Living on a boat is simply simple

Life on the boat is great.  That's the easiest way to describe it.  Not that living in such a small space doesn't have disadvantages, obviously it does.  But the advantages have been so amazing, so awesome and thankfully completely automatic.

Jon and I have been married for nearly 10 years...and for nearly 10 years we've said that we should simplify our lives, slow down, spend more quality time together and have more cool adventures.  But for ten years our house, jobs and lives got in the way...no matter how many articles or books I read, and no matter how many times we talked about it, we simply couldn't make the change happen.  But when we took the big plunge and moved onto the boat, suddenly, with this big change we'd made all those things just happened...without even trying.

We should simplify, cut-down, downsize, organize...clean up.

Moving to the boat has forced that change, because 250 square feet simply isn't a lot of room.  (plus it only takes about 20 minutes to clean up when it is dirty) Obviously you can simplify without moving onto a boat or reducing your house size by 90%...but no matter how much stuff we got rid of we still had too much stuff!  We estimate that we got rid of 6,000 pounds of stuff.  Yep...you heard me right. We sold, donated and tossed nearly 6,000 pounds of stuff that we obviously didn't need. No wonder I could never keep our house clean!! Now we have 4 towels, 4 plates, 4 bowls...just the stuff we need... not the stuff we kept just in case an NBA allstar team came to stay with us. (seriously, we had like 15 towels...who needs that?)

When you only have 4 of everything,

even the 5 year old can do the dishes!

We should spend more quality time together

Between homeschooling, living in a boat and having no cable on the docks...again it's just automatically happened.  In our last house the kids became accustomed to going off to their own rooms to play.Now that they share a room, and it's right next to the living room, we are always near each other.   Plus, without the temptation of TV, we just don't have that crutch of "seeing what's on."  Now we read, play, craft, talk, cook...or just hang out.  We don't have to plan to spend time together like we used to.  It just happens.

We totally built this pantry...that never

happened before we simplified our lives!!

We should do more cool things. 

Living on the docks is it's own adventure.  Between drunks and fishermen and sea lions and seagulls...it's a regular party down here!  We've seen a raven decimate a rat, a dozen sea lions playing, a heron dive for food, crabs sneaking around the ocean floor...we even have a pet seal we like to call AquaRog, cause he looks like Roger (our dog).  Plus since we have less house cleaning and such to do, I find that we go out more.  We've done art classes and hikes, played on a frozen pond, collected specimens at the beach, we play chess and use our microscope...and thoroughly just enjoy our time.  Last night Laurel and Jon snuck out at midnight for an Aurora Borealis hunt.  I just don't think they would have done that before.

Having such a small space means only keeping those

things that are special to you, things that make you smile.

 

Cutting out the stuff that kept the house messy, and removing the time wasters like TV (and cleaning!) have made us focus on what's most important to us as a family.  It's also renewed our enthusiasm for the next adventure around the bend.  (Nope, not gonna talk about it yet...it's not time.)  But suffice it to say, as much life changing as we have done, we have BIG plans still on the horizon. 

We are living the life we wished for, and planning for more. 

Trust me, if we can do it, so can you.

 

 

The harbor at night, yes, it is that pretty.