Does anyone really enjoy laundry? I used to hate it but could do it every day. I could just take out to my washer then put in the dryer. But I would always end up leaving it in the basket for days. Still it was nice to be able to pop into the garage to do it.
Now that has all changed almost 5 years ago, we moved to a boat. The first year I did all my wash at our sons’ apartment. Then the 2nd & 3rd year I bought a spin washer and took my wash to the local laundromat. The laundromat was clean and had huge washer which was great because you could do all the wash except towels in 1 load. The cost was around $15.00 every two weeks. We have been living in a marina for the past 2 years which means no more using my spin washer because you are not allowed to hang wash outside. I started using the laundromat at the marina. It cost around $20.00 to $30.00 a month. The new marinas laundromat is expensive, and the washer/dryers do not work that great. I currently do around 4 loads a week costing me around $20.00 a week. So that translates to around $960.00 plus 4-5 hours out of my day. It takes a long time because I don’t always have access to all the washers at one time. People tend to leave their laundry in the machines and never return so it takes forever to finish the wash. I considered getting a washer/dryer combo for the boat, but they are not efficient either and take a long time to complete a load of wash. They are also a huge investment plus the cost to operate them. When eric refitted the boat, he plumbed water and added electricity outlet for a unit. I just ended up adding a laundry day to my weekly routine. What are your thoughts on laundry? Do you think I should reconsider a washer/dryer combo or continue going to the laundromat? Leave your comment below. This is not a sponsored blog. Some of the links I provided are affiliate links which means I will make a small percentage from each sale. You do not pay any more for using my links, but I do appreciate the support. Thank you for checking out my blog. Also don’t forget to pop over to my YouTube channel from my website. Remember to keep living the dream but tiny.
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Yes, we were on a cruise. Even before leaving for our cruise everyone said why are you going on a cruise when you live on a boat in a beautiful state.
We were on a cruise for several reasons. 1. Everyone deserves a vacation and a chance to celebrate life events even people who live on a boat 2. It is a quick way to get to places that iron maiden could not take us that quick. 3. The best one is that we don’t need to drive, cook, clean or do anything but relax. 4. The most important reason is that it is super cheap. Even if we sailed the whole way, we still could not get to all these ports in the time frame and would spend so much more money with all our expenses. Here is the breakdown of our expenses Trip 329.00 per person plus tax and fees 800ish Parking for a week 57.00 Gas 10.00 2 waterproof bags 15.00 Vodka 11.00 2-12 packs of soda 5.00 Bottle of wine 10.00 1 beer a night for me 42.00 Chair rental 10.00 2 beers at Margaritaville 12.00 Gambling 60.00 1 excursion 121.00 All our meals were free included in the trip. Some things I learned while on our cruise: I have no issue to living in small spaces and felt our room was big. I also learned that we are not as messy as I thought we were. I’m sure our room attendant loved us because he only cleaned our room once a day and it was easy super low maintenance. I learned that I can really handle the heat now because I froze the whole cruise. Eric loved the air so I guess we will use more now after our trip. We also need to make our room darker I loved how dark the room on the shop was. Our boat bedroom is too bright to sleep. Lastly as much as it was nice to get away, I realized that I already live a life where we are on vacation. I highly recommend you take a vacation or start living the dream by making one day a week a vacation day. There are so many cheap and free ways to do that. You should also take one or two big vacations a year because life is too short. We have great friends that can help you feel like a millionaire for a day, weekend or week by booking a trip on Kuma Too a 47-foot sailing catamaran They are right in Dunedin Florida. Contact Mandy at (727) 512-0502 or https://www.sailingkumatoo.com/ Remember to keep living the dream but tiny. Is it possible to retire in your 30’s and 40’s today? It really can happen. I believe that the millennials know what they are doing for the most part because of the way they live their lives. I’m not saying that all millennials are doing it right, but many are. I wish I knew what I know today.
Now I’m not saying that only millennials can retire because since we are X generation, I think our generation can retire by 55 instead of 70 or 75. Some ways this can happen is by following the way todays millennials are doing some things. Here are some of the things that could help you retire soon.
I hope that this blog helps you start to think about how you can retire soon. Like I said before if only I knew what I know now I would be fully retired now. This is not a sponsored blog. Some of the links I provided are affiliate links which means I will make a small percentage from each sale. You do not pay less or more for using the affiliate links. I do appreciate the support. Thank you for checking out our blog. Remember to keep living the dream but tiny. Hello everyone. Welcome back to my blog. I am sorry that it has been so long since I blogged. Today I thought I would show you what our life looks like right now. I can’t believe that it is February already. It has been a crazy year already and I have a feeling that it is going to fly by. We have been trying out some new things this year.
