Let The Mess Begin

And so it goes for moving, weeks of mess, living out of suitcases and boxes, with piles for several destinations, finding a place for everything and handing the keys back to the estate agent. I'll walk out the door with a suitcase and my backpack. I'm sending about 4 boxes ahead to my daughter's place, with the few personal items, mostly souvenirs and books, artwork. It is not an easy task as I'm using many of the items up to the last week. I don't want to live like I'm camping though, so I'll hang onto a few things to the last days. I'm selling some things online through gumtree (like kijiji back home) and planning an apartment sale for a few Saturdays in April. Even though I've done this several times before, it doesn't make it any less daunting. It is acheivable, but exhausting. Pack, sort, sell, give away, throw out, send by sea, and so on. I'm not just moving onto a new town, I'm repatriating back to my home country after an absence of just over 4 years. I  couldn't be happier. So I'll take the mess, the chaos, the hard work, and all those bits and pieces (an Aussie term) as I bid a fond farewell to my home of 4 years. Australia, it has indeed been a slice, and then some. But I'll save that for another post closer to departure time. 

Dundee enjoys the mess of moving, as would most cats - boxes, paper, plastic, new smells, old smells, a changing environment. I'm going to miss that little bugger. Again, I'll leave that for another post. The back to work plan is being reevaluated, so in the meantime, I'm distracting myself with making the mess, as well as researching tiny houses and bus conversions. There is a lot of information out there, and doing my conversion over the coming months with the goal of being in by Christmas, I'll be living out of suitcases, boxes, bags, and surrounded by mess for the months to come. I'll have to find ways to minimize and organize the mess as it will surely drive me crazy otherwise. And then with any luck, it will be my final unpacking for the forseeable future. The bus conversion/tiny house is part of my longterm goal of freedom and independence to follow my own paths. I've missed having a home of my own to customize - loved my house in Newfoundland for that reason - I designed it for us. 

I'm tiring of changing my living environment so frequently as I find it exhausting both physically and mentally. I just want a place to call home that I can move to be wherever I want to be and still have an affordable and comfortable home. I had thought I could do this in my VW Camper, aka the Karma bus, however it was too small for my needs and not having a toilet/shower meant I had to depend on a serviced site for those services. I prefer to be off the grid as much as possible, using solar and potentially wind power to charge the batteries. I am looking at using propane for cooking, on-demand hot water, and heating, with a woodstove to supplement heating. I also want to source the most efficient way to supply air conditioning off the grid as well. Part of the long term goal is spending only 6 months per year in Canada, and the other 6 somewhere south of WINTER. This is why I need the mobility. With being able to function off the grid as much as possible, I can keep my costs down to the bare minimum, making it possible to work for 6 months of the year in Canada, and then travel/live somewhere down south during the winters, escaping snowdom. I'll have to suffer through the next winter as I can't possibly have it completed in time, and want to spend one full year at least with my girl in Edmonton. Hence the wood stove. All I need to move in is the bathroom and the woodstove. The  rest can be completed over the winter. I've still got the VW Karma van to travel around for music and camping while the conversion is in progress. 

The choice for a school bus style conversion came after doing a bit of research. The typical Canadian school bus from a rural setting is what I'm seeking. They tend to have strong body, good suspension and able to handle the rugged terrain of country roads. The squared off buses ride too close to the ground to be able to handle the bumpy roads I plan to travel on at some point, particularily south of the US border. A stripped school bus can potentially give me 35' x 7'5" x 6'5" interior. It's a low ceiling, but I'm short, so there is plenty of clearance for me. I'm not planning on standing up all day. School buses are constructed to be much stronger than the average manufactured RV, which have been referred to as tin cans. I'm ok with the shape of the bus. A low ceiling means cheap to heat. Those tall ceilings of the loft tiny houses meant an upstairs bed - hot as hell, and heat loss from the main floor where I would spend most of the time. The bus can also be longer than a typical tiny house, at 35'. That gives me enough downstairs room to enclose a sleeping chamber for myself. I don't need a full bedroom. Just a bed I don't have to navigate stairs or ladders to get to. And a short distance to the toilet. Funny what things become more important when designing a living space as one ages. I had initially thought about a slide away bed but then realized I don't want to have to move stuff to go to bed, or to put the bed away. I want it just to be THERE. I can build a ton of storage beneath it, and I don't need a full ceiling above my bed, so will utilize what space I can based on the quirky spaces that are available around the wheel wells and other stuff I'll be trying to hide in the cabinets - batteries, inverter, power controls, pipes, wires and so on. 

So that's the latest on the project, ha ha. Stay tuned for updates about the Nomad Project at my new blog, judesnomadproject.blogspot.com. I'll be closing this one down after I depart the land down under on May 1st. The posts will remain, but I won't be adding any new posts. Thanks for reading these past years. I have a few posts in me yet for Australia, so keep on reading.