Winter prep

My lovely wife and I have been taking about our winter plans. Last year, we had house sitters lined up to watch the place. We knew for sure we would be on the road in early January. Winter prep only went as long as the end of December. A small pile of wood, a few gallons of heating oil, and we were good to go. The house sitters took care of the house the rest of the winter, and did a fine job of it too.

This year, things are different. There are enough family and other things going on right now that we can’t really set a firm departure date. With that in mind, we’ve decided to prep as if we were spending the whole winter at home. That way, if we do stick around, we won’t freeze in the dark. We decided to stop looking for a larger sailboat. Our money will go into house upgrades instead.

It’s actually a relief to have come to that decision. There’s focus to my actions now. The next few weeks will be busy ones. Today I replaced all the firebrick in the kitchen woodstove. In a more perfect world, I’d have bought a new stove, but I’m looking to pay down debt, not make any more.

My wood hauling trailer is almost ready for the road. Hope to register it on Tuesday. One of my friends has a load of nice dry wood for me. It’s too long for his stove so he’d rather not spend all this time cutting off the ends. Fits mine fine.

One good thing about my lovely wife and I. Should we decide to head south, we can shut down the house, pack our stuff, and head on down the road in less than a day. A few days later we could be sailing off the coast of Florida. We’ve made similar last minute travel decisions in the past. Once we decided to go camping. Twenty minutes later we were packed and headed down the road. That was in summer. Properly shutting down a house in the winter takes a bit of planning.

Unless everything falls apart, we’ll most likely scoot south for a good part of the winter. If we do, our winter preps will have us that much better off for the winter after.

-Sixbears