I feel I have to start by apologizing for a certain lack of Portland, Oregon posts — I smacked my laptop screen during our adventures and was reduced to 1/3 of usable screen. There was some time spent traveling to and from the mountains/coast, then trying to find a suitable laptop replacement in stock within Portland city limits, and setting the laptop up. Ugh, #ComputerSaga.
BTW, Jan and I are each on our second laptop and second phone of the trip. Travel is kinda hard on electronics. But that isn’t what this post is about. Moving on…
Making it home in an hour or less
We have a routine for setting up that actually only takes a few minutes to turn any place into our home on the road. The quick list:
Unpacking clothes: 10 minutes. Hang up shirts, put the luggage cubes into drawers, set the shoes by the front door. Boom, done. I generally put my jewelry case on a dresser or bedside table. We have a dirty laundry bag that finds a home in the closet. Coats go into the front closet, hooks, or whatever is close to the front door.
Bathroom set-up: 5 minutes. I have our “medicine cabinet” in a bag that unzips and can be hung on a hook, towel rack, or stowed in a lower cabinet. The most used stuff gets put into an actual medicine cabinet, if it exists, the vanity top if it doesn’t. Shower stuff gets stowed in the shower. I generally spend the most time trying to figure out where to put our electric toothbrush so the cord doesn’t hang somewhere it shouldn’t.
Kitchen set-up: 5-10 minutes. We don’t carry much kitchen equipment with us, so this doesn’t take long if we’ve come by airplane. If we’re hauling fresh refrigerator stuff between in-town locations, it takes a bit longer. Coffee goes in the freezer, coffee kit goes on the counter, spices and staples come out of their container, and our plastic wrap and foil find a home. Our small cooler and reusable shopping bags go on top of the refrigerator.
Home Decor: 5-10 minutes. Little touches make a house a home and we each have our contributions. Jan has a string of LED lights that he cleverly hangs, and I have strings of Peruvian pompoms to drape artfully over lamps. HGTV, eat your heart out! If we’re staying somewhere for a while, I’ll hide or move scented candles & other hideous items. Also, the appropriate number of pillows ranges from feast to famine — we’re currently drowning in decorative pillows, so those need to find new homes.
Office/Electronics: 15 minutes. We place our Bluetooth speaker and noise machine, decide where we might need extension cords, log into WiFi, plug in the Roku and set up that access, and stake out our preferred locations for operating our home office — it takes a little bit of time to get it right.
Miscellaneous: 5-10 minutes. Stowing suitcases, backpacks, etc. Towels are usually already set out and the bed made, but we like to look for extras. We also go through drawers and cabinets to see what may have been left intentionally (or not) for our use. This time we scored a bowl of fresh fruit, six pack of water, Tide Pods, and two new shower poofs this trip. Sweet. However, the oven only has one rack and there aren’t any baking sheets, not so sweet.
Making a day of the neighborhood
We get information about a rental before we arrive, but details don’t come into focus until we get boots on the ground. Here are a few neighborhood must-haves that we look for in the first day or so.
Laundry. There have been a very few times we didn’t have in-unit laundry, so we have to figure out where the laundry mat is and how to get there. Our current place has a building laundry in the basement and our host left us a roll of quarters, which was nice.
Grocery Store. How close is the nearest grocery store? Since we don’t typically have a car and we don’t travel with food, it’s important to know where the next meal is coming from. Fortunately, we’ve managed to land within a 15-20 minute walk of a supermarket at most places. When that hasn’t worked out, Instacart/Peapod has stepped in to fill the void. We occasionally will use delivery for heavy things. Ahem, Diet Coke.
Gym. Access to a gymnasium has ranged from “in the building” to a “three-mile bike ride” to “you’re on your own.” The quality of the equipment varies wildly, too. While we have a routine for when we don’t have access to the good stuff, it’s easier to keep up with weight lifting when you have an actual gym so we always try to find a place. This city of Denver has a YMCA-like set-up of neighborhood & regional work-out facilities, and they are extremely reasonable, great quality, and cheap. I’m kinda impressed.
Public Transit. Trains and buses don’t always exist or run frequently, but when it does we want to know where the bus picks up and where it goes. We try to hop a ride as quickly as possible. The trickiest part of public transit, so far, is finding out where to buy tickets, which tickets to buy, and the norms around using them. It varies.
Coffee Shop. This is an important nice-to-have alternate office for when we don’t want to hang out in our place. Also, access to coffee and pastries is a good thing.
In sum, the glamorous life of travel includes setting up the basics every time we move from place to place. I’m surprised at how routine it has become and how quickly any place we land magically turns into home, sweet home.
I chuckled at the photo of the State Capitol. Until access was blocked, motorists could drive into the surrounding parking lot and orbit the building — even late into the night. Locals dubbed the parking lot “Sodomy Circle.”