Day 3 Welcome to Cabin 7009

Travel makes one modest, you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.
~ Gustave Flaubert

Our room with a view

I don’t know about our place in the world yet, but on the Pacific Princess, we occupy a pretty tiny space. Stateroom 7009 is a tad over 200 square feet counting the diminutive balcony. With all the stuff we packed, I was a bit concerned about fitting it all in.

However, we found room for everything here in our floating tiny house. We’re settled and ready to enjoy our home for the next three plus months. Here are some of the tricks we used to organize our space.

The “spacious” closet much vaunted on the Princess website turned out to be more wardrobe sized. Most of the hanging space is taken up by my things, but the DH has been allotted a sliver to hang his suits and tux. He also uses the upper shelf to house folded casual pants and shorts. As you can see from the photo, we brought a set of hanging shelves. This holds my casual pants, capris, scarves, casual tops and dress shoes. On the floor of the closet, there are a few of the DH’s shoes and our laundry hamper.

Handy dandy built in tie rack!

The half-sized closet next to this was dominated by a dorm sized fridge, which we moved to make room for the DH to hang his shirts. (The unplugged fridge now serves as a side table for our teensy-weensy love seat.) He very gallantly gave me full use of the four drawers below his shirts. In exchange, I surrendered the four smaller drawers under the desk.

I’m really tickled with my bedside storage. I travel with a bipap machine and a So-Clean to keep it germ free. Because I knew there was no electrical outlet beside the bed, I expected to have to duct tape an extension cord across the room to reach the plug-ins at the desk. Instead, thanks to a suggestion from my online buddy Erin Erkun, we discovered a European style plug under the head of the bed. The DH had brought a converter in case we got lucky, so all my medical devices can get juiced up without creating a trip hazard. The little side table is home to all our prescription meds, (yes, Mom, I’m heeding your advice and not storing them in the steamy bathroom!), spare tubing, filters, canullas, and cough drops. Each of us have a little collapsible storage bin on our bedside tables to hold glasses, cell phones, Tums, and other odds and ends.

The magnet hooks we brought work great to hang our bath robes. The circular dot ones hold up our planning calendar and world map. Collapsible storage bins in 3 different sizes are good for organizing things on the shelves under the TV and on the opposite side of the desk from my DH’s designated drawers. We keep our 2 pairs of binoculars in a bin on top of the now repurposed dorm fridge.

Part of being comfortable in a small space is putting every spot to good use. I’ve hung a slim shoe rack on the back of the bathroom door. It only takes about five inches from the entrance way and holds all but one pair of my seven shoes, along with things like visors, umbrellas, and handheld fans.

The bathroom in our cabin isn’t much bigger than the one in our camper, but it seems to be adequate. Princess provides soaps, bath gels and shampoo, but there is plenty of storage for our personal stuff. There is a hair dryer affixed to the wall, but it's definitely a relic from the previous century.  

We love our little cabin. It’s a perfect retreat for when we want to read or nap or just spend time on the balcony listening to the wind and watching the water rush by. And I’m so glad the staterooms were refreshed just last summer with new beds, linens and carpet.

The scratch off world map my friend Marcy gave us will become more colorful as we visit new ports! 

So that’s the tour of our home here on the Pacific Princess. I’ll share some of my favorite spots around the ship in a future post. That’s all for now. “Aloha” from somewhere between LA and Honolulu.

P.S. The ocean is much calmer today. Yesterday the pedometer on my phone was under the mistaken impression that I’d climbed 20 flights of stairs. That’s because the ship was rocking so much, between one step and the next, the deck would tilt enough to fool my phone!

P.P.S. I was right about the ventriloquist. The middle school humor about where his hand was reminded me of why I’ve always found them vaguely creepy. Tonight, our entertainment will feature the classic rock and roll of Stevie B.

May 8, 2018 update--Now that we're home, I was able to upload our video tour of Cabin 7009--our home away from home! Don't mind my breathlessness. I wasn't using Herkimer (my portable O2 concentrator) at the time I filmed this and walking & talking were kind of a challenge for me last January. In fact, I commented to the DH that I was breathing like an old horse on this video. 

"You're breathing," he said. "That's all that matters."

Anyway, I'm fine. Enjoy the show!

Later in the cruise, we discovered 2 more electrical outlets--one on the archaic hairdryer that worked great for charging our electric toothbrushes and the other under the TV, which made a good charging station for Herkimer!

About the magnetic hooks: We bought ours at Walmart so they aren't the strongest. In fact, our robes began having snail races to the floor and we ended up using the hooks on the ceiling (they held just fine there) & hung extra laundry that needed to air dry on them. You should have seen the cabin on laundry day. It was like Dhobi Ghat in miniature with all the non-dryer safe items hanging from every available hook!  (If that makes no sense to you, see my Mumbai post for a picture of this huge open air laundry.)