Living simply while working aboard cruise ships

2 Jan

When I joined my first cruise ship contract, I arrived overpacked with things I thought I might need and strangely underprepared for the things that actually mattered.

I had packed for a version of ship life that existed mostly in my head – for fun, for shore leave, for the idea of the experience – without giving much thought to what it would mean to work, rest, and exist in comfort over long stretches of time.

I didn’t arrive with strong expectations about cabin space. I was already used to living with less room than I wanted. Growing up, we moved between rented apartments and terrace houses, and space was something that was constantly negotiated rather than assumed.

At one point, five of us shared a three-bedroom apartment, and I slept in a shared room. Cramped spaces were familiar enough that I didn’t think to worry about them.

What surprised me wasn’t the size of the cabin, but how quickly it filled up. Over the course of that first contract, I collected more things than I needed, until the desk and the floor became temporary – though not very temporary – storage solutions.

Somewhere between unpacking and repacking, it became clear that most of what I had brought, and much of what I later accumulated, wasn’t solving any real problem. Once the ship sailed, those choices mattered far less than I’d imagined.

The cabin set the tone quickly. It was small, shared, and built for function rather than comfort, with just enough storage to hold what you actually needed and very little tolerance for anything extra.

Drawers filled faster than I expected. What felt reasonable when packing slowly on land became irritating once I had to move it aside every day just to get dressed or sit down.

The cabin wasn’t a neutral backdrop. It pushed back, daily, through friction.

Some things revealed themselves as unnecessary almost immediately. Clothes I kept meaning to wear stayed folded, untouched, until the end of the contract. Shoes that had made sense at home felt awkward or unnecessary once daily routines set in. Items that felt reassuring in theory lost their appeal through repetition.

There was no decision to stop using them, no deliberate decluttering moment. They just slipped out of use. Without noticing when it happened, they fell out of my mental inventory. Excess stopped feeling comforting and started feeling like something that needed managing.

On later contracts, the pattern became familiar. Different ships, slightly different layouts, the same outcome. I didn’t necessarily bring less – sometimes I brought more – but the space always resolved itself in the same way.

A few things stayed in constant rotation. Others settled quietly into the bottom of drawers, untouched, until it was time to pack up again.

It wasn’t until the pandemic contracts that simplicity became unavoidable. Shore leave disappeared, days blurred into one another, and routines stretched longer and tighter. With fewer external variations, only the things that actually worked stayed in rotation.

I wore the same few pieces again and again, not out of discipline or intention, but because they made sense. Comfort mattered more than novelty.

It wasn’t a philosophy shift. It was practical, and enforced simplicity. Somewhere in that period, the urge to chase new things quietly faded.

Around me, people responded differently to the same constraints. Some cabinmates upgraded constantly, bringing in newer, better versions of the same comforts.

Others lived with almost nothing, their spaces sparse and barely touched.

Watching this play out made it clear that simple living onboard wasn’t a shared ideal, just one of many ways people adapted.

What filled the gap wasn’t emptiness, but repetition. Routine took the place of variety.

Eating the same meals stopped feeling restrictive and started feeling efficient. Days became easier to move through when fewer decisions were required.

The comfort was quiet and unannounced, only noticeable once it had settled in.

Returning to land life between contracts felt subtly disorienting. Not because of space, but because of choice.

Decisions multiplied quickly – what to buy, where to put it, how to organise it. I noticed how much mental energy went into managing things: comparing options, storing possessions, maintaining order.

Onboard, that effort had barely existed.

I don’t live as simply as I did on ships, and I don’t expect to. Life on land naturally expands, and with it come more choices, more possessions, and more room for things to accumulate. That shift feels inevitable rather than like a failure.

What has changed is my relationship with material things. I no longer see accumulation as a goal in itself, or assume that having more will automatically make life feel better or easier. The ships stripped life back far enough for me to notice what actually made a difference, and what quietly didn’t.

By my own standards, that still matters. Even if my life isn’t minimal or particularly simple, it’s shaped by a clearer sense of what’s enough. That awareness fades and returns, but it tends to resurface when I’m deciding what to keep, what to let go of, and what I don’t really need to carry with me anymore.