It seems that the weather in Batemans Bay knows how to read better than in any place I have lived in or visited before! Right on cue everything has burst into life and the days have warmed up beautifully, the bulbs have popped their heads up, found the weather delightful, shook off the winter blankets they had been hiding under and dressed themselves up in their resplendent colours and shapes! Yes spring has sprung!

The bats have finally departed, taking with them the aroma-de-bat-pee that had descended, making our evening strolls unpleasant and abandoned! All of a sudden the evening air is filled with the heady scents of the blossoming trees and bushes around us and once more we can indulge the desire to go walking outside in the evenings!

It seems like it is time for me to start the task of swapping clothes around in the lockers, find the shorts and tee shirts and pack up the winter things.
That of course is one of the fun things about living on board the yacht - the fact that there isn't always quite the space you might have in transitional times in a house. With only a couple of drawers each we really have to keep out only those things we really wear all the time, the rest are still here, but have to be packed up and stowed away in harder to access places - like beneath Erina's bed. Getting to them is tricky - first of all we have to be able to get into the room (hahah, not always easy with a teenage girl!), then we have to be able to get through the assortment of things that accumulate on the beds to be able to get the mattresses off, and that's another little bit of work, and then remember which of the four under-bed lockers the item we are looking for is in. Having found the right one, sometimes the entire area has to be unpacked to find the elusive item. Its always pretty exciting when you find what you are looking for, as you might imagine!

To make this task a little easier, I have the lockers all numbered. When filling them I use plastic bags and write on them the contents of each one, and then, because I can sometimes be highly efficient and organised, I record in a little book which locker contains which bags.

Like with many things, it's all good when it works, but unfortunately sometimes things get packed away in a hurry and I forget to write it all down. Sometimes a late addition goes unrecorded. At the time I say something like, I'll go back and write it all down later, but later never comes! That's what happened in the early part of this winter, and as a result things are all a little higgledy-piggledy and I have the opportunity to do a bit of 'spring cleaning' - get everything out, sort through, pack away (nicely labelled and recorded of course!) making access easier next time there is a seasonal change!

Its funny really managing with such limited space. I think we are doing pretty well overall. Peter has a little principle, which he tries hard to enforce - if something new comes on board, something has to go off to accommodate it. We do ok for the most part - regularly sorting through and taking unworn clothes to the op-shop if we've got something new - and if we can't, well we try and pop it on when he's not looking!

Seriously though, this style of living means we simply can't accumulate stuff. I get tempted now and then - I was very tempted by a cute red polkadot tea pot on Sunday when we visited the little town of Tilba Tilba - but I already have (don't tell Peter!) three teapots on board which is probably more than is absolutely necessary and I actually couldn't think of a good enough reason to replace one or add to what I already had! But it was so cute! Ah - well with Christmas coming perhaps I will go back and buy it for someone else!
I did buy a little espresso machine recently - a little pod-style machine that was on a super sale. My biggest criteria for the purchase? Not the quality, or brand - no just its size! It was small enough to fit on the little bit of available bench space I had! I am happy with it though, it has been a good little addition and has earned its place on board. If it dies too soon I think we can replace it, knowing that it fits so well! And the coffee is great!

Living on board a yacht means that life never gets too cluttered. You can never keep clothes that might fit one day, or that you like just a little. You make different choices. For me this is a good thing. Our life is more simple. We recycle a lot at the op-shop (yes, I have been browsing and thought I quite liked something only to realise it was me that had donated it and no, it wouldn't come back!) and we pass things on to others around us. Our life is not only less cluttered, but in a way more present. We have what we are using now, not what me might use one day or did use before, we only have space for what it relevant in the present and there is something I quite like about that.