We started our new year by moving to a new marina. We have been here for almost two months already. I finally got us in a daily, weekly and monthly routine. Just in case this is your first time on my blog let me introduce Iron Maiden our tiny home to you. We live on a 44ft sailboat so that gives us around 200ft of living area. Right now, it is just Eric and I living here but Josh our son will be moving onboard again very soon. So here is a day in our life. Here’s a schedule that I follow more than Eric does. Eric has his own business plus works for Josh's company. Josh works full time, so this is our schedule. Living in a marina verse on anchor it is so much easier to get things done. Daily Exercise Breakfast shower Or Boat work Work {blog, Vlog, work business, full-time jobs, my cookbook, and my book. Training or Errands Weekly M-Boat work and work day T- Boat work, $5.00 movie day, or work day W- Laundry or Beach every other week/ work day Th- Market/Groceries/ work day F- Boat work and work/meal prep Dinner and Dishes Relax, read, TV It took a few weeks to get back to a routine. I have found that working from home and living in the same space as you work it can get very difficult to stay on schedule. I love to give times to task and set goals for boat projects to get them finished. Boat work is super important but it needs limits because small projects can turn into hours, days or weeks. Many people do boat work by a schedule. I know many popular youtube sailing crew do them the same time every month. We learned the hard way how important regular routine is important. Some examples would be now that we don’t move our boat as much as we would like we start our motor every week. We also start the dinghy motor every month. Just this week we learned that our sump pump was not working because it was clogged. We clean our shower weekly and the tubshroom (this thing is awesome it keeps hair from going into the sump pump). I never thought I should check the sump pump but I do now and will be a monthly boat chore. These are just a few boat chores we have. I know our sailing friends have tons of boat chores but they use their boat more. So there you have it. A day or week in our liveaboard life. If you have any questions let us know. I hope you have a great week and remember to keep living the dream but tiny. There are things that you need with a home that travels but probably don’t need it with a stationary home as much. Living in a home that moves it can be hard to do some normal things or you many need things that are easy when traveling. Since I live in a sailboat I will start with things that I never considered I would need when I move to the boat.
1. An address or place to receive mail and packages. Because we move often but get a lot of amazon packages we need a place that can safely receive packages. We have tried several. Our first one we tried was having a box at a UPS store. It is a little pricey, but they give you a real address, you have access to your mail 24/7, they will hold your packages for you, so they are in a safe place. The bad part about this option is that the address is not seen as a real address, so you cannot register to vote with it or use it for a banks address and you cannot forward your mail when you move. Second option would be getting a P.O. Box, but they will not give you a real address and all the other negative things go along with this option too. Third option is an online service. I have not tried this service, but I know a lot of travelers that use it. The service is St. Brendan’s Isle mail forwarding services. Weather you are a traveler or cruiser offers a mail forwarding service that meets your lifestyle. With the SBI service you can have a traditional mail service or virtual mail service with digital images of your mail. Some of the benefits are you get a street address vs a P.O. Box. Another one is the mail scan pro this option allows you to look at your mail because its scanned and you can choose to receive it or to just have it deleted. Fees for this service can vary. For us a cruiser this service would be great because they can assist with registration and residency as well. The best part is that mail forwarding to any port of call is possible too. Another mail option is to use the marina where you are staying. One of the bad things about this is most marinas unless they are a liveaboard marina won’t allow you to receive mall or packages there. You are unable to have mail forwarded here as well because the address is a commercial address. But this is one of the best options if available since its free. If you still own property or live in a land home of course you can use that address. Owning a brick and mortar business is another place you can receive mail or packages. I am sure there are many other options, but I just listed a few. 2. Due to the limited living space in most homes that travel. Again, I live in a boat, so space is limited. Not only being very organized but having items that collapse. I have many items that collapse especially kitchen items. Some of my favorites are my collapsible dish pan and my collapsible dish drain. Another item I just found was collapsible buckets and food containers. Saving space helps a lot so it doesn’t take up much room. Space really matters with how you can live a clutter free home no matter the size. 3. One of the most important things that you need in a home that travels is power. Because in most situation you don’t always home regular power to hook up to you need to depend on power coming from other sources. The one we use the most is our solar system. Our solar system and batteries run everyone on our boat. The best part of it after the initial set up there is no cost to run it just go old sunlight. 4. The next thing along the same line is Wi-Fi. If you are like my family, we all work from our home, so internet is super important. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to access. Even if we are in a marina or on the hook we need the assistants from our netgear Wi-Fi ranger extender. We also use the Wi-Fi to stream movies on our tv or listen to music. 5. Due to living in different areas or temperatures mold and mildew is often a problem so having a dehumidifier can really make a difference. When we are in a marina we run our air conditioning so that helps with the mold but when we don’t use that we depend on the dehumidifier to keep our home healthy. 6. For us having 12 volt everything saves so much power. Most of my appliances do not run off 12 volts but I do have some much as a crock pot and television. Our large appliances like our refrigerator and freezer run completely off our solar system which is great because we never have to worry about our food staying cold. I also rely on other things to cook that don’t use my solar like my Gas One stove. My outside grill is something that I use a lot as well. 7. I happen to be vey picky about my water so having a safe reliable water filtration system helps so much. We are in the middle of remodeling our galley aka kitchen in our boat, so I use a my Zero water pitcher to have fresh water. When you are getting water from all kinds of places you just never know what could be in your water. 8. A common item that most homes that travel need are a portable potty. We use the natures head compost and a travel funnel. The best part about portable potty is it can be used in a boat, RV, tiny home or any type of home. 9. The last thing that that a traveler or cruiser could not live without it a Kindle paper white. The kindle is great because it holds all your books in one place instead of having a huge book collection. The part I love the best is I can read it anywhere because the screen can be seen in the sun and hold tons of books. comment below or head over to my website to add any of your favorite products. This is not a sponsored blog. I use affiliate links. Some of the links I provide are affiliate links which means I will make a small percentage from each sale. You do not pay more or less for using the affiliate links. I do appreciate the support. Thank you for checking out our blog remember to keep living the dream but tiny We all like to save money right. What can we do to complete that? Here are a few suggestions that might help.
