Mrs. David's Garden Seeds®

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Living In A Mobile Home

After 18.5 years of living in a regular house, we are once again living in a mobile home aka a manufactured home out in the country on our own land. We are happy to be out of the city. However, we forgot about how much less storage there is in mobile homes, even when the square footage is over 2000 square feet. They don't put many large closets or storage areas in them.

This week, as I unpack all of the boxes brought in today from our storage units, I will discuss the unavailability of storage and the stupidity of hoarding. Apparently, I am a hoarder and didn't know it until I saw all of the boxes in my new living room.

Living in a mobile home means no separate linen closet to hold all of your blankets and sheets and other linens. It also means no hall closet for storage or winter coats. It also means no attic and no garage to put hundreds of books and clothes that have grown too small, and craft supplies, not to mention exercise equipment that doesn't get used very often. I had completely forgotten about these important storage places now that we are living in a mobile home.

When we first lived in a mobile home, we did not have much at all so everything fit just fine with plenty of room to spare. I will say that one tends to collect a lot of stuff over the course of 32 years, especially when one has spent the last 18 years living in the same house.

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Monday, September 23, 2019
Living In A Mobile Home

Happy Fall, Y'all! I say this because some of you actually get fall weather coming soon. We are in South Central Texas so it will be hot summer for a while yet.

This morning, David left the house around 5:45am to go to San Antonio and get a U-Haul and some movers to clean out the last of our storage units. He arrived with a full truck around 10am and then everything started getting piled in my empty living room. I had no idea we had so much junk. I would pack boxes and they would be hauled off to a storage unit before I realized how many I had. I got rid of a lot of stuff while packing. I will be getting rid of a lot more while unpacking now that I am living in a mobile home again.

As the movers brought more and more boxes into my living room, I began to realize there is no way that all of this stuff will ever fit into this home. Fortunately, quite a few boxes and containers will go into a shed because they are for the business or for Christmas. We have a ton of Christmas decorations.

On a good note, I could not find our plates in the boxes we had, but today I found them so we don't have to use paper plates anymore. I am still missing our drinking glasses.

Once the movers had unloaded everything, we took the U-Haul back to
San Antonio and then came back to begin the unpacking. I started Marie Kondo-ing box after box. Not much of anything sparked my joy this afternoon. I stopped around 8pm and you can barely tell that I touched anything. My dumpster is overflowing and they won't pick it up again until Friday.

In keeping with the story line from last week, no, the skirting team did not show up again today. We talked to the transport manager and she said they would be here on Tuesday morning. They didn't show up on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or today even though they were supposed to, so do we really believe they will show up tomorrow to finish the job?

We texted the portable potty company again today and he said he would be here late this afternoon. I think he showed up close to 5pm and finally the awful smell is gone! I do not miss waking up in the middle of the night and having to go in that thing when we were living out back in the shed.

David called the electric company today and they said we only have to wait another four weeks before they put our two poles in and place the electric hook up. In the meantime, we are grateful for the electricity that the generator provides but it is ridiculously expensive. I checked the propane tank yesterday and it was already down to 50%. We just filled it on Friday.

Tomorrow, we should get a new permanent fence around the back of the house that the dogs can go in from the backdoor so we don't need to put them on a leash to take them potty. According to the transport manager, the three sides of our unpainted skirting should be painted (ha ha) and I should get a lot more of the boxes and containers either put away or Marie Kondo'd away.

We are supposed to have a well dug next week.

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Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Happy Tuesday! Living in a mobile home means we need to downsize, even though this is a bigger house than our home in San Antonio. As I said yesterday, it is all about storage space and when you are living in a mobile home, you just don't have storage closets.

David spent a lot of the morning arranging things outside in his sheds and working in the garden. You will be happy to know that some of the beans he planted last week are already coming up! I unpacked a lot of boxes. I found about 20 boxes of Christmas decorations and lights. David took them all out to the shed and took a lot of empty boxes outside to break down.

I finally found some more china to wash and put away. I still haven't found our drinking glasses or Lucy's new dog bed. I found Ethel's and Annabelle's. It is so frustrating. Our living room still looks like a war zone, but it is way better than it was yesterday. I just hope the furniture folk don't decide to bring our living room furniture early. There is no place to put it at all right now.

Living in a mobile home in the country is so different than living in the city. If you will remember, last Wednesday and Thursday, we were supposed to have skirting installed. The team of two guys came late both days, left early on Wednesday and then on Thursday said they could not finish and would be back here early on Friday morning. Of course, they never showed up, nor did they show up Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. The transport company kept  saying that the skirting team would be out tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow...Well, at 2pm today, the skirting team's boss and another guy came out driving a car and got stuck in our sandy front lawn instead of staying in the driveway.

