Sandra Madeira

Yesterday’s post is here if you missed it but in summary, we surprised my husband by setting up a new two-room tent in the garden and having a takeaway in it for his birthday. This idea came up due to us being in lockdown and potentially not being able to go away this summer. After all of us spent a night in the tent, it got me thinking about the advantages of camping in the garden; however, when you read it, please bear in mind that we’ve never been camping as a family before 🙂

1. It’s cheaper
2. It’s safer
3. You can use your own wifi
4. You can use your own facilities (particularly useful in the middle of the night)
5. You don’t have to take the entire contents of your house with you ‘just in case’; you just pop back into the house
6. You can plug in an extension lead and use your own electricity, particularly useful for watching Netfix or local news on your computer
7. You can still be at home to receive your parcel deliveries and for engineers to come round to fix your appliances (see below)
8. You can have your own local takeaways that you are used to, and enjoy them in the garden on your own plates
9. You can wash your hands whenever you want, which is particularly relevant at the moment
10. The children can go back into the house or go for a walk if they get bored
11. You have an extra room to go and be by yourself in (or hide in) during the day when everyone else is in the house (and there’s still wifi for blogging!)
12. You can use it as a shelter from the sun, and still be in your garden
13. You can pop back into the house if you’ve forgotten something
14. You don’t necessarily need to take any time off work as you’re only sleeping out there, but I suppose you could if you wanted to have days out
15. You can still water your plants indoors and outdoors
16. You can choose the days you sleep in the tent vs. in your own beds

You can probably tell from some of the above points that we’re more used to luxury than camping in a field!

Our experience

As mentioned, all four of us spent last night in our new family tent in the garden. Halfway through the night my husband had to go back into the house because our airbed had practically deflated and it was giving him a backache. This also made our backs feel cold, so after he’d gone inside I settled myself down and had more room to spread out (those sleeping pods are very compact). I used my warm fleecy coat as a layer between myself and the floor which was much warmer, and I was looking forward to staying asleep until I needed to start work.

I was woken to the sound of the outer door of the tent being unzipped, followed by a loud and cheery “Morning!” from my husband. It was 6.50am – far too early to be getting up. He’d made tea for us and hot chocolate for the girls, and put up the chairs for us to all sit in the main area of the tent. We couldn’t understand how he was so awake when we were so tired, but we did like the idea of having a hot drink in our own mugs and then being able to go into the house to use our own bathroom and get some breakfast.

As I entered the house, I noticed that the kitchen and dining room were so messy from yesterday, so I spent some time tidying up before showering and logging on for work.

The oven and freezer are now fixed

Our friendly engineer came round this afternoon with the spare part to fix the door back onto one of our ovens. He also looked at an issue with the other oven and fixed the plastic flaps onto our freezer shelves.

Due to social distancing, it was easier to make him a coffee before he arrived this time, and I stayed more than two meters away in the dining room with the doors open whilst we chatted. We are very lucky that we always get the same helpful engineer round from the company each time. He always gives me new tips and advice on all of my kitchen appliances, even if they are not ones that are insured with them. Today I learnt how to clean my hob properly, and how to keep my dishwasher and washing machine running more efficiently.

I’m posting this blog a day late again as our wifi had intermittent service last night due to emergency maintenance.

I think we may sleep in the tent again, after I’ve bought a new airbed! The girls have created a new rule though – no one is to wake anyone up in the morning for any reason 😀.

Until later…

Sandra