Back

Maintenance | Day 82 of my 2023 Journal

Cecilie Conrad·Mar 23, 2023· 3 minutes

One advantage of living in a van is the number of things that need fixing/maintenance is much smaller compared to living in a house.

Another advantage is once you start, you just have to finish. Otherwise, there is nowhere to live.

A third one, we realized, is doing the actual fixing right outside the supplies shop, as the home is on wheels makes it SO much easier every time there is something you forgot to buy.

All it takes is a day of sunshine and a lot of patience.

The disadvantage might be it is even harder to push yourself to get started. You just KNOW how exhausted you will be at the end of the day. Relieved and exhausted.

In our van, the big drawer inside was broken and had been for a few weeks. We had to change the glider part. Seems easy enough: Go buy a new one, take the drawer out, unscrew the screws, remove the old one, fix the new one, and put the drawer back.

In our case, it was a bit more complicated.

In order to take out the drawer, we first had to, of course, empty it, leaving everything outside at the parking as there was no space left inside for the stuff.

Secondly, we had to remove one of the 2 doors to the bathroom, as one person had to sit on the toilet to press down a piece of plastic to take out the drawer. On the other side of the drawer, we had to remove the door to the water container to press down on that side. But before we could get that far, we had to take out two seats as the drawer did not open fully with the seats in place. And before we could do that, we had to take out the table.

Okay. Once the table was out, one child's personal box was easy to take out to clean and organize, so why not do it while everything is chaos anyway?

Long story short, it took about 4,5 hours in the sunshine, everybody organizing and making small and big modifications, and when we drove off, the vibe of the van was so much lighter.

Getting things like this done is such a relief.

Now we shall book a monthly maintenance day, as putting things like this off is just a waste of good energy.

NB! If you want to see a video of the process, you can see it on Instagram.

Love and light

Cecilie-Underskrift-300x133

Cecilie Conrad

# 82 of my 2023 writing challenge - Read them all here

Ravenna showed up on our travel itinerary because of a Donald Duck story. It is funny how things are connected. Read more
We have crossed the mountains from the coast and sunshine to the coast, crossing a landscape of snow. And we lived in Sant’Oleo for three days lookin…Read more
We are grateful to have a life from which we do not need a pause. We have created and allowed ourselves a life with freedom enough to decide how we w…Read more
Traveling from Sicily to Copenhagen between the beginning of March and late May will give us three months of spring. Being Danish, escaping six month…Read more
As anarchists, we are not much for rules. As self-directed, we don’t do rules. The structure of a rule is not flexible and can never take into accoun…Read more
Crossing the Italian boot west to east was a humbling experience. I have said it before, but it is worth repeating. Mountains really are big. Read more
The secret room in the Archeological Museum of Naples has its own story. The Roman culture in Pompeii had a thing with the penis. Huge aroused ones a…Read more
It is important to remember to ask the question: What if it was easy? How would it look? Because easy is not impossible, very often, it is the first …Read more
Some days can be defined by a single moment. I will let this one stand with its rainbow. The day was packed, but the rainbow alone would have been en…Read more