to get creative.

Board games, art supplies, e-reader all stacked up. Half comes out when you want something in the back.

Everything you need to keep needs a space, so every little bit of space needs to get filled. This means easy access goes out the window. You stack things up however they fit and take out whatever you need to in order to get to the back. Reorganizing becomes a daily occurrence. Any time I need tools to do some work around the house, I almost always have to haul out at least one toolbox with tools I won't be using just to get at the tools I need; and this happens no matter which way I stack everything.

Reduce and reuse!

Neither of those coffee cans have coffee in them. All of those large containers were originally for popcorn and now contain something else. That is all food grade plastic, so plastic containers become imminently practical for storing and organizing dry goods.

Multipurpose furniture. And tacos.

Each Ottoman is food storage and can be used as a seat or table. You need as much as possible to do double duty. We had to sacrifice storage space when we lost the dinette to mold but gained it back with those Ottomans, plus extra seating and table space.

And clothes, you ask? We are given a ton of hand-me-down clothes that Aurora won't fit into yet, but will when she grows. We also need places to store seasonal clothes. Here's a double-duty double-whammy.

Clothes pillows!

Both of those pillows are stuffed with clothes. Now they can come out when needed and be useful when not. Seasonal clothes get swapped in and out, and Aurora's old clothes can go inside the pillows until she gets more hand-me-downs that she doesn't yet fit.

And let's not forget the importance of reading!

Hanging book pockets for storing books!

Almost like it was blessed by Heaven.

A friction curtain rod across the bathroom gives you space to hang cloth shelving in dead space. You can also hang other things in the shower itself to store soap and shampoo.

More will come later, Lyndsay has a lot to say on this matter. Her biggest piece of advice is to use Pinterest; it is her best friend (news to her husband). Search for 'small space hacks', 'camping hacks', 'rv hacks' or anything else in that vein.