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| Lydia and Lincoln love the caravaning lifestyle. |
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| Heidi with Lydia and Lincoln |
My husband and I have always been the
restless type, looking for new adventures or projects to keep our selves
sane.
We have played with several ideas over the
years. Moving overseas, travelling round
Australia, moving within NZ, yet we’ve always managed to come up with a variety
of excuses to just stay put!
Then in February we brought a caravan.
We left on our maiden voyage down south for two weeks in February. I was convinced that the kids would never
sleep, wake each other at night, be constantly bored, and would be in my pocket
24/7, not to mention that it didn’t have a dishwasher!! As it turned out, the whole trip was a huge
success!
We arrived home, got back into ‘routine’…
and that’s when the idea of calling the caravan home took shape. We agreed to rent our house out for a year
and see what happened.
We found a property manger that got our house rented within the week, all of a sudden we had four weeks to pack up our life and more importantly compact it into a 22ft caravan! Luckily we got tenants that wanted a furnished place, and were flexible as to what we left behind. Needless to say we only packed what was either necessary or irreplaceable.
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| Shane adjusting to his new pace of work. |
Next we had business to
take care of..... literally. Shane is a
tradesman so we decided to take his van/business with us, so he could pick up a
day or two along the way. We also bit
the bullet (and it was an expensive bullet) of getting a property manager to
look after our rental properties. Our neighbour, and good friend took on the
daunting task of receiving, and ‘doing’ our mail, while we’re away. So with the house, stuff, and work taken care
of, all there was left to do was leave.
But there were a few sleepless nights to contend with first.
Our main concern was the kids. Our daughter Lydia is four, at kindy and a
very social creature. We have Lincoln
who’s two, not yet started kindy, but loves interacting with others. Both kids enjoy their friends, weekly
catch-ups with cousins, and a neighbourhood full of kids. So I kept worrying that we were robbing them
of important childhood friendships, compromising their social skills, and that
they would get behind in their learning.
Shane reassured me that it’s a great time to do it, and that the kids
will be fine. In the end we worked on
the theory that we’ll just ‘make it work’.
We
didn’t quite know where we were going to start, or in which direction we would
travel. But with the kids grandparents
in Wellington we always knew a few trips home would eventuate sometime, and
figuring that NZ is a pretty small place, anywhere we missed, or wanted to
revisit would be quite do-able.
The ‘winterless’ north is the path we’ve
ended up taking, it’s taken two months to get as far as Piha, and yes we have
missed places that we will revisit!
Caravan living has highlighted the space that we don’t need, the stuff
that we don’t miss, and what we were missing, being stuck in day-to-day
routines.
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| Heidi flat-out looking after the kids in the caravan park. |
Getting dinner, doing dishes, laundry, and
recycling all seemed mundane tasks at home, these have now been transformed
into little bits of family time. Lydia
begs to help with dinner and the dishes, and both kids enjoying the stroll over
to the laundry room, or recycling centre.
Even sweeping and general cleaning have become an enjoyable task, with
the kids wanting to help, and all day to do it in!
We have a ten-year-old Border collie, Holly, who has been greatly benefiting from ‘the free life’. Our daily walks (these usually involve hunting down a coffee shop) have become something we all really look forward to, and a great way to meet new people and explore our surrounds.
Local playgroups and campgrounds have been great for the kids, they have
definitely not lacked any social stimulation.
Their confidence and independence seem to have increased already,
perhaps because we’ve allowed it to, or perhaps because they’ve had to? Either
way, any doubts we had about the children have been put at ease, they are
sleeping and behaving better than ever!
And now refer to the caravan as ‘home’.
Shane and I have had the time to enjoy each other’s company, and as we
don’t have TV…our communication is at an all time high!
We’ve even bantered around the idea of adding another six months to our
travels, and taking on Australia!
We’ve realised that for us, time seems to be the great stressor, with no
deadlines, or set times to do things, we are stress free, and nothing seems to
be a worry J
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