Spring cleaning is necessary when living the RV lifestyle, especially if you’ve been parked in one spot for months. Recently we rolled everything up to drive our motorhome down the road to fill the gas tank. This rolling up and stowing away of everything is a necessary before going down the road, no matter what size or type of RV you have. Now our 150-gallon gas tank is filled with diesel, so we are set for the summer here in NC.
Our 43-foot motorhome has a lot more space than a smaller RV, but there are still limits. A drawer or closet can only hold so much. I’ve learned the longer we are parked the more sprawl happens and the more things accumulate. Before we roll things up, sorting must happen. Donation bags get filled and dropped off. I reorganize everything to make it fit. Sometimes it’s like doing a puzzle.
One of thing I love in our home is the cedar lined closet my husband made for me. The bar was too low for my dresses, so l had looped them over hangers so they wouldn’t drag on the floor. I asked him to put a new bar as high as possible, lose the top shelf and remove the carpet. Access panels are in the floor above the diesel engine and the fuse box is in one corner, so he had to cut the wood to fit. In May 2021 we spent several weeks at our son’s farm in NC while my husband worked on this project, cutting his own wood from 2 x 6 solid pieces of cedar (5 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches) down to 2, 2 x 3's (2 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches) and then cut that into 3 pieces, 2 1/2 x 3/8 inches. Our closet is made from this solid cedar, not from cedar plywood. When I met Mike in high school he’d made furniture in wood-working class and won ribbons at the fair. I love this closet because of the quality and time my husband put into it. And the love.
Here’s a before picture of the floor panels, one of his processes, and after pictures of the fuse box and the new bar. Now my dresses fit, and I love the scent of cedar. It’s a roomy closet for an RV.
Today it’s crammed full because everything is still stowed. It holds dresses, pants, shirts, a suit, coats, nightgowns, shoes, hats, multiple suitcases that nest, my portable Singer sewing machine, my guitar from high school, a middle eastern drum I bought in Turkey, and plastic shoe boxes full of scarves, gloves, and other accessories.
In the living room my writing corner is already overflowing with books and papers. I plan to try to keep it more organized this spring and summer and to bring shorten the to be read piles.
Spring also makes me think of the butterflies I’ve always loved. I write a Butterflies Fly Free series about 1920s flappers.
On one of our first trips to Florida with the motorhome, we visited Butterfly World in Coconut Creek, Florida which was the first butterfly house in the United States, and the largest in the world. It was like being in a magic garden with butterflies everywhere, exotic flowers, and colorful birds.
Here is a picture of Mike and I next to a large tropical flower so you can see the size of it. And a few of my favorite pictures of butterflies from that visit.
In my 1920s Butterflies Fly Free series each book is about a different flapper and her desire to be free. The 1920s fascinates me because there were so many changes for women. Like a butterfly emerging, they came out of their corsets and long gowns, their long heavy hair, and emerged as flappers wearing bobbed hair, short skirts and dancing the Charleston. They could drive cars, smoke cigarettes, drink bathtub gin or smuggled rum at speakeasys, and best of all, vote!
In Book One, TRAPPING THE BUTTERFLY, the heroine is seventeen turning eighteen. She’s staying in the Arlington hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas where Al Capone would rent the entire fourth floor. Bethany meets a flapper named Suki who helps her with her metamorphosis into being a flapper.
Book Two, DANCING BUTTERFLY, is Suki’s story. She’s a dancer at the Green Mill in Chicago owned by one of Al’s associates. Frank, one of Al’s men, helps her escape with a broken foot after the club is shot up during an attempt on Al’s life. She becomes his moll and when he sends her on a train to Miami, she meets Philip who introduces her to his sister Phyllis in Miami.
Book Three, EXOTIC BUTTERFLY is the story of Phyllis who travels from Spain, to live with her brother. The pattern I use for these stories is to introduce the heroine in the next book in the previous book. The women know each other and each book is from a different woman’s point of view. Each book is as individual as each flapper. Bethany has never been kissed, but Suki has had many boyfriends and enjoys sex. I compare them to Sandy and Rizzo from the movie Grease. What the women all have in common is a desire for freedom.
The books can be read in order, or out of order, or as standalones. There’s a freedom to that which my flappers would approve of.
“Please don’t put your books in a corset, doll,” Suki said. “Why do you think I cut Bethany’s corset in half? They’re dreadfully confining.”
I completely agree. No corsets for these ladies. I hope you enjoy reading their stories. Fly free with my flappers this spring and enjoy a trip into the 1920s with me.
For more pictures from our trip to Butterfly World: https://beautifuldaytraveler.wordpress.com/2021/03/24/butterfly-world-in-florida/
To visit Butterfly World: https://www.butterflyworld.com/
If you have questions about our fulltime motorhome lifestyle, drop me an email and they may appear in a future Tales from the Trailer article.
I’m wishing you happy reading and a beautiful day, until next time, when I return with more Tales from the Trailer.
Debra Parmley is a multi-genre author who after living for 23 years just outside Memphis, TN, sold everything to live full-time in a 43-foot motorhome with her Air Force veteran husband. She writes as they travel the U.S.
She has written military romantic suspense, contemporary romance, historical romance, dystopian romance, holiday romance, fairy tale romance, urban fantasy romance, poetry and nonfiction.
Debra travels widely, reads widely and writes widely. You will find danger, action and adventure, and romance in her stories. In her Tales from the Trailer articles, she shares the RV lifestyle and travel adventures in the U.S.
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