If you want to live more simply then try living in a caravan and you will undoubtedly satisfy that desire.
There is no room for any extras on board – only the basics.
Clutter is not a word that I would recognise living here as there is none – everything in the caravan is a considered item and has to have a home otherwise you would soon find yourself falling over things. The cupboards are few and none too generous in size so sometimes you have to be very creative with the space.
We have just enough dishes to make and eat a meal, nothing to bake with but then that must be healthier, although I did bring an apple cake with us, we just eat fruit or nuts, oat cakes, crackers. No puddings either but we have the occasional ice cream treat.
We have only a minimum of bedding and towels – one of each in use and one spare, just enough clothes for gardening and trips to town and a few necessities like toiletries and cleaners. We do have a small Dyson, a small bucket and a tiny hand brush and pan…that just about sums up the cleaning aids.
We eat very simple food as we have no electrical equipment like a blender or food processor. Our pans consist of a large 3 tier steamer, a milk pan, a medium pan with a lid and a frying pan with a lid. We also have a colander and I might consider buying a lettuce spinner for the summer as my one luxury.
Above the fire-place there are three shelves for decoration and display. I display only a few decorative items on here – a glass vase with a collection of tiny seashells inside, an empty vase for when I pick a few flowers, a little bowl full of dried rose petals from the garden, a lino cut picture of some geese by a local artist (our only picture) and a tiny set of wooden houses. The other items come under the useful rather than decorative category – a small china mug, a water jug, some heavy stemmed wine glasses that we use for most cold drinks and a clock with a lovely soothing tick.
We keep a small selection of books mostly gardening books for information and ideas and a novel or two.  I also keep a box with a few stationary items – stapler, sellotape, scissors and the like, some coloured pencils and a notepad. We have a folder for instruction manuals and another for the few bills we have, water, electricity, council tax and that is our filing system. At home we have a large filing drawer with the archived papers in the loft.
Of course there is no loft here – instead there is a little storage space under the beds but they are empty – we have no need of anything to store – we use everything we have here.  I don’t even keep any spare bedding for the 2nd bedroom – I am not expecting anyone to stay.  I can look at something and think – yes I have used that in the last couple of days and it is a good feeling. If I were a nomad and had to pack all this stuff up to move on I daresay we would have even less.
For entertainment we play cards, read, write blog posts, of course, or listen to the radio. We have no television nor want one and at one time we had no internet connection so only brought the lap top with us if we just needed to access our documents and didn’t need to access the internet – now I can attend to my blog while I am here but that is all I do.
The mobile signal is quite pathetic at times so no-one tries to contact us and we rarely phone anyone other than my mum to check on her and my daughters just to let them know we are still alive.
Being so disconnected from the world might not suit everyone but I love our little retreat here – I could easily live here full-time but on the other hand I do not want to miss our new grandchildren growing up.
It is a dilemma not easily solved.
Today was another sunny day in the garden, slightly cooler but pleasant. I have been on weed patrol again digging over boarders and filling in the rabbit holes where they have scratched the surface to get at the plant roots. I will have to get more chicken wire to protect my young plants. Funny they don’t like the campion – there is plenty of it.
DH did a bit more of the ditch – here he is with his shovel and barrow (he is a bit blog shy – so only half of him).
Hopefully it will stop the pond overflowing onto the path, though the primulas quite like the water.
……. And then he shimmied up the old apple tree to lop the top off.
All our best apples grow at the top. It is a half standard tree that was planted by the previous owners and was left to grow unchecked so it is a bit of a beanstalk and we have to wait for the apples to drop off rather than pick them. Now it has been checked I have no doubt it will retaliate by not producing as many apples this year.
A day of pleasant pottering and pondering.
Total spend at the village shop for 6 yoghurts, a bag of peas and a 2 x Magnum £6.60
Everything was recorded in my planner – both for work and home and I didn’t go anywhere without it. I still smile now when I remember those early days of time management planners – whenever I attended a meeting for work everyone else would arrive carrying theirs too and we would end the meeting synchronizing planner time! I still use mine out of habit – paper has always been my thing.
Recently I bought a book titled L’art de la Liste by the same author Dominique Loreau who wrote L’art de la Simplicité: How to Live More with Less. She throws a whole new perspective on my love of lists. She likens a list to a haiku (an expressive Japanese poem) or a journal as it becomes a record of your life and suggests the advantage of making lists allows us to rethink and restructure our ideas.
where the journey takes me 2 