There’s Vodka in the Boys Bathroom

“Hey, where’s the vodka?” 

“It’s in the boy’s bathroom.” 

This is not something I thought I would ever hear, much less say.  You see, the boys are only 9 and 10.  So why are they hoarding the booze in their bathroom?  Are things really getting so bad on the boat that the kids have turned to the sauce.  Before you go calling CPS, let me assure you that they are not.  You see, life aboard is a constant search for new and inconvenient places to store..um…well….everything really.  Food, tools, cold weather clothes, cleaning supplies, toiletries, water filters, and even vodka.

Compared to many, our boat is well equipped with storage.  We have the standard 3-4 cabinets in the galley (kitchen), and some cool trap doors in the floor that reveal storage nooks.  But we’re also lucky enough to boast extra storage under the cushions of most of the seating throughout the boat.  Many boats don’t have that luxury.  Even with this “abundance”, there is nowhere near enough space to store the collateral of a modern 5 person family.  We had to get creative, and create our own places to tuck away our loot.  

We started off way behind the eight ball.  At first we thought ourselves to be geniuses by purchasing a boat that was loaded with stuff and ready to go.  That was until we moved on board with our own u haul of things that we just had to have from home.  Tools.  Water toys.  Kitchen stuff.   Books.   We planned on having a nice leisurely month at a dock in Brunswick Georgia to sort through the two conflicting sets of stuff, but it didn’t work out that way.   Delays in some pre-departure boat projects at the yard had us moving on board three days before we were scheduled to set sail.  No longer did we have a month; we now had three days!

I hear you.  “Hey dummy, why didn’t you delay the date you set sail?”.   You’re smart.  That would have been a great idea…but.  The date centered around the captains that we hired to certify that we knew what we were doing to satisfy the insurance company.   They were an amazing couple that were about to become grandparents.  The kid was coming out any day now.  They couldn’t delay their time with us and be there for the birth of their first grandkid…nor would we want them to.  So, three days it is. Luckily, we still had our AirBnB for those three days, and it had a garage.  That garage became our open tile for the first phase of our life aboard.   

Open tile?  What’s that?  Let me introduce you to what we affectionately call the “Tile Game”.   Remember that little plastic game you might have had as a kid?  The one that was a grid of sliding squares and one open space?  The object was to move the tiles around, using the empty space, until they form a picture or put the tiles in some other order like this:

So the garage was an open tile.  Sort of.  It was filled with the stuff that we brought with us in a uhaul.  Yup…we thought we could move a uhaul of stuff onto a boat.  The first thing we did was to get access to the boat (ahead of the three day clock) while it was still in the yard.  That allowed us to get the kid’s rooms setup so there wouldn’t be mutiny.   We were also able to bring back bins and bins of treasure from the boat to the garage.  I call it treasure because we didn’t know yet what was in the bins… so we just assumed it was awesome.

Some of it was awesome.  Some of it was broken.  Some of it was underwear.  Much of it went to goodwill or to the trash, especially if there were dupes in our uhaul load.  I’ll let you decide what you think we did with the underwear.

Excellent, we have now filled the garage to the brim and it is no longer an open space.  But…in doing so we created an open space on Twig!  We spent the rest of the time waiting for the boat to be ready, washing sheets and planning where we were going to put stuff when we moved aboard.   We thought we were all set.

Then we got onboard.  The open space we thought we had created got quickly taken over by the kids.  To be fair, it was their bedrooms.   Plan B:  put everything on the dock.  The dock that the marina said not to store stuff on.  It’s just for a bit, no biggie.

Clearly we needed some new open tiles.  I had a full set of power tools onboard, so I got to work.   The first space that I created were two new shelves in the salon (living room) and galley (kitchen).   Easier said than done.  After four trips to Home Depot, I found myself cutting, gluing, and screwing the shelves out on the dock.  Noise and sawdust were everywhere, and I was sure that we were about to get kicked out.  

A day later, the shelves were hastily painted and installed on the boat.   Magic!  At least two bins of kitchen crap got unloaded onto them.  What we thought would be an open tile quickly disappeared.    We need more space…onto the next project!

