How a Mouse Infestation Reveals What Living Without Margin Really Means

Small problems stay small when there is margin. When that margin disappears, they become a chain reaction.
The evening before last, there was a party a few doors down. Sometimes those things are announced beforehand, usually not, and this time was no different. Constant talking, shouting and laughter. Lots of clinking bottles that I assume contained beer.
Every evening Mart holds me for a long time so I can become calm enough to fall asleep quickly. This evening was no exception. Mart himself was already exhausted from the overstimulation, and combined with the constant noise from the partying neighbours I could not settle down and just kept spiralling. About the past. About the future. I wanted it to stop.
Normally we spend almost the entire night spooning on our left side. Earlier we could still lie opposite each other sometimes, because I liked looking at him. I asked him if he would lie nose to nose with me for a while. That way I could try to stay in the “now” and focus on him.
It helped somewhat. Not because my mind suddenly became quiet, but because his presence anchored me somewhere in the present. As if my nervous system knew it should not completely drift away as long as he was there. I could fully take him in: his warmth, his relaxed face, his scent and the way he felt.
But the thoughts kept coming. About the past. About everything that still has to happen. About how much longer we will remain here.
Eventually the calm only arrived late at night. Maybe it was not even calm, but simply losing consciousness from exhaustion.
Yesterday morning we went to the camper for an extra visit. We came home with six garbage bags full of food. Food partly eaten by mice, partly completely contaminated with droppings. So there was truly a huge amount of food in the camper. If I had known that two and a half years later we still would not be using it, I of course never would have stored that much. But at the time we thought we would leave quite quickly. That we had enough food for months with us. Then we would only need to occasionally get water and fresh food.
But the mice have gnawed through everything. Even four packs of vegan chocolate milk. One of them had already started leaking and when I picked it up it sprayed out from all sides. The bottom of the cabinet was soaked through and so was the floor in front of it.
What I do not understand is why they do not simply finish eating what they have already opened. There were hundreds of wraps, kilos of oats and muesli, rice cakes, food for Fannar… and yet everything gets a bite taken out of it.
The answer is actually simple, although that does not make it any less frustrating: mice do not only eat. They test food. They gnaw into everything, follow scent trails and sharpen their teeth. That makes it look as if they are destroying everything at once. But understanding that does not help when you are standing in the middle of the devastation.
Because we emptied two cabinets last week, exactly what I was afraid of happened. Apparently they had enough food in one cabinet where they had not been the previous week, but now they definitely had been there. On the couch. And… in bed.
That is what happens when food slowly disappears: mice start searching further. And because we cannot empty and clean everything in one go, simply because our situation does not allow it, their territory keeps expanding.
We even went there on a Saturday for once, but as if that still was not enough, Mart went to the camper once again today. There he discovered that the mice had not only been on the bed, but also hanging in the curtains and inside cabinets containing clothing. Exactly what I had feared.
Truthfully, we regret the camper. Mart said it out loud yesterday as well. We bought it in October 2023 because we thought we would be gone before New Year’s Eve. So we had just over two months to empty it, clean it, replace the front seats, load in crates of food and clothing, build the bed, buy a mattress and prepare everything. Several times a week Mart stood behind the apartment building late at night cleaning everything. In a suit. With a steam cleaner, buckets of water, cloths, alcohol and vinegar.
We built the new front seats downstairs on top of the old platforms. Every weekend we loaded crates of food and suitcases of clothing into the car. The bed was only just finished in time. It still had to be cleaned on the same evening we wanted to leave. On New Year’s Eve. And it was all too much. Especially for me, because I wanted the bed to be extremely clean. So I first wanted to completely undress and clean myself before making the bed. But it was dark. In the distance we heard fireworks. We no longer dared to drive further than Hilversum. During the years before, that had been our limit with the car. It had rained for days and everything was wet and muddy. So we turned back. Before midnight. So that we were already lying in bed at home before my mother and her boyfriend returned.
And now we have ended up at exactly the same point again. Weeks, months and by now years spent searching for a place where our home on wheels is allowed to stand. But now our limited time and energy go into emptying everything, cleaning everything and washing the bedding. And washing. So much washing. We normally do two or three loads a month. Now there are already four piles of laundry from six weeks of use lying here inside the house. And in the camper there is much more that still needs to be washed.
My mother insists on doing laundry every Friday. So we cannot simply wash everything back to back, because we first need to clean the washing machine from cigarette smoke and her extremely long hairs before we are allowed to use it.
And of course yesterday that old washing machine almost broke down. Mart spent an hour trying to get it working again. So even something as simple as doing laundry suddenly becomes a logistical operation.
Where two and a half years ago we could still quietly clean the camper in darkness without anyone recognising us, that is no longer possible now. In March it will already stay light longer. So all of this will continue for a long time yet. And meanwhile spring has begun. We are craving freedom. My mind keeps repeating the same questions:
Will we still be living at my mother’s house a year from now? Will we have to sell the camper? When do we give up?
But who wants a camper without a newly installed diesel tank? With thousands of mouse droppings? Of which the paint on the outside is already flaking because it has stood still in wind and weather for so long? We can vacuum the droppings away. Clean everything with vinegar. But then you still have the soaked cabinet floor from the leaking chocolate milk and the crate cabinet where all the mouse urine ended up after running down from multiple crates above it. Those crate cabinets need to be replaced anyway in order to reach the space behind the heater where the mice enter.
And after that the camper still needs its vehicle inspection. And I do not even know whether it will pass because of the way the seats are attached now. Or what else no longer works after two and a half years of standing still.
And imagine that we suddenly find a piece of land after we have just sold the camper… What would we put there then? A tent? The car with a roof tent? Can you truly live in that year after year?
The difficult thing about living without margin is that small problems never remain small. When you have space, time and autonomy, a mouse infestation is annoying but solvable. A few days of cleaning, a few loads of laundry and done. But when you do not have that margin, every problem becomes a chain reaction.
Mice → textiles → laundry → washing machine → planning → energy → time.
In the end, we are not searching for a perfect place. We are searching for autonomy. A place where we decide for ourselves when we do laundry, when we go outside and when we work. Where we no longer have to survive on hope alone, but can build a normal rhythm. Where we can walk Fannar three times a day whenever he wants. Where we can comfortably work with our own hands again.
Maybe that is the core of everything: autonomy. Not perfect silence. Not a dream place. Simply control over your own space. And maybe, first of all, relief.
Rest can come later.