July 26th 2021 – Begin our Full Time Rv travel
Going full time? How does one do this?
I don’t know how other people prepare to be a full time rver but this was our story.
Once we decided that we WERE going to move into our rv full time and sell our home of 34 years, we needed to begin getting rid of our worldy goods so that we could FIT into our 24 foot rv. The possibility was real that down the road we could upgrade but we were going to start out in this 15 year old rv that we’ve kept under cover except when we were out for 6+ months each year. We started with setting up a table out front of our house with a free/moving sign on it. People LOVE free stuff and we live on a road that goes to the local elementary school and is somewhat busy during commuting times. I kept a box in the house where I would accumulate things to put out there on a daily basis. I would go through cabinets/drawers and pull out the obvious things that I no longer needed and should have gotten rid of sooner/much! Things moved out nicely. These were not the high priced things but things that I thought were less than a couple of bucks/most. As time went on I got a bit more free with things I pulled and it kept flowing reviewing the same cabinets/drawers weekly. I listed bigger things on Facebook Marketplace and a few free bigger things there. I hit our closets and drawers for clothing clean outs and took many bags to Salvation Army.
We also bought an 8x12 shed to put at son’s house to store things that we could not part with. WHY pay for a storage unit…throwing money away. This size would keep us reasonable and offer us change of season clothing as well. Son could keep the shed if he wanted later on. It ended up being filled with some of husbands tools (that he could not part with or “needed”), seasonal clothing, 3 kitchen boxes for me, camping equipment/husband, and some garden things. Giving up the garden was HARD…harder than the house…the blueberry orchard, the strawberry beds, the espalier Asian pear and my nice sized veggie garden.
Husband was NOT on board at first with this. It took him a few weeks to get on board. I think his tools had a lot to do with that. I needed a drier climate for health reasons. He reasoned he could buy new/better tools later.
Me: I am selling our house. Wanna come with me?
He: Laughs, okay. He was happy that I invited him I think but I should also note he is the driver.
We invited two of our local adult kids to come over and pick anything they wanted from anywhere in the house or garage. Free shopping…who can argue with that. We pulled a few boxes worth of tools for our Arizona son to be delivered to him in the Fall. With our timeline ABOUT 4 months away before becoming full time Rvers, we worked hard on getting rid of our stuff. We made people good deals. I did NOT want to fill up a landfill. I wanted people to be happy to take it off our hands and feel like the got a good deal.
On Nextdoor.com I began some chatter about us moving (in a market that was pretty hot with buyers) and was truly hoping that a bidding war would ensue. I told one neighbor with adult kids that we were selling our property and his property bordered ours. I wanted to create some buzz about this property. After 34 years, It was going up for sale and I wanted a decent price for it. In the end, I decided the neighbors kid deserved a house near her parents and I did not need a city person living in my house but a local person at a time when city people were inundating the area and buying houses out from under locals for cash. Not nice.
In the end, we successfully managed to get out on our timeline, get a price we were content with, and throwing out only about one large trash can’s worth of stuff and out king sized mattress. I was happy with that!
The next month was spent in our son’s driveway with a “dump station” set up into his septic. Our daughter and another grandchild was 6 minutes away. Perfect for us NEW grandparents. We would be in son’s driveway each summer and for a month at Christmas (brrr in ny in our rv) for help with projects, babysitting. A win for both I hope.
