Trailer: Trash or Treasure?

Recently my little family has succumbed to a cliché: we’ve rented a trailer. No, not a movie trailer, not a tractor trailer, not a horse trailer. Just a plain old house trailer. Well, I wouldn’t exactly say plain: If your home had vintage 1970’s style mustard yellow plastic doorknobs on brown panel doors, would YOU consider it plain? I didn’t think so.

We made the move purely for economic reasons. As previously noted in some other ramble of mine, our apartment in town had an insulation problem...namely that there was none. As one can imagine, in below zero weather it was no picnic. If you all have been keeping up with my ramblings, you should recall that due to the rent increase in this blustery shit hole we call our hometown, finding an affordable dwelling place was ALSO no picnic. Our trailer rent is a little higher than what we were paying, but with the amount of $ we’ll save in heating it, it worked out to our benefit. So here we sit. Goodbye village, hello country: goodbye street, hello road.

SO what is trailer life like, you ask? It’s not bad, actually. There’s the privacy factor, which is great. And we’re on this cute little plot of land that overlooks a hay field. We have a row of trees (of the fir category, perhaps?) and a stone fireplace to cook on. Damn. I almost forgot to mention one of THE most important elements of our new life. We have burning barrels. And we use them. I am totally anti-burn, mind you, but at the moment we have no other feasible choice. Our garbage man does not have service out here in the sticks, even though we’re less than a mile away from his business headquarters. Hmm. Well, that’s another blog.

Now that we’ve been here for a bit, I’m noticing all the glitches. Like, there is NO storage space. And we have a garage, but the door falls off the track just enough to make it too annoying to deal with. The wood stove in the garage, which was supposed to be a little country perk, seems to be clogged with...who knows....according to dad, perhaps some sort of animal nest? Poor Cynthia is cursed yet again with a closet sized bedroom, and last but certainly not least, BROWN PANELING. I have serious issues with that durable, old school, landlord favorite. It seems every place I end up in has at least one room infested with those tiresome “planks.” My solution? If you can’t beat it, paint over it!

I’m sure there are a million more things I could bitch about, but really, the benefits this time outweigh the complaints. Nothing is more appreciated than the warmth I now enjoy as opposed to the reoccurring frostbite in my pinky toe that I previously had to look forward to.

Yes, it IS a little strange to have a hitch on one end of our “house.” I suppose if we couldn’t come up with the rent one month and we wanted to be devious, we could literally drive away with everything INCLUDING the kitchen sink (which, by the way, is also mustard yellow).

But really, it’s not so bad. As to the question of whether it is trash or treasure, I haven’t exactly decided yet. Thus far all I know is that we burn our trash and due to the lack of storage, I may just have to bury my treasures!

To be continued.......