1. How many of you have gym membership you never use? Are you using that membership probably not or it was in the new year’s resolution but by feb you never went again? Cancel that membership today. Now If you live off grid this is something great because not only will you be inspired to get out of your probably small living quarters, but you can shower after the workout. There are some good free workouts on YouTube as well that are free. 2. Also, along with working out if you need to buy workout gear try shopping at TJ Maxx, Ross or Bells outlet. They have some great deals on name brand stuff. 3. Instead of going out to eat or party on the weekend have a game night or have pot luck. Invite friends to your boat or home. One thing we do here at the marina is have game and pot luck night. Its pretty fun and it saves us tons of $$ money and we don’t have to drive 30 mins either. 4. Save money buy ordering your groceries online you can stay on budge plus you have it come right to your door. We are thinking about getting rid of our car, so this would be a great option for us. If you like going to the store you can still save money but ordering it online, then picking it up because that way to keep to a budget. Lastly if you want shop make a list and check your pantry so you don’t buy things you don’t need. 5. Take care of large household appliances so they last longer like fridges, stoves and coolers. Also, if you live on a boat take care of things like your engines by changing the oil and other maintenance. Another thing to save money on is the exterior of the boat take care of that as well. Have the bottom clean to preserve the bottom paint. 6. Another saving idea for a boat is live on the hook or mooring ball instead of a marina. There is a whole blog about this on my webpage go check it out. Moving from a larger space would save you tons of money as well if you don’t live on a boat. 7. Lastly making a loose budget for the bills that are due and use the rest wisely. A great way to save money is set a goal and use things like acorn to put money away without you doing anything. If you have any questions let me know and if you have any other ways to save money, please comment below. Thank you for reading my blog. Remember to keep living the dream but tiny. A little back story on me. I have been living on my 44ft steel sailboat Iron Maiden for 3 years now. I went from living in a 2700sqft house to a 400sqft boat and it was a huge change for me. I must be honest even though it was crazy it was the best thing we did. Things that are different for a woman living on a boat. · I had to reduce my clothes almost 90%. The clothes were not too bad but everyone who knows me knows that the real hard part was my shoes and purses. But believe it or not I only have 3 purses that I switch them out occasionally, or when they break and only wear around 5 pairs of shoes. I still have around 15 pair but that includes summer, winter and workout shoes. I used to have several bins of shoes. · Let’s talk about bathing on a boat. Washing my hair and shaving my legs it’s an upside-down challenge. Oh, and I forgot about dying my hair wow is that hard. The hardest part of it that we must limit the amount of water I use. · Another challenge for me as a woman on the boat is using the restroom. We do not have a traditional toilet we have a compost. When my hubby suggested we get a compost my first though was omg how do I use this as a woman when it has two separate compartments and what about that time of the month. But it was easy, and I think it was another great idea he had. · A huge challenge for me is getting dressed on the boat and not looking like a hobo. It is much easier now that I live in a marina but when we lived on the hook it was a major challenge. · Having some me time. It is hard to have me time in only 400sqft. So, what I do is get up earlier then Eric and spend an hour or so looking at social media or reading a book. · The next thing I struggled with is being as a woman is having limited space for all my stuff. I really like having a space for everything especially when it comes to my kitchen stuff. But unfortunately, due to lack of space I just don’t have all the luxuries in the kitchen that I used to have. · While I’m talking about the kitchen I went from such a large house to a smaller boat with the smallest kitchen (galley) in the world. Lucky for me I am a good cook, so I am still able to make some great meals. When it comes to cooking and storage I always need to plan out all my meals and shopping trips so that everything has a place. Overall it might be difficult at times being a woman on a boat but there is no other place I would rather be.
