This was our 2013 Jayco Flight Swift 198 RD

THIS WAS OUR 2013 JAYCO FLIGHT SWIFT 198RD, PARKED AT THE TOMBSTONE TERRITORIES RV PARK IN ARIZONA



Saturday 3 December 2016

Quick fix for rattling dishes

The majority of RVs, especially campers and fifth wheels are built with a weight consideration in mind. Our White Hawk has a very nice interior, however the top cabinets of my 24 RKS galley are fastened only with screws to the thin plywood (no glue between) of the outside walls. That plywood is bonded to an insulation layer of Styrofoam, which itself is bonded to the fiberglass of the outside walls.  So I will not test their weight capacity by filling them with heavy items especially while traveling. Looking at the space available to store our dishes and glassware I have been concerned about their safekeeping and clattering should we bounce around lets say meeting unexpected potholes or uneven roads.
When I outfitted our camper, the Corelle dishes appealed to me. Corelle is a brand of dishware made of Vitrelle, which are tempered layers of glass developed by Corning Glass Works (Corning, NY) in 1970. They are lighter than China dishes and extreme shatterproof and break resistant. I happened to like the square forms so they do not fit the plastic molds for dishes that are available at some RV outfitters.  These Corelle dishes come in good-looking décor and different shapes. To keep the plates and bowels secure during travel days I made inserts out of anti-slip material to insert between every item.




This practice served us well on our yachts during our travel years on the oceans, where the motion got pretty rough during some passages and the technic is used by most blue water yachties, which sail off the beaten path.
I also found that if I place a mat on the shelves in the fridge it helps the food to stay put and not to slide around while traveling.  Of course I also lined the shelves in the lower cabinets with the anti-slip material to prevent other items to move around.


The anti-slip material I got at the Dollar store where they sell it in rolls of 5 feet, but there are several similar products available in other stores as well they come in a variety of colors.  The coated fabric is easily cut with a pair of scissors and the shapes can be traced with a pen around an object placed on the mat.



We like to drink wine from real glass stemware and for the camper I found some inexpensive glasses at the IKEA store that I liked.  To simplify their storage solution in the camper I kept them in the box they came in.  Had I not had this container, I could have perhaps used a box for bottles from the liquor store cut down to size with a box cutter. Those boxes by the way I find handy to store our stash of liquor and wine in the camper too.



1 comment:

  1. Your experience while Yachting will truly help you while RVing. Having a vivid resourceful imagination is also very handy. You are off to a wonderful start.
    Be Safe and Enjoy!

    It's about time.

    ReplyDelete