My wife has Lupus, Fibromyalgia, and a whole list of other stuff. We have been full timing for almost 4 years, albiet locally, while I get ready to retire! It looks like 1 April will be the day, if I can't figure out a way to do it sooner. What I really want to tell you is the the IMMEDIATE loss of stress was the deal clencher for me. DW is actually doing better as well. Best wishes, and Happy Trails!

Parrish wrote:

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Great question, I have been pondering.  Circular saw, I may want to build something.  Certainly a drill.  Chain saw for cutting wood?  We like to boon dock.  Howard spoke about some 300 or 500 piece craftsman tool set and I have one of those; but only use a small portion of it.  Will I need a recipricating saw.

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 I figured a saber saw . . .for the size of lumber in anything I need to make for the  trailer that seems more useful than a circular. One can always clamp on a straightedge and get a reasonably decent cut. I'm taking a drill and hand tools as well . . .shovel and a pruning saw along with an splitting maul. Not sure about the usefulness of a chainsaw . . .at many state parks in the east you can only burn firewood you buy there and it's already cut and split. Unless you're boondocking in the middle of nowhere I wouldn't think that you would really need it. I'll keep a selection of my hand tools as well; definitely not keeping all of them though. OTOH, if you're planning on working some then the appropriate tools for the job need to go to.

We started getting rid of our stuff a little over a year ago.  We too have had to touch every thing we owned.  It started out as overwhelming but we just bit off a little bit at a time. We had 2 garage sales and 6 charity pick-ups.  We also maxed out our town garbage pick up limits every week.  We have our storage stuff down to 6 15 gallon plastic bins.  Most of the storage is made up of familly pictures and videos.  This stuff is for the kids when they want it and it will be stored with them anyway, no cost to us!

Our house goes up for sale this week and it still has furniture we will use and for show.  The plan for us is to donated all of it to my son and charity.  Most of our stuff we either donated or gave to family and friends.  We felt we didn't purchase the stuff for investment but just for our enjoyment so we already got what we paid for. 

Our plan is to be FT when the house sells.  No idea how long that will take!

I remember when we had the difficult task of going through my parents' house after my Dad died - sorting through a lifetime of stuff.  Of course, the sentimental items were shared and divided among the six siblings, but there was more "STUFF" left than we knew what to do with and it felt almost like we were dishonoring our parents - for something that had been very sentimental to them was tossed to the junk pile. Oh how we wished we could ask Mom where this or that came from - what was the story behind that china plate . . . That process of sorting and deciding was difficult for all of us.

When Bruce and I decided to downsize to move into our camper, I realized what a tremendous service we were providing to our four kids. When the time comes - they won't have to deal with a house and garage filled to the brim.  They won't have to wonder why on earth Mom liked this ugly china plate.  They already have been given the sentimental items to treasure and keep. 

 

 

laubenthal wrote:

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 Our son picked out a few things she wants . . .and we will get a  small storage unit for the stuff my wife "needs" to keep . . .although I would imagine that in a few years we'll do what others have done and sell it all. Other than that . . .I'm craigslisting some stuff and goodwilling some stuff but the majority of it will go via an estate sale. Local companies charge 25 or 30% commission but they price everything, negotiate with the buyers, pack up the donatables and deliver to charity with a receipt back to us, and have a liquidator come in and take everythng remaining for a fixed price.

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 Turns out the estate sale isn't happenin'. We had them out this last week to look around (4 different outfits). Two said no thanks and the other two said there was only 3000-5000 worth of stuff after subtracting the stuff family is taking and that we want to keep.

On one hand . . .bad that the sale is out. On the other hand, good that the sale is out…lots easier to declutter for the house sale by donating and we've already found a couple of local military related charities that will take just about everything. Spent yesterday and today getting a big pile ready to go for Am Vets this week and will probably have a pick up every couple of weeks until late April when the house goes on the market; then another big pickup before we hit the road in July. Picking up our new New Horizons in June…production is in progress, moved to flooring this week.

Seems like a lot of stuff to do…but after today and yesterday we decided it isn't as big a job as I thought…still big, just not overwhelming. Luckily we've never really spent a lot of money on furniture so most of ours is either falling apart or out of style and we'll get more tax deduction for donation than we would selling it.

Our Estatate Sale went great, I never dreamed of so many people going through my stuff.  Not too bad, clearing near $9000.  I bought most of the stuff at garage/estate sales so I may have made money may have lost some.  Got more than I was asking for some things and less for others.  Don't know if we need one more sale or load this remaining stuff on a trailer.  I know I wish we were fishing or up in the mountains.  Day one of the sale it was obvious we were full time living in the rv with our bedroom suits and couches sold.  We've lived in the camper a week without giving it much thought, comfortable enough.

I meant to resign from work last week; but I had a couple people recommend that I apply for disability insurance based on depression from a toxic work place and dealing with a disabled wife.  Figured I would give that a try for 70% of my salary for a while.

