I feel like a kid playing with a doll house! I've been playing around with floor plan ideas for the bus and trying to design everything with storage space in mind. There is only 75 square feet to play with and we want so many things to fit in and I don't want to block out any of the windows. I love the sunshine! While I have been inside playing with paper furniture Michael has been out in the cold doing all of the prep work. The seats and floor are out, the sub floor is in and he took out the awful driver seat too. Hopefully we can find a replacement!
Some of my friends think we are crazy for doing this but spending six months in the woods while hiking the Appalachian Trail really helped put things in perspective for me. I find myself resenting the job I once loved and wishing most of my earnings weren't going towards paying bills that I wouldn't have if I was living differently. I know I can't just change things overnight but slowly I am changing the way I spend money and decreasing my footprint on this planet. I still don't have it all figured out yet but I'm taking one step forward at a time and following what my heart tells me is right.
I grew up in the country in a huge old Victorian home on a hundred acres so it's not really surprising that as an adult I've chosen big houses and filled them with lots of furniture. It seems like I've always taken up a lot of space. Some of that changed for me when I became a single parent and I needed to change my priorities in order to stretch the dollar. I still had a lot of stuff though. Later I thought I was drastically downsizing when the kids moved out and I put what I wanted to keep in storage right before starting my thruhike. During my six month hike I lived out of my backpack, if it didn't fit in my pack then I didn't need it! In fact as time went on I kept lightening my load taking out stuff I really didn't need and by the end of the trip I was carrying 17lbs of stuff I needed to survive plus food and water. I probably could have even carried less. After my epic journey I came back to all the stuff I had stored and knew I had to get rid of most of it. I didn't need it and I don't need it today. I still have too much stuff and take up far too much space but I know that it will be an easy transition for me to travel around and live on a bus because I have lived with less. I know it will be harder for Michael and I want to help make the transition as easy as possible for him. I have visions of living in a tiny house in our future and I feel like this is going to be a great stepping stone. With that in mind Michael is making extra storage space above the windows down both sides of the bus. Seventy five square feet isn't much room for two adults and two large dogs but We are going to try to make this as comfortable as we can. Today's pictures are the work in progress of the overhead storage and the beginnings of the walls of the bus. 
