TravelingRae's Profile

This is just like my 'bedroom' except I have enough less head space. I think there are two kinds of people, those who love this sort of cozy nest and those who find it claustrophobic. If you're in the latter category, give up now and make yourself a bedroom area on the ground floor or you will never get a good night's sleep. If you're like me, then you will end up loving your loft. I made mine very dark and lots of bedding. It's well-insulated, so I can barely hear the world outside and it's so dark that I sleep the night through.

As for Sunday lie-ins, get a couch. Once you've come down that ladder to go to the bathroom or grab some coffee, are you really going to want to get back up there? Lie-ins are the one thing I miss about having a proper, not ladder-accessible, bedroom.

Mmm... bacio. There's a great little gelataria in White Rock BC where I would get one scoop of bacio and one scoop of espresso: coffee, hazelnuts, and chocolate all in one bowl. Heaven. I don't have the equipment to try out this delicious-sounding recipe unfortunately. :(

The smell dissipates very, very quickly. Vinegar is a deodorizer and disinfectant. It is incredibly cheap and natural.

I'm a slob, but a very organized one. I let the mess grow until I can stand it anymore and then in just one hour, POOF, everything is put away and my home sparkles. This is because everything has a home, so it's very quick to put stuff away. Once you have clear surfaces, cleaning is a breeze (especially when you live in a space that's less than 200 square feet).

Being organized as changed my life. I used to need WEEKS to get my home 'company' ready because 'cleaning' meant finding a hiding space for all my crap and then tidying up around the piles I couldn't hide. Now, I can have company over with just 30 minutes notice and the rig is usually in decent enough shape to have friends over with no notice at all.

I've accepted that I'll never be on of those people whose house is neat all the time, especially since you walk right into my kitchen. To save water, I only wash up once a day, after dinner, so anyone who drops by mid-day gets to see the pile in the sink.

One place that I do need a modicum of order is my home office. It doesn't need to be perfectly tidy, but I can't focus if all I can think about is that I need to dust.

Second rule of design: just because someone says you shouldn't, you CAN.

I just inherited about 50 billion pallets and look forward to converting all that weathered oak into cabinetry for the guest cottage I'm building.

What you need is a catastrophic hard drive failure, which will let you test your backups and see if they are adequate. Once that happens, you'll sleep soundly.

I have a Mac, so when my hard drive crapped out, it was just a matter of getting a new one and taking a couple of hours to restore my latest Time Machine back up on it. I only lost an afternoon. I have another, bootable, backup, but now I know I don't really need it, except as a backup of the backup, so I am confident I'm well protected.

I had this post in mind all day and almost went to buy lemons. Good thing I didn't. Going through the food on board this afternoon to figure out what I need to eat before crossing the board, I found in the freezer a bag with five limes in it. Three minutes in the microwave to thaw them out while I made the simple syrup, and within 10 minutes I had very tasty limeade! Freezing lemons and limes makes them so much juicier. I used a 3/4:3/4 ratio for the simple syrup and got about 1 1/4 cups of juice from my limes, and then to that I added 2 cups of water.

I live in a motorhome, so there is absolutely no place to hide the litter box. I have gone through a bunch of litter boxes and litter types and this is what works for me:

-top loading litter box (I just use a tote that matches my decor and made a hole in the lid)

-Arm and Hammer Double Duty Litter (http://www.armandhammer.com/pet-care/cat-care/Products/double-duty.aspx): it seems expensive but I literally use a quarter of the cheap store brand litter I used with a fraction of the smell

-Arm and Hammer Litter Mat (http://www.walmart.com/ip/ARM-HAMMER-Cat-Litter-Mat/21871210: (it was about $5 in stores, not sure about that online price!). This mat catches just about all the litter my kitty tracks out of the box. No tracked litter means reduced odours and dust throughout my home. I've tried a number of kitty tracking mats and regular mats and this is the only one that works and doesn't get all disgusting.

A rather dry mojito -- barely any sugar, good rum, loads of fresh mint. Mmm!

And anything made with dark rum, as long as there is no cola involved. Oh, and a piña colada sprinkled with cinnamon.

Rum is definitely my hard liquor of choice.

I keep a picture of my dad, who died in 2007, above my desk. It was taken in the 50s when he was about 10 years old.

Also, he carried a bottle opener on his keychain for years and it now lives on my knife bar. He used it to open Coca-Cola bottles back in the day. I use it to open beer bottles.

I did all the cooking for him growing up, so I raided his kitchen after he died and collected a lot of pieces, like a serving spoon and mixing bowl, that I used to prepare family meals.

I live in a tiny home, so just about everything in it has a story.