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SIDEBAR: How many people don't understand what a driveway is for and what a lawn is not for? So our contractors who were out back installing a fence had to waste their time pulling this guy out of the sand. We pay them by the hour which means we had to pay for them to pull someone out of the sand. Since we moved here, a lot of people have gone off the driveway and gotten stuck in the sand. Don't they have driveways where they live?

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The skirting boss told me he was not happy with the skirting team last week so he did not allow them to come back on Friday. He said that he would paint the skirting and put a moisture barrier under the home. He and the other guy did and then they took off the little door to get under the trailer that had a latch. He replaced it with a door that has four screws so you can't just open it and look under there. The odd thing is that he jammed a screwdriver under the skirting in the dirt and left it there. They drove away around 3:15pm, not really enough time to do much of anything well. I wonder if they put a moisture barrier down there.

Our contractors worked on the fence for the backyard so the dogs can go right into the yard from the back steps. This will make living in a mobile home much easier so we won't have to take the dogs out on a leash every time they want to go outside. When we lived in our regular house, we just opened the back door anytime they wanted to go out. There was no escaping because yards in San Antonio are fenced in. The fence should be done tomorrow. The contractors also laid more grass in the backyard.

We are almost out of propane again and David called for a delivery today. They said sure thing but never made it out. I hope we don't run out before they get it in gear and we have to live without electricity again. Just because the calendar says it is fall, it is still full on summer in south central Texas with temperatures close to 100 every single day and high humidity.

It has been such a blessing to have air conditioning and to be out of the shed and we are beyond grateful but the propane is expensive. Also, we hurt from lifting boxes and unpacking. It is hard work for a couple of empty nesters. We don't have any help.

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Wednesday, September 25, 2019

On today's adventure of living in a mobile home, we unpacked some more and then left to go to work around 9am. It took almost an hour to get there. I wrote checks to pay bills and got them all mailed out.

For lunch, David took me to one of those theaters that serves meals with recliner seats. I have been wanting to see the Downton Abbey movie and he surprised me and bought tickets to it. It was a great movie.

Then we stopped by a water well company and paid a lot of money so that we can have a well dug on our property in about three weeks. After that, we bought some groceries and a new mouse for my computer. We came home to see that our contractors were still here. They finished putting up the fence for our dogs and then they took down all of the inner boards they had put up when we moved into the shed. They put in real insulation and then put the boards back in so now that shed is fully insulated.

I got the groceries unloaded, we ate dinner, and then I unwrapped some more things. I feel as if the boxes are multiplying and will never be gone. Fortunately, the furniture company hasn't called yet so I still have time.

Remember the screwdriver I said was jammed under the home by the tiny door out back? I went to take a photo of it this afternoon and it is gone.

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Thursday, September 26, 2019 -
Living In A Mobile Home

I spent almost the entire day unpacking boxes and hanging up our clothes in our closet. Living in a mobile home, you would expect a small closet, but this is the biggest closet I have ever had in any home I have lived in. I did find and put away a few more dishes. We don't have any dressers yet but we should be getting them in the coming weeks. They were ordered two weeks ago. We gave our old ones away. We don't have nightstands either, so it is difficult to find a home for so many things in the master bedroom. I found a TV, remote, and antenna for the bedroom so I set it up and scanned the channels. Without cable, we can get approximately 30 channels out here from San Antonio.

The furniture store called today and said not all of the bedroom pieces are in but some of the other furniture is in. They come out here only one day a week--on Wednesdays. Living in a mobile home far from the city means you can't have things as soon as you want or need them. In this case, it will be delivered next Wednesday, which is okay. Right now, the living room is still filled with boxes, but, hopefully by then, it will be cleared out for the delivery.

Living in a mobile home means you get low grade things in your home, like manual thermostats instead of digital. Today, David had a technician replace the cheap manual thermostat with a digital one so we can actually tell what temperature it is in the home.

Later on this afternoon, some generator technicians came to change the oil and filter on the generator so the electricity was off for a while. That means that our very slow internet was also off. During that time, David and I drove to the top of the hill to get our compost bins for the garden. Now we can start making our own compost again, like we used to in San Antonio.

Once the electricity was back on, I started laundry while David gave the three dogs baths out in the yard. While he was still bathing the dogs, I went outside to pick up dog number two. When I was finished, I took the bag to our overflowing dumpster. It was then that I noticed our little Corgi, Ethel, had escaped the fenced area and was headed for the highway. I called to her but she kept on going. I went up the driveway to the highway as quickly as I could. She stopped outside the gate at the driveway and somehow, she let me grab her. She is normally a runner so maybe she was tired.

