Battling clutter

Mike and Rebecca aboard s/v Zero to Cruising tackle clutter in a way that puts reading materials that are needed to hand out of the way, and yet keeps them easily accessible:

I live in a small boat and I hate clutter. Those two statements together almost guarantee that I will forever be stressed out because, with a small boat, there is not a ton of space to hide the misc. bits of stuff that we need to live with, aka clutter. For example, at this very moment, within arms reach of where I’m typing this post, there are five books and two Kindles, and that’s just reading material! No wonder we’re always looking for creative storage solutions.

Not too long ago I came up with a storage idea that I thought would work but because it involved sewing, we put it onto the list of tasks to do when we next broke out the sewing machine. Getting the sewing machine all set up for just one little job is a PITA. Yesterday, and the day prior, was such a time though. After describing to Rebecca what I wanted, and sketching it out on a piece of paper along with some rough dimensions, she set to work. Fortunately, we still have quite a bit of Sunbrella remaining from the supply we purchased when we were back in Annapolis.

As with many boat projects, the original design ended up being modified a few times over the course of construction but we’re pretty happy with the finished product. While I had originally intended to fasten the top edge with screws, down inside the lockers underneath the seat cushions, I determined that if a block of wood was sewn into the top (we actually used a chunk of plastic material that we had on board), it would act as a stopper so that when the locker’s lid was closed overtop of it, it would remain in place. In my mind this is a big improvement as, while it is still secure, it can be removed easily and didn’t require any more holes to be drilled in the boat. Perfect!