Before I get to anything else, I wanted to thank everyone who has been asking me about this Houseboat thing and tell me that they are following my journey. It's a bit humbling to know that people are reading this! And in being told that I realize that while I started out strong I have been slacking on writing anything and led me to trying to understand why. I think I've hit on something.
Back when I started looking at houseboats I asked myself why I was doing it. I'm not the person that wants to leave all material things behind and simplify my life, I did that when I moved up to Seattle. I downsized a whole moving van worth of stuff! I have simplified as much as I'm ever going to. I never had big dreams of 'living on a boat', I don't know how to sail, boats were never my thing. So why am I doing this?
Well I wanted to own again, and the housing market here in Seattle is crazy. I miss the ocean, and while I don't want to live on salt water (it's killer on electronics and stuff) living on fresh water is a nice compromise. I was ready to move out of Bellevue and live in a place with 'soul', I have friends on the West Side that I don't see often and I'd like to see more, without huge efforts on my own part. But while all of those reasons are true I wasn't sure that was enough.
What I found it really came down to is the concept of using space efficiently. The challenge of living in such a small space but doing it without giving up the things that make me happy. Part of that is paring down the noise and seeing exactly *what* makes me happy, so that is simplification, but that isn't all of it. Part of it is having a smaller carbon footprint, not having a lawn (most useless waste of water I can imagine), and owning my own place again, but it's even more than that. We waste so much, *I* waste so much in my life. I buy all these groceries that go bad, I end up buying things I don't need or only use once, or three version of the same thing because I'm not sure where the old one is and I just buy a new one. While I am certainly a consumer, I don't need to be consuming this much, and living on a houseboat is a way to consume less. And this is how I've chosen to do it.
So then why am I frustrated? I bought a fantastic houseboat, it's beautiful, but it's not very space efficient. There is dead space under my bed that would have been much better utilized by placing the water heater there instead of in the *only closet*. I have no shelves, there aren't any of the cool space saving things that I had pictured in my mind, and somehow I didn't make that connection before I bought this place. It's missing the things I was looking for.
Where does this leave me? With a better understanding of my current frustrations and a goal, to incorporate all of the space saving things into this boat. I've been reading about boats and RV's online, and amusingly enough the RV's have better 'tips'. Some of this will need a third party to do things like put my mattress on lifts so I an use the dead space under the bed, and install shelving, but that is ok, I have time.
Now I have a goal, find the clever ways to utilize space and make this crazy 353 sq foot place my true home.
