By Myscha Theriault / Tribune News Service
NOW that my husband and I have liquidated the majority of our belongings and jumped headfirst into a life of full-time travel, we are making efforts to develop a routine more suited to long-term adventure. How long we want to be in a particular location, what the shopping situation is once we get there and traveling with fewer day-to-day comfort items all present problem-solving hurdles which need to be navigated. Here are a handful of ways we are working out the kinks as we go.
- Bookings: We adore our current place for its location and charm, but more than a month with a doll-sized fridge and a shower the size of a tissue box would probably put us over the edge.
Don’t get me wrong. We would happily book this apartment again, and we love the town where we’ve been spending time. However, we need a bit more space and a few more amenities for a longer-term writers’ retreat. The wrinkle? There’s really no way to know if a new place that looks good online will really suit our needs for longer than three or four weeks until we show up and give it a try.
Any number of factors could throw off our productivity plans.
The Internet access could be unpredictable, or the next-door neighbors might be experiencing a tad more family drama than we can work with when tackling more massive writing projects. It takes time to get a handle on such things. Typically, by the time we do that, the place where we’re staying ends up being booked for the following month.
The solution? Currently, our plan is to try out a place here in southern Spain we feel might work for a week or so before we head to Sweden for our summer housesitting gig. If the house we have in mind for a two- to three-month product-development project is a good fit, we’ll book it in advance for next fall. If it isn’t, we still have time to look for other options in the same general area.
- Grooming: Enthusiastic downsizing of my beauty tools collection prior to departure included my favorite small magnifying mirror with suction cups
It could work on any tiled wall or well-lit bathroom mirror around the world. The downside? Those things can only be made so small, and critical space was needed for charging cords and backup batteries. This has caused a kink in my grooming routine when it comes to anything requiring the use of tweezers. I thought I was onto a solution when I noticed I could use my phone’s display screen for putting on makeup in the morning.
My dreams were dashed, however, when I realized the zoom feature required for close tweezing was only available when the camera was oriented to shoot through the lens on the back.
Getting creative with my reading glasses and the small mirror inside my eye shadow palette is all well and good when it comes to tweezing those later-in-life chin hairs, but the system falls short when trying to deal with the upper eyelid area while still wearing the reading glasses required to see what I’m doing for such close work.
The result? My eyebrows are a total train wreck and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, I am keeping my eyes open for a threading salon of opportunity.
- Cheapies: Sure, it’s great to save money with a kitchen and limit your restaurant trips to twice a week or so, or focus more on happy hour snacks and breakfast outings. However, are you still paying more than you need to because you’re searching for products and brands from home?
Are there certain produce items that cost more where you are, even though they were the cheapest choice in the country you just left? Further, once you determine what the most economical staples are, how do you turn them into meals efficiently?
For instance, I wanted to learn how to make Spain’s famous potato omelets. A classic meal with extremely inexpensive ingredients, this particular dish is something that can be prepared in nearly any country we decide to visit.
However, when we finally slowed down enough for me to practice, the gas stove at our rental had easy-to-use burners but an oven with no way to precisely adjust temperature settings. It was either hot or warm, and only the bottom half worked.
My plans for producing the perfect vegetarian dinner party omelet will have to wait. Instead, I’ve focused on creating more stove top and salad-style meals using garbanzo beans and lentils.
Based on their availability in even the smallest rural grocery store, they seem to be all the rage here. The fact they both come precooked in glass jars means faster food prep and more time for sangria.