Full time RVers occasionally house-sit for friends or relatives who live in the normal world, the world of sticks and bricks, lawns and driveways. It's been so many years since I've spent a few days in such a structure that the experience seemed exotic and adventurous.
This isn't as whimsical as it might at first seem. For one thing the typical suburban house is dangerous. I've never had a close call when hiking near 1000-foot-high cliffs, but I've come quite close to slipping in those bath tubs found in most houses. That never happens in my travel trailer's shower stall, where heat, pressure, and vibration have solidified desert dust into gritty, metamorphic layers.
We have fewer pieces of seldom-used junk than the house-bound, but we can actually find the useful stuff. I was looking for a simple spoon the other night during my house-sitting gig. My arm actually wearied opening drawer after drawer in the kitchen, while I stared at every kitchen gadget ever invented. I didn't even know the names of most of them. Perhaps they get used once or twice per year.
Since no tea kettle could be found, I was forced to use one of those silly microwave ovens. I remembered downsizing (read, donating) the microwave in my trailer during my freshman year. The house-bound don't see how life could exist without microwave ovens. Indeed, it is harder to warm up expensive snack foods without one. Finally, after a good deal of improvisation and experimentation, I did manage to make some tea in the microwave. For awhile it seemed like I would need one of those remote controls to use the microwave.
Thankfully the menagerie of remote-controls was in the living room, usually under one of the couch cushions. It took three of those blasted things just to watch one of my DVD movies. In my trailer I could watch DVDs just by popping them into a 10 inch portable player, and popping a couple buttons on the machine. No remote control was needed.
The picture was fantastic on that expensive, giant, LCD screen. It was the size of a medium-sized RV slideout. But the thrill wore off pretty quickly when I realized that the programming hadn't gotten any better just because the screen was larger. That illustrates Thoreau's comment:
"...so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance...
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."
There is a moment that a long-time RVer dreads most: using the house's toilet. I wasn't actually worried about being injured, as in the shower, but I feared the most embarrassing overflow accident. Just think how large and expensive the typical American house is. Couldn't they have spent a little less on granite counter-tops and a little more on a toilet that actually flushes, and then stops?! These problems never happen with an RV toilet.
But I don't want to be accused of being one-sided. It is true that much of the progress in houses is over-rated, most of all, the increased space. But it was sweet to do laundry without reading Spanish or looking for a handful of quarters.
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