TRADING SPACES: DON'T DO THE MATH

Which is bigger, a cruise cabin or a walk-in closet?

I woke up this morning and did math before I even opened my eyes, and I really don't like math.

Two weeks from today, we board Enchantment of the Seas in Tampa.

And the cabin we'll sleep in that night is smaller than the walk-in closet and bathroom I'm standing in right now.

Not a little smaller. Smaller.

The strange part is that the cabin already exists. Somebody has made the bed. Somebody has checked the lights. It's sitting on a ship somewhere, exactly the size it's going to be, waiting for us.

Meanwhile, I'm in a closet with shelves that hold more than I've owned in years, trying to lay out a cabin on the floor in my head.

Here's what life looks like right now.

We're house sitting on fifty acres. It's a third of a mile from the road to the house, so getting home is a drive. Roger rides the buggy around the property several times a day, checking on things.

We can't see a single neighbor. Our company is turkeys sharing the corn with the deer, and spiders building webs from tree to tree like they've got a construction permit.

Two and a half months under one roof. Our longest ever, in four and a half years of full-time travel.

I loved it.

Now look at where we're going.

Enchantment is 989 feet long. She would fit along one edge of this property with room to spare, and she carries over two thousand passengers.

Out here, I can't see a neighbor.

Out there, thousands of neighbors are around every corner.

No drive into town. No buggy patrol. The property will be a eleven decks of corridors, and the buffet is a walk, not a drive.

So we go from a third of a mile of driveway to hundreds of feet of hallways and stairwells.

In two weeks.

Some people think that must be a hard trade.

It isn't.

We love house sitting. We love cruising. Equally. Nobody has to pick a favorite child.

And I can't help noticing the laundry.

In late May we finished a thirty-night Princess crossing, plus two weeks of Alaska. My laundry lived in the laundromat down the hall. Thirty days of hauling a bag down that hall, hoping nobody beat me to the dryer.

Now my laundry lives inside the walk-in closet. I don't even have to leave the room.

And for the next seven cruises, all Royal and Celebrity, laundry is free and I don't have to do any of the folding.

Free. At sea. I'm still processing it.

Here's the rest of the fall: seven cruises, a break in November for a pet sit and Disney, then back to a cabin until December 20.

Fifty acres, a cabin, somebody else's pets, Disney, a cabin again. Nobody can say we don't change the scale.

Packing is easy, too. We have the car, so only what we need goes on the ship. Eight months of hauling every season of clothing taught me that lesson the hard way.

It's fall everywhere else, but Florida is still summer.

The jackets stay in the car.

Sundresses and flip flops, you're up.

So how did all this start?

I woke up and did math about a closet.

My next home is smaller than my closet.

And the laundry is free.

There's Always a Story