Full-Timer Spread

I think everyone has heard of middle-age spread and understands a waistline that bulges without respect to exercise or dieting.  There is a parallel to this in living space too.  It seems that whatever space you have, you fill it in time.  I think most who have had a home, be it a mansion or one bedroom apartment, has experienced bulging closets and crammed-full drawers.

Full-timers, out of necessity, are hyper-aware of using the space available in their abode on wheels.  Weight and weight distribution is important and the use of the physical space of the usually no more than 400 sq/ft are always front and center in the mind.

We started our full-timing experience with all the things we thought we would need and a few things that would be nice to have but not absolutely necessary.  We also changed our attitude to collecting memories, not things, and adopted the rule that for anything purchased/acquired, something else would have to be disposed of.  Another rule that we loosely adopted was that anything not used in a year's time would be jettisoned.  For the most part these adaptations have served us well for the past nine years.

In the first three years the not-used-in-a-year rule culled out a lot of stuff that we were sure we would use but turns out were of no use in our new lifestyle.  According to our scale weights we removed right at 2,000 lbs.  Goodwill made out well in regards to us.

But as time went on and we found ourselves in ever-changing living arrangements our needs morphed.  Like all the things we thought we would need and turned out didn't, there were things that we did not even think about needing but did.  We were adapting as we went along, although I admit I resisted, thinking that most of the things we wanted to add were only temporary needs and did not justify permanently adding them to our inventory.  Case in point, a back-up satellite dish.  Our roof-top mounted dish works great, as long as you have a clear shot of the southeast sky.  But we were finding ourselves in frequent company of obstructions of one kind or another.  Most of these were tolerable because they were a problem for only one or two nights, but when we found ourselves totally blocked by giant ponderosa pines for five months at one of our camp hosting jobs it was time to take action.

Clear sky for sat dish?  No problem at Cheyenne Mountain, CO.

                                         

Clear sky for sat dish?  Big problem at Grand Canyon North Rim

 

And it was a good thing we did because about a year-and-a-half later we were tucked tightly under a canopy of oaks and pines in Georgia from March to November.  So now a satellite dish, LNB, tripod mounting stand and 150 ft of cabling are a permanent add to our inventory.  Not a lot of weight and except for the dish, not a lot of bulk.  But that dish is a beast to deal with on moving days.  About the only thing we could do with it without it being in the way every time you moved was to put it between the front and back seats of the truck.  It was a pain to work around but at least we didn't have to take it in and out every time we stopped for a night.

The next consumer of space that more or less trickled in over time were holiday decorations.  When we left the sticks and bricks we thought we would be able to dispense with lights, ornaments and the likes.  Boy were we wrong.  These things may not have been essential to living on the road but we found that they were essential to our psyche.  So now there are decorations for the "big" holidays - 4th of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  There are small things, mostly in the form of garden flags, for the many other holidays.

Starting in 2015 our space given to decorations rose significantly.
Lights, ornaments, inflatables, two artificial trees and a whole assortment of nick-knacks.

One of the most restrictive aspects (to us) in the RV lifestyle has been a place for perishable food, mostly the frozen kind.  If you have read earlier posts of this blog you know that we have had numerous volunteer jobs that have found us in very remote locales.  So remote in fact that we could only practically do a shopping trip once a month.  Many times it required an overnight stay to get to the stores we needed.  We would get the frozen and refrigerated items we needed and then pack them in multiple coolers with blocks of dry ice in order to get them back to our campground without spoiling.  Thank goodness the park services we were working for kept a large refrigerator and chest freezer available for all us volunteers and ranger staff to use.  The rub there was that you may get home with your groceries and find them full.  PLUS an RV freezer (at least ours) is just barely cold enough to call the food frozen.  In fact, if it is ice cream then it is definitely not frozen, just a thick soup.

After six years of working around our refrigeration situation we finally got fed up with all the juggling and limiting of our purchases and bought a small (1.1 cu/ft) dorm freezer and installed it in our basement.  It weighs 37 pounds empty, just about the weight of all the camp chairs we used to stuff in that location during travel.  Unlike our RV refrigerator (which operates on electricity or propane) this little box works exclusively on household current (120 V).  It has to rely solely on its own insulation to get from campground to campground on moving days without everything thawing.

With the freezer taking a chunk of storage space we are getting into a real pickle now.  Packing the camp chairs is a real challenge.  There is no place to put them that is inside.  All we can do is rig a system in the bed of the truck to hold them securely so they won't blow out or move around and get under the fifth wheel hitch.  This is important as the hitch is articulated and rides on air bags.  It needs to be able to move unimpeded.  Keeping the elements and road grime off of them is shot.  They get filthy in a hurry.