We had too many showers.  The boat was built for charter, and charterers like showers, so there were four on board.  Unless Mere and I decided to double up, there was no way that more than one of us was going to shower at any given time.  The water pump just couldn’t handle it.  So, we had three spare showers, and I quickly converted two of them into storage by building more shelves.  More cutting.  More gluing.  More screwing.

Now we’re getting somewhere.  After the shower shelves were in, all of the kitchen stuff was put away, and everybody started to get settled.   That gave us enough hold over the chaos to set sail.  Which was a good thing, because our three days were now up.   We spent the following days on the water, and the evenings continuing to organize.  Our water maker was inoperable, so the little cabin in the tip of the boat that housed it became our “room of de-requirement”.  Anytime we didn’t know what to do with something, we threw it in there for later use.

We were bursting at the seams, and couldn’t imagine getting rid of anything that remained.  Friendly discussions took place about my need to have four toolboxes, two lockers, and 6 ammo cases full of tools.   The need for a breadmaker was challenged, as was the industrial sewing machine.  In the end, we didn’t get rid of much more, so we needed another open tile.

“Hey boys!  Don’t you miss sharing a room?  You keep doing sleepovers in each other’s cabins, why not just bunk up again?”

It was a dirty play, but they really do love sharing a room…and we really needed a storage room.   They tried it for a week, and we quickly moved all the extra crap into our new storage room before they knew what was happening.  At the end of the week, we all agreed that it was best for them to continue to share a room.  By “all agreed” I mean that Meredith and I agreed, and we bribed the boys.

Abundance of storage!  Finally!  Now we can go shopping.  

Don’t judge, we still hadn’t really provisioned, and we were headed to the Bahamas where it’s hard to come by necessities.  Fear of $7 doritos took us on multiple Costco and Walmart runs in the name of stockpiling.  We bought foods that we hadn’t eaten since college…or since ever.   Mountains of Ramen and canned chicken made their way on board, and everything got shoved into the new storage room.   Chaos once again, and once again we were filled to the brim.

Now we play the tile game each and every time we go to the grocery store.  Or when we stay at a marina.  Marinas have mailing addresses, so Greg punches the “buy now” button for everything on his Amazon list every time we stay at one.  I am Greg, and will be referring to myself in the third person for the next section.  Here’s an example:  

A)  Meredith is allergic to eggs, but loves eggs.  She has found that she can mock scrambled eggs using tofu.  Tofu is really hard to find in many places. Greg loves Meredith, so he bought an entire case of Tofu on Amazon so she’d never be without it.   Actually, he bought 2 cases. Greg is a great guy.

2)  Greg may be great, but he’s also an idiot.  We have nowhere to put 2 cases of tofu.  Ideally we would put them in a bin.  A clear bin so we can see what’s inside.  

D)  All of our clear bins are already full.

The hardest part is creating the empty space.  In this example, we need to ultimately create an empty bin (without purchasing a new one) for the tofu.  I don’t remember the exact conversation, but it went something like this:

Meredith: “Do you really need all your tools?”

Greg: “yes.  Unless we want to stop fixing things when they break every day?”

Meredith:  “That’s true.  You’re smart and handsome”

Greg:  “What’s under Jade’s bed?”

Meredith:  “Cold weather clothes, we’re going to need them in the fall”

Greg:  “That’s true.  You’re pretty and wise”

Meredith:  “Can we consolidate anything in the storage room”

Greg:  “probably.  Maybe if we put all the breakfast food in one bin.  Wait, we don’t have a bin.  That’s the problem in the first place”

Meredith:  “ how about this:  we move the cans from the bin under the table to the space under the floor.  If we move the pancake mix, we’ll have room.   If we put the pancake mix in the bin with the cereal, that should work.   We can then put the tofu in the can bin. But the bin with the cereal is pretty full”

Greg:  “looks like we’re having cereal for dinner.”

This scene plays out over and over, and each day we get a little bit closer to organized.  Here’s what it looks like these days:  

We have a bin for our naked board games.   Don’t judge, it’s not what you think.  They just don’t have their boxes anymore..they take up less space that way.   Our chips hang from a cargo net hammock, and the life jackets have their own as well. The engine parts are under Jade’s room, and bins full of first aid supplies are in the spare room.

Oh, and yes, the beverages, including the Vodka, are on the shelves we built in the shower of the boys bathroom….high out of their reach.