Thank you for reading my blog. Remember to keep living the dream. Successful people
When you live tiny people tend to think that you are not successful or can’t be successful. Here are some ways to be successful. 1. Take responsibly for your life 2. Know what is important to you.... 3. Meditate daily or do some relaxing things for yourself. 4. Take care of your body every day. Healthy people are happy people. 5. Read and learn I try to take at least 1 hour a day to learn. 6. Be constant daily give a time frames to activities. 7. Follow through on things. 8. Don’t ever give up. 9. They are not afraid to fail. 10. Sharpen your skills. 11. Be self-aware. 12. Practice gratitude. Write down what you are grateful for daily. 13. Solid success system. 14. Associate with likeminded people. 15. Goal oriented. Setting daily, monthly and yearly goals are important. 16. Manage emotions be your own person always. 17. Communicate clearly. 18. Be a great listener. 19. Value alone time. 20. Don’t waste time. 21. Swap out time for positive. 22. Turn off your phone. 23. Limit social network time. (stay focusd app automatically limits time on social networks) 24. Don’t over commit if you really don’t want to do it or go somewhere say NO. 25. Be open to change. I try to follow many of these things, but I am still trying to follow more. Things that I try to do daily are. I follow a daily to do list, morning and evening routines, think positive, exercise as much as possible and I set alarms to keep me on task. I hope some of these ideas can help you be more successful. Thank you for checking out my blog remember to keep living the dream but tiny. You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine. I found this be true and I started really using my daily planner. I usually either plan a week at a time starting by filling out my planner either Friday the week before or the Monday beginning of the week. I put everything in my planner like what we are going to eat that day, what exercise I did that day and pretty much everything else. Since it’s a new month some things What I try to do is set goals. The goals are personal goals, boat goals, work goals and family goals. I achieve most of my goals at least 3xs a week mostly because I work from my tiny home. Some of my personal goals are to lose some weight and get back to eating healthy. I have been trying to exercise 4 times a week my beach body app really helps with this. Another personal goal is to make sure I use my planner every day. I also have been trying to limit my screen time by not checking Facebook as much and at the end of the night I am reading instead of watching tv. An app that could help with this is called ifocusmode. Some of our tiny home {Iron maiden} goals are really completed by my awesome hubby. One of the goals are to finish up our hot water system since as much as I hate it will be cold soon. Another goal was to get a new small boat and make a davit system to pull the boat out of the water daily. This goal was achieved already which is awesome to have a new boat. Now to my work goals, one of my goals is to soon start Vloging on YouTube to promote my Tiny Living channel. Another goal is to post to my social media accounts daily for my blog and blogging at least 3xs a week. I take 1 to 2 hours a day training on something new. Set goals for work to make money and try completing them. Family goals are sometimes a challenge. My hubby and I try to have 1 date night a week. Our family also tries to eat together every night and try to do something as a family once a week. No matter what our goals may be for the week I try my best to complete as much as possible. I can only control myself not anyone else so at the end of the day I can only take care of my goals. Some tips on how to set goals and change your life goals: 1. Make a daily list of goals or to do list. You can get a planner like I have or put it in your phone. I have two planners and use my google calendar daily. 2. Set priorities for the day and week. 3. Have a morning and evening routine. People who set routines seem to be more successful. 4. Meditate and think positive about everything. I promise the outcome will be better. 5. Exercise daily if possible even if it is 10 minutes a day. 6. Set alarms to keep you on task. 7. Change 8. Clean something every day and if you are like us it is important to work on our tiny home daily. 9. Write down what you are grateful daily. 10. Sit and relax take time for yourself. Thank you for checking out my blog. I enjoyed sharing my daily goals and planner with you. Remember to always live the dream but tiny. I live in FL so it can get very hot in the sun. Our boat doesn’t not provide a lot of shade and its usual to hot to stay inside. I also have to spend time in the sun when going back and forth from the marina to my boat. Another problem I personally have with the sun I have very light skin so I burn quick.
Here are a few tips to survive the sun. • Wear long sleeve shirts • Wear light colors... • Wear a hat to protect your head and give your face shade. • Wear sunglasses to protect your eyes • Use umbrellas or sunshades on boat • Drink plenty of water it is easy to get dehydrated quick • Most important wear sun block and re apply also use sunscreen with zinc in it. There are so many kinds of sun tan lotion out there. What I have been doing is trying different brands to see which one works best for me. So far the ocean potion is working really good for me. The reason this is working for me is because it does not feel greasy and they make one for your face as well so no break outs yeah. Lastly I suggest going to see your dermatologist often. Thank you for checking out my blog and keep living the dream but Tiny living. |
AuthorJoan stump Archives
May 2019
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