Tilly Tour: The Bathroom

If you follow me on Instagram, or if you're my friend on Facebook, you know that we've had some mechanical issues with Tilly and are staying in Austin, TX, until further notice. While we're here, we are doing a bit of deep cleaning to get Tilly in tip top shape.
It occurred to me recently that aside from the people who have seen Tilly in person, nobody knows what she looks like on the inside. I figured now would be a perfect time to share her insides with the world so everyone can see how we live. Since the bathroom is the smallest room (seriously, so so small), I decided to start there.
Before I go into what the bathroom looks like now, here are a couple of pictures of what it looked like before the renovation:

We didn't change all that much during the reno, but what we did made a big difference. We chose a pretty green-blue to paint over the fuggo wallpaper, painted the cabinets white, ripped out the hideous window treatment and replaced it with some simple white curtains, installed a fan in the roof vent, and put in a ruffled shower curtain to add some texture and interest to the room.



Counter with my cosmetics, which get packed away when we're driving. Also a good view of the toothbrush holder I "installed" (aka stuck to the wall using sticky tape. It's crooked).



Shower curtain.





Cabinets, and the fan we (Josh) put in.

We keep most of our everyday toiletries in these two cabinets above the window for easy access.The right hand cabinet has mostly my stuff: shampoo, conditioner, face wash, moisturizer, dry shampoo, etc., plus some of Josh's vitamins. These items are secured inside the cabinet with a tension rod so they don't move while we're driving, and fly out at us when we try to open the door.

The left hand cabinet is mostly Josh's stuff- shaving cream (or "beard lube" as this particular brand calls it), hair gel, beard trimmer, etc., plus toothpaste and first aid stuff. We keep these items in a set of 3 stackable acrylic bins we got at the Container Store for $10 each.

The whole left wall is a giant mirror, which makes it ideal for bathroom mirror selfies.

Nothing too notable about the shower, so I chose not to include it. All you need to know is that it's very, very tiny. Josh and I are both fairly large people- I'm 5'7" and he's 6'3"- so a larger shower is definitely on the wish list for our next home, mobile or otherwise.

Myakka River National Park

Tonight, we're camping out in Myakka River National Park. This campground is beautiful. There are trees everywhere, and the sites are very secluded. After we cooked and ate dinner, I laid on the bench of our picnic table and watched a group of giant dragonflies dart around the sky.

We were also treated to a beautiful sunset. Every sunset on the west coast of Florida has been spectacular so far.

At the end of last week, Josh inspected Tilly's tires, and found that the two front ones needed to be replaced. I pretended to look at them as well, and pretended to agree with him, even though I know nothing about tires. For all I know, Tilly rolls around on 6 jelly doughnuts. Of course Tilly tires are special order, so we called around and found a reasonable mechanic near Ft. Meyers who could both order them in and do the labor. We spent the past two nights at a sketchy RV park in Ft. Meyers waiting for them to arrive, relaxing, and preparing our home for some new additions to the family (more on that in a later post).

I don't write about Tilly's repairs too often because they're pretty boring, but just in case anyone was under the impression that driving a 25-year-old, pre-owned RV across the country is a piece of cake (or a piece of jelly doughnut) and we're on this glamorous camping adventure... no way. In fact, at the beginning of our trip, a new part would break every day. This started the day we left Falls Church with the brake rotors suddenly becoming worn down, and continued with the engine grounds burning out (all of them, one by one), the starter breaking, the accelerator cable snapping, the master cylinder clogging (which required a new master cylinder be installed and the brakes be bled), the generator refusing to power the air conditioner, and the toilet leaking into the bathroom. We also lost our bathroom skylight cover somewhere between Miami Beach and Key Largo, and haven't been able to find a replacement yet, so we have a garbage bag attached to the gaping hole in the ceiling to catch the rain. It has rained every day since we lost it. Josh would wake up every morning and say to me "welp, I wonder what's going to break today" and something inevitably would. And we would laugh about it, or sometimes cry, and then go to AutoZone and pick up the parts we needed to fix the Ol' Girl up and get her moving until the next breakdown.

Not that I'm complaining. I'm on the trip of a lifetime, and I'm grateful to be doing it, setbacks and all.

RV Storage: Folded Clothes

One thing we noticed when we first went to look at Tilly was that she has a lot of closet space. There's a narrow closet on either side of the bed, and a very large closet in the hallway that separates the living room from the bedroom. This was one of the many things that set Tilly apart from other RVs we looked at during our search. My dresses, Josh's button-downs, and all of our jackets quickly found homes in Tilly's ample closet space once we started moving them in. Folded clothes, though, were a different story.
What we gained in closet space we lost in drawer space. There were no nooks or crannies in which to keep our socks, pajamas, t-shirts, or underwear. Since the closet space was so plentiful and we had 5 lifetimes' worth of hangers (for some reason?), I briefly considered hanging our foldables in the extra closet space... like a barbarian. But that wasn't going to work, either.
Josh and I took a trip to the Container Store hoping to find a reasonable solution to our problem. After exploring our options, we decided on a custom drawer set by ELFA.

Before we stuffed all our clothes in. Is this picture really calming to anyone else, or is that just me?

We had to sacrifice about half of our large closet to make this work, but we were willing to do that. The frame and the drawers are sold separately, so you can decide what depth of drawer suits your needs best. We chose varying drawer depths, based on what type of clothing we would be keeping in each drawer. For example, Josh has a lot of bulky jeans, so we chose a deep pants drawer for him. Most of my pants are pajamas or yoga pants that easily roll up, so we chose a shallow pants drawer for me.

Colorful pants fo' lyfe.

I also decided to keep some non-clothing cosmetic items in on of my drawers, since I have so much beauty stuff and I didn't want to completely take over the bathroom.

We're both very happy with our setup and would recommend it to anyone else who is having similar storage issues. It's the only thing we found that was the perfect size and shape for our needs. The set was $158 ($58 for the frame and $100 for the drawers), but we used a 10% off coupon and got it for about $140.

RV Storage: Jewelry Edition

When I lived in a stationary home, I kept all of my jewelry inside of this beautiful wooden jewelry box:

I love this thing to pieces.  It's once of my favorite possessions; however, it did not work so well in our new mobile abode. All of the necklaces and bracelets that I had hanging on this rotation rack...

... ended up in a jumbled mess.

 And all of my jewelry that was too short or chunky to hang was stuffed into these drawers:

 My solution to this problem was less aesthetically pleasing, but way more functional:

Yes!  One of those double-sided jewelry organizers your mom most likely bought you from the Container Store when you were in high school.  I found this perfectly good specimen in my childhood closet, filled with tarnished necklaces from Claire's and several of those wallet chains I used to wear when I was 14 and thought I was punk.  And a belly chain. In my defense, I was 14 in 2004 and that shit was popular back then.

The jewelry holder fits perfectly into my tiny RV mini-closet.  It takes up barely any space and, since it's double-sided, holds the entirety of my jewelry collection.  

The cost of this project for me was free, since I already had the organizer, but these are pretty cheap. You can find them here and here for $10, or, if you need more pockets, here for $25.