I carried Ethel all the way back to the house, having to stop three times to rest my arm because she is too heavy and I am out of shape. The only place where she could have gotten out is right by the gate but she would really have had to squeeze herself out.

There is a lot to do tomorrow as well as unpacking to make space in the living room for the new furniture. Our old living room furniture is still pretty new so we are using it in our den. We have never had one before but it is a cozy room except for a few boxes. Living in a mobile home is taking some getting used to after more than 20 years in a regular home.

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Friday, September 27, 2019

Happy Friday! When I woke up this morning, David was already up and our contractor was here, in the dark, painting the inside of the shed where we spent several weeks.

Today we got a lot accomplished. We got up early and got ready to go. First stop, we got Juanita's car inspected in Pleasanton. Then we had to go to the County Tax Assessor down the road in Atascosa County to get the sticker for the car window. We dropped off a property tax survey at yet another courthouse in Jourdanton. We were hoping we would have time to stop off at DPS and get new driver's licenses with our new address but the clock ran out.

Today was our company's monthly luncheon at Salt Grass Steak House in San Antonio so we had to book it on over to the big city. We had a small group this time of only ten. The food was good. Then David invited everyone to come see the farm.

While the crew was there, they did move all of the boxes off of the back deck over by the cabin so that was a big help. Once they left, I got to the business of unpacking again. My lower back got to the business of causing me great pain again. Maybe next week living in a mobile home will be a bit easier.

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Saturday, September 28, 2019

Good cloudy morning. I had a rough night, getting up six times during the night to use the bathroom. My living room has about half of the boxes it had on Monday afternoon so I need to get it in gear and get them cleared out. Wednesday is looming and there will be no room for my furniture.

We have been living in a mobile home now for two weeks and there is still so much to unpack. I can now see the carpet in the living room and I have unloaded a lot of boxes, but they need to be finished by the time Wednesday rolls around as that is when some of the new furniture is arriving, the living room furniture to be exact.

Today, we just focused on clearing the boxes. David did a lot outside including carrying boxes of stuff outside for storing and he took out a lot of empty boxes as well.

I finally got the media room television hooked up to the antenna so we have 48 channels without cable! That is more channels than we had in San Antonio. I could not get that many channels in the other rooms that I tried to set up the TV. I tried to hook up the Fire TV but the internet signal on our property is not strong enough. That is ridiculous.

I finally found our sheets today as well as the rest of our missing towels and washcloths. I still cannot find some of the remotes but I have about 25 more boxes to go through. I haven't found my frying pans or my cookie sheets or deep dish pie plate either. Fortunately, I found my rice cooker today so that is good.

I went into the little room we are using as a library and put the shelves in the book cases and dusted them. I need to get the books on the shelves before Wednesday because I have a loveseat coming for that room.

My lower back is just killing me so I am going to shower and go to sleep early. David is already asleep on the couch. This move and living in a mobile home that has to be unpacked has been rough on us... We never knew we had so much stuff!

Good night.

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Sunday, september 29, 2019

We wrapped up this last day of the week of living in a mobile home by rising early and letting the dogs out to make potty in our fenced in yard. Apparently, the gates are just not tight enough to the posts and not low enough to the ground so Ethel did not come back in. We went out looking for her, and sure enough, she was across the street inside their fence. She could not figure out how to get out. David went over and finally showed her where to come out. We blocked under the gate and thought everything was fine...

We went to church and then stopped at Walmart for a few things. We came home and let the dogs out and all was well. All three came back in. All afternoon, we unpacked and put away and organized things. Slowly, living in a mobile home after being in a regular house for so long will be okay.

Then this evening before I fed the dogs their dinner, I let them out for just a few minutes. The neighbors across the street were out in their front yard when Ethel decided to pay another call to them. David's cell phone rang and we were told that Ethel was over there. We rushed outside to see Ethel. David jumped in the SUV to go get her.

The road we live on now has high traffic due to a sand mine. Trucks go zooming by both ways 24/7. Ethel stepped out before David could get there and twice I thought she was a goner. David finally got her and closed our front gate. The problem is that the fence is still not all the way completed on one side and that the gates that were installed are all too high off of the ground and do not close next to the posts so Ethel can squeeze through.

Now Ethel is sleeping peacefully on the back of the couch. I am going to work on David's Garden Seeds for the rest of the night as my body hurts from lifting and bending and carrying. It has been a nonstop week of doing this, trying to get everything taken care of before the new furniture gets here. I am in some serious pain. If it were not for having to unpack and take care of boxes, I might have enjoyed my first two weeks of living in a mobile home.

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Return from Living In A Mobile Home to Our Small Farm

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