1 January 2016 – Becoming Liveaboards

Amsterdam (NLD)

“How on earth are we going to fit all this stuff onboard?” Ivar asks Floris when he sees the pile of things to move to the boat increasing. He would repeat this question many times on our packing day. However, he must admit that Floris is making sensible choices on what he moves to the boat, what he gives away and what goes into storage. And actually, by the time we’re loading everything in our friend Margreet’s car, it appears that Ivar has almost as many boxes and bags to move to that boat as Floris.

Moving at Christmas

We decided that the Christmas holidays would be a good time to move onboard. Both of us have some time off work, and the sooner we can rent out the apartment, the more budget we’ll have for our travels. At the same time it allows us to spread the workload surrounding all preparations, get used to our floating tiny house and keep an eye on the apartment until we leave Amsterdam in June.

Decluttering 2.0

Ivar lived onboard Lucipara from 2005 – 2012 and vividly remembers the amount of clothing, books and other stuff he gave away or placed into storage when he sold his apartment. However, he also learned how easy it was doing without most things he was used to having in the apartment and felt a sense of relief. He gave away most of his clothes and shoes, the tv, the stereo, wall pictures and pieces of furniture to friends who helped him move. He realizes Floris is going through a similar experience now.

Floating Tiny House

We arrive in the Amsterdam Marina with a fully loaded car (including the printer on Floris’ lap), and carry everything onboard. Where is it going to fit? It looks like an impossible task to store everything, but in the next few days, we manage to store most things away in the many drawers and cupboards. We place our summer clothes in plastic vacuum bags and scan most of our admin. That really clears things up. Just before Christmas we look around in amazement – it all found a place (including in the garbage bin)! We can now enjoy our new home and the little Christmas tree that came out of storage for the occasion.

Happy New Year!

We celebrate New Year’s Eve with our friends Pieter and Mark aboard our new floating tiny house. With a good view on the fireworks all around us, we drink to the New Year and cannot resist wondering where we’ll be in a year from now. Somewhere in cold and dark Scandinavia? France? Spain? It’s part of the charm of 2016 that we don’t know where the year will take us. It started out on a high note, that’s for sure, and we look forward to staying there!