This last few weeks we have been so busy clearing out & finishing work on our house & I have to say even though we would consider ourselves fairly minimalist I’m a little disgusted with ourselves for collecting so much shite. We’ve given away about a tonne of toys & clothes to charity shops & I’m selling lots of things worth anything through Ebay & Donedeal. Anything that hasn’t been used in the last 12 months is gone. I would usually find this difficult as I’m quite sentimental & have a tendency to keep every little thing but now that we have a goal I’m really happy to let go. It’s just stuff!
I literally don’t know how we ended up with so much as Liam & I absolutely hate & avoid at all costs shopping for anything except food. Yet we have all these clothes, shoes, cosmetics, gadgets & electronics collected over the years yet every year we still use the same old things so we ruthlessly got rid of all the “just in case” stuff. Now Liam & I have all our clothes in one small wardrobe in the camper & the kids each have a small press for theirs. We all live out of one small bathroom bag for essentials only. We wont be buying bottles of shampoo, conditioner, kids shampoo, body wash, face scrub etc anymore & to reduce our waste we are using just one bar of soap for washing everything.
In a camper van, there is a place for everything so we’re choosing carefully all the things we want to bring with us. At home we had a couple of oh jesus presses, you know the press where you stuff letters & junk in and every time you open it you think oh jesus! Well we wont have space for one of those in the camper so we’re learning to become habitual put-awayers. Not only that, everything has to be put in a certain way like a jigsaw so that it doesn’t rattle or roll all over the place when we’re driving.
We just got back from our Athlone trip last weekend so that was a good test for us all & the camper. It was our first big trip in it. The drive was grand, very comfortable, the kids were great and Buckie didn’t mind the long journey at all. We had a great time in Athlone, it’s a really nice town right in the middle of Ireland where went to see the “How to Square a Circle” show at the Dean Crowe theatre which was just breathtaking then headed to Sean’s pub (oldest pub in Ireland) for drinks with my sister Siobhan and her family and the kids and their cousins all played out in the sun together.
We camped over at lough Ree which was lovely and headed for Birr in Offaly the following day. Liam is well known for his “dad jokes” and was cracking the old Birr is Offaly cold ones all morning! Birr indeed was cold that day and misty so it was a quick visit to Birr castle, gardens and science centre. It was one of the most interesting places we have ever visited to be honest. Not only does it have the biggest treehouse in Ireland, it also has a huge telescope in the gardens which was built in the 1840’s and was the biggest telescope in the world for over 70 years. With it, spiral galaxies were discovered and scientists came from all over the world to use it. I can imagine all these great scientists waiting weeks even months for clear skies I mean it’s no wonder the Romans named Ireland – Hibernia (Land of Winter). You only know it’s summer here when the rain gets warmer! All jokes aside, it is a lovely country really, we’re just a bit fed up with the weather at the moment and can’t wait to hit the road this August.
