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

I just wanted to include more images from the same day. The streets with their shiny buildings contrasting the little cargo-bike-food stalls, the arc…Read more
I titled this “Beating Hearts” because the Aztecs’ human sacrifice took out the still beating heart of 52 humans EVERY DAY (according to our guide)! …Read more
The first step in Mexico City was to take it in the city. A good way to do it while not wasting time is to visit an art museum. Mexican art is like n…Read more
I am not afraid. I am insecure about how to find my way in this context, how to find solid information in most here-and-now contexts, and how to bala…Read more
The story goes (the one I know) that the Huichol people, who make this sort of art, took the peyote juice to enter a state of transcendence in order …Read more
Everything can be an adventure, even this. For us Europeans, a REAL gated community with a guard, actually several guards, is seriously exotic. We ha…Read more
It is truly overwhelming how fast San Miguel de Allende is unfolding for us. One of the game-changing things is that there is not much ego energy. It…Read more
It was a lovely morning after the game-changing party, convincing us we had finally found the place with the right vibe and the right people to stay …Read more
This was the final drop: We are now convinced San Miguel de Allende is the right place for us to have our winter breaks and find our new community an…Read more