It’s not all fun and games…

Living the life is a phrase we have often heard regarding our choice to live life on the open road. However it isn’t all fun and games as this is a lifestyle not a perpetual vacation. With it comes the normal day-to-day activities everyone has to deal with such as laundry, house cleaning, general maintenance and home repairs.Each spring and summer we create a list of things to address once we arrive at our first extended stay for the fall or winter.

Below is our list of items that we have addressed or checked off during our fall stay here in San Diego:

• we have a floor “bubble” which after discussing the issue with Tiffin on the phone is likely a bolt that is working its way up through the floor. I learned that I will need to extract the bolt and put some extra strength Locktite on the bolt before reinserting it.
• I cleaned out the air conditioners coils which required a day of disassembly while using a brush to clean off the fins and coils inside the A/C shroud. I used a brush similar to this brush. The important part is to make sure the bristles are not angled away from the hand when cleaning the delicate aluminum fins as these straight bristles will not only clean them but will also help straighten them if they have been bent.
• I performed some major bike maintenance on my bike by repacking grease in my rear wheel axle as well as greasing the bearings in my fork
• we have a couple of “squeaky” windows which I addressed but haven’t completely solved
• I still need to order some replacement windshield wipers and a small parking light lens cover (that broke during our travels) from Tiffin
• we replaced our broken anti-gravity chairs by ordering a new two pack from Amazon
• we went to a free clinic for our flu shots
• we paid the registration for our RV and car
• we ordered a new quiet fan for our bedroom as our other one had become rather noisy and unrepairable.
• we scheduled our upcoming yearly physicals at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona.

In addition there were a few major items requiring attention. One was my annual hand waxing of Abbey, our RV, with Meguiar’s Paste Wax. This usually takes about ten days to complete as I only do a small amount each day so as to not make me so sore from the continual “wax-on wax-off” motion required to really make her shine. The payoff is that she sure is pretty now…

Another major item was to remove and replace our kitchen faucet and the sink drains. I will pen a blog soon on how it was done as I feel it may be helpful to detail it for others who might be planning the same task. But I will say we are very pleased with our new Dura Faucet and I was especially pleased at how easy it was to install.

The last major item is still a work in progress as I am nearing age 59 1/2 thus making me eligible to begin withdrawing money from our Roths and Traditional IRA’s.  I am doing a lot of reading as to how to optimize our exit strategy to minimize our tax bite from these withdrawals.

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