Our CCC is about 800 pounds. It seems like a lot at first, but it goes quickly. I think it’s generally accepted that the clothes on your back weigh about 3 pounds, 5 if you’re wearing denim. We’re big on jeans around here, so with all of us that’s 20 pounds of clothes a day. 140 pounds for a week’s worth of clothes. I’d say that we all have at least 2 weeks worth of clothes. That’s already 1/3 of our CCC.

Books are really eating up our CCC, so the other night CM and I decided that we had to reduce the kids’ books by half because they weighed too much. We randomly picked groups of 2 books and we had to get rid of the one we liked the least in each group. We were going like gangbusters for the first 15 minutes and then we lost our steam. Next thing I know, we were just going through books and not getting rid of any.

How much do you think everything in your house weighs? What if you had to narrow it down to the things that matter?

I think it is great that we will conserve water and electricity. Our water supply is very finite, thus in order to have the resources we need to shower, brush teeth, wash dishes, and use the bathroom we will need to be very conscious of our supply vs our demand. Electricity is also a concern. Since we will not be hooked into the power grid most of the time any activity (like having light or posting to the internet) will also need to be choreographed so we can do things like start the RV in the morning.

On to the fact that we are driving a home that takes Diesel. We purchased one of the most fuel efficient RVs, but 17 mpg is not a number I am happy about anyways. The majority of RVs get 8-9 mpgs. So from that aspect it is great that we can double that number. I just wish I could make it better.

So can it be said that we are doing our best to be conscious of our environment? I think even weighing the facts of the items we will be conserving it can be said that the answer is no. Are we doing any worse than we did on our apartment? I think we will be doing better than we did in our apartment though.

So what can we do to do better? If we can get the money we can get solar panels. We don’t have the money right now though. We are stretching everything we have right now just to get the RV. Also one of the points of having the RV in the first place is to travel so to show our kids different aspects of life.

These are just some of the thoughts I am having about this whole trip. I am very aware of the things happening in our environment, and I have these concerns weighing on my mind. I do think, possibly not rightly, that with the way energy is going my kids will not have this opportunity if we do not do this now. MAybe I am just trying to clear my conscious by getting these thoughts out there.