We didn't plan for the purchase of a small SUV in February of 2019 to be part of the solution to our equipment storage problem.  In fact, at that time we weren't thinking about changing our equipment storage/transportation problems at all.  The idea was to leave the SUV with one of our kids when making trips that would keep us away for just a few months.  But then the pandemic hit and we knew we were going to be location-locked for awhile.  That's when, in our minds, the demand for more "stuff" to be acquired hit home.

Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket - the COVID lockdown made us do it!  Well, whether it did or didn't, it happened.  PLUS, one of our kids announced that her family was moving to North Carolina.  And the other announced that he intends to sell his house and find another one to fix up and sell.  Where we don't know.  So much for having somewhere to leave the SUV.  The logistics to do anything other than take it with us just got too complicated.  And don't even think about saying sell the SUV.  Cyndee went 8 years without having her own vehicle.  I don't think she'll ever be without one again.

That's when the lightbulb came on.  Since the car would be coming with us everywhere then we had all the cargo area to use for carrying our added stuff.  For a about a year we could see that as a workable solution.  But the longer we were in lockdown the more we allowed increases to happen to our cargo inventory.

As previously posted, you know that there has been some serious consternation over my 5th wheel tow truck.  So not all of our being in one place is due solely to COVID, just as much so is our lack of trust that our truck will get us from point A to point B without breaking down along the way.  Regardless, we've got to deal with all this stuff.  Hitch itch is growing, eventually we're getting back out there.  Sooner rather than later we hope.

So, enter the next bright idea.  That little SUV can easily pull an equally little trailer.  It took a little convincing before Cyndee got on board but she eventually saw the beauty of the idea.  It was on!  We're getting a cargo trailer.

Like most everything else in 2021, small cargo trailers were in short supply.  After many weeks of searching coast to coast we came across not the exact thing we wanted, but pretty darned close.  We found a manufacturer's dealer in South Carolina that would take our order.  The caveat was that it would be 20 weeks before it could be delivered.  No problem, we're not going anywhere anytime soon and it will let me get a hitch installed on the SUV at my leisure.

The order was placed, and importantly, accepted by the manufacturer.  That was in the last days of August, 2021 with an expected delivery in January, 2022.  We would wait for the phone call to come to South Carolina and pick up our purchase.

Much to our surprise, one day six weeks later, we got a call and were told our trailer was ready to be picked up.  Great!  Fantastic!  Dang!  I haven't had the hitch installed yet.  That's okay, I know that I can get in to the shop with 48 hours notice so they have time to acquire all the parts. 

And that's exactly how it worked, two days later Cyndee's little SUV, Pepe, rolled out of the shop with a shiny new hitch.  After dealing with large load equipment for so long that hitch looked like a toy but it was actually one class larger than required to do the tow we're going to do.

Pepe has a new shadow.

The drive to get the trailer was 3 hours in a pouring rain the whole way.  Luckily, the dealer had a small shop where we could do the walk-around inspection and hitching up without getting soaked.  The box is four feet wide, six feet long and three feet ten inches tall.  Sitting on its axle gets the height just above that of Pepe.  At first blush the trailer seems to be a well behaved tow while empty, even in inclement weather.  It will be some time before we know how it behaves loaded.

But there is work to do before loading.  It will be necessary to install cargo rails to secure everything in place.  You don't want your load shifting around on you, even in this small space.  And since the box height is only 3'10" and I am 6'5" that means I'll be on my hands and knees getting stuff in and out of the trailer.  The particle board flooring is not going to cut it.  I'll install vinyl flooring that will be easier on my knees and easier to clean.

  

20" tiles installed as a floating floor (no glue)

All done.

The floor installation was pretty simple, the hardest part was cutting the curve to match the front of the trailer, and that really wasn't that difficult.  Next are the cargo rails.

The cargo rail installation was more involved and strenuous.
128 self-tapping screws into the steel tube frame.

Four full-length cargo rails, four single point anchors up front 
and two ceiling hooks.  All done!

I used an E-Track Cargo Rail system.  It's made of heavy gauge, powder coated steel with closely spaced slots for all the modular anchors and hooks and other accessories that can be attached.

With the cargo rails installed it was time to see how things were going to fit.

Partially loaded.  Looking good.

So, after loading a portion of the things that will be in the cargo trailer I discovered an added benefit of having the cargo rails.  They help make much more efficient use of the space, its not going to be as crowded and jumbled as I thought.  But it is space, it will be filled....eventually.