I kind of miss vacuuming

We've had a really wonderful week on the road. We've seen butterflies, ancient aqueducts, basaltic prisms, huge pyramids no one quite knows who built them, and a gremlin like character. But between all that fun exploring there are some chores in vanlife.

Gus studies up between visits from his vanlife friends who wait outside our door asking 'Can Gus come out and play?'

Getting ready for some big city traveling, Gordon switches out our license plates for some fake ones for $30 off Amazon. We've read of peoples plates being stolen so wanted to avert the hassle of that...it still has our real number on it.

We decided not to bring a vacuum after all and resort to using this brush to quickly sweep out the van.

I've never been a 'right tool for the right job' kind of person. I don't have one of those color coordinated closets nor take pleasure in organizing cabinets. But that's kind of all changed on the open road - everything really does need its place to save your sanity. And since items may have shifted in flight - you have to be very careful when opening the doors, so the brilliant Gordon installed a high tech bungy cord system to curtail the door opening expletives.

We've a now proud owners of our own garrafon de aqua and get the zen task of filling our water tanks by hand thru another high tech adaptation of a topo chico water bottle cut with a hole. A 5 gallon garrafon costs about $3 and seems to be our best bet for now as water filling stations haven't been plentiful.

Of course when you add all that water the next logical task is emptying the pee bucket. This chore is usually done under the cover of darkness about once a day. It is a game changer to have your own toilet on the road so I whole heartedly embrace this task. Not.

Next up we have a wine / laundry storage holder in the van and transfer it out to be washed. So far we've had to pay about $10 for our laundry to be done, or find an airbnb or homestay with a washer. It's taken us no time at all to embrace wearing the same clothes a couple days in a row.

One treat my sis taught me while camping probably 20 years ago is to boil some water and do a steam facial. It's truly a magical spa day treatment when you haven't been able to shower.

Last up is washing some dishes today. I can't sing the praises of using a spray soap enough. It uses about half the water for us to rinse as a giant glob of soap and lasts longer too. I will cry when we run out.

As our reward when it gets dark out we all snuggle up and watch some series on our IPAD in the door holder system.

We may need to watch the Gremlin movie again soon as we saw the rare and ancient Mexican hairless dog, Xoloitzcuintli or Xolo for short.

So there's a day in the life of our van chores. I kind of bored myself writing this post, sorry dear reader. Gotta go tend to the rice that just spilled down the inside of our van and will probably rattle for weeks in all the crevices and wash some ziploc bags for reuse. Glamours of life on the road!