We purged - donated - gave away - threw away. We still ended up with an 8x10 interior storage unit. over the past 30 years we have collected a LOT of antiques. Along with the current condition of the economy the value of Antiques has hit bottom as well as the numberof buyers.

Example: Antique pew like bench - only 4 know in existance. Valued (appraised) at $5,000 - $7,000.
3 Antique dealers said we'll take it but the chances of selling it are very slim and if it sold don't expcect more than $800!!!!! YA --- RIGHT!!!!

So we decided to store our Antique collection in a climate controlled unit along with some other stuff as well.

We seem to think we will F/T for r4 - 5 years and then get a nice condo someplace warm and only RV when the spirit moves us. I would be approaching 77 at the end of 5 years TWT as to how moved I am at 77 - I would hope to be rearing and ready to go. I can see us RV-ing 5-7 months of the year.

So our decision to store STUFF was based on the bad economy vs the real value of an extensive antique collection as it relates to switching to P/T Rv-ing down the road.

TWT

We are finally free of all our 'stuff', happy full timers now. Don't miss a thing!

Well, our stuff does not control us any more!  In about 30 days we were able to rid ourselves of all the "stuff" we had accumulated over the last 40 years.  We proudly showed a completely empty house to our new buyers for their final walk through before the closing tomorrow morning.  One more day and we'll be FREE!

Hi Ron, I'm a newbie and we made our decision to full time a couple of months ago.  We are purging and planning our first garage sale in a couple of weeks.  I went over to take a look at your photos and see that you are from around Jax - which is where we are.  Just wondering when you started trying to sell your house and how long it took, also if you don't mind what area you were in.  We have set our date to full time as Nov 1, 2014 and plan on putting the house up for sale by owner with the first garage sale.  If that doesn't work we have already chosen a realtor..

 

Thanks

Gregg & Debbie

caribbeach wrote:

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Hi Ron, I'm a newbie and we made our decision to full time a couple of months ago.  We are purging and planning our first garage sale in a couple of weeks.  I went over to take a look at your photos and see that you are from around Jax - which is where we are.  Just wondering when you started trying to sell your house and how long it took, also if you don't mind what area you were in.  We have set our date to full time as Nov 1, 2014 and plan on putting the house up for sale by owner with the first garage sale.  If that doesn't work we have already chosen a realtor..

 

Thanks

Gregg & Debbie

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 Gregg & Debbie, we were extremely lucky in selling our house in Middleburg.  Believe it or not we listed it on Saturday, had our first showing on Monday afternoon and Monday evening we had a cash offer just a couple thousand off our asking price.  Twenty-eight days later we were at the closing (which took 10 minutes) and we were fulltimers!  We were ready to go... already had our motorhome and although we were shocked that it all came together so quickly we were ready to roll. 

We interviewed 4 realtors and asked them some very pointed questions:

1.  How will you market our house?  We understand the power of the internet and wanted a company with not just local connections but with global reach. All of north Florida is in a very depressed real estate market.  Folks who are selling their homes are not getting the money they wanted out of them.  Consequently they don't have the money to buy their new home.  We wanted to attract folks who have sold their homes in better economic areas and have more money to spend on ours. Don't be fooled by your realtor telling you that the MLS does it all.  Within 4 hours of listing our house I Googled our address and got hits on multiple home selling websites. Our buyers were folks from Michigan who had already sold their home and had cash in hand.

2.  What is our home worth?  It's important to realize that the best opportunity to sell your home is when it is first put on the market.  It's like "only getting one chance to make a good first impression"... if you put too high a price on it you won't even get showings, let alone offers.  Two of our realtor candidates came up with the same price, while the 2 others suggested higher prices. Comparables were worthless because of all the short sales and foreclosures.  We trusted the consensus of 2 very qualified realtors and it worked to sell our house.

Selling "by owner" has the big advantage of not having to pay the realtor's commission but the disadvantage of not having a professional do the crucial pricing and marketing.  We decided that the commission was well worth the benefits derived.

Write me a PM if you want to know who our realtor was.  Good luck!

Ken & Sarah wrote:

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We still have STUFF, but we are three boxes lighter after today. I have pruned down my books to those I am going to read over the summer. I bought a Nook and plan on utilizing it to read all other books. I just wish more magazines and newspapers were available for it. I will have to do more research. If anyone who has a Nook knows of other sources than Barnes & Noble for material I would appreciate a heads up. I haven't checked but maybe a new area for discussion eBook readers.

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 I have a nook and any pdf file can be downloaded also here are some other extensions that it will download too.  If you have the tablet version you can download the kindle app and also have  any amazon books.    If you can stand to read on a tablet you can get both apps on it and read from both sources. 

My husband and I are gadget collectors.  we have a kindle for him and a nook for me and 2 Samsung Galaxy tablets for when we want to read off them and just have a table.  Ohh and I have the kindle and nook app on my phone too.   We love to read and getting rid of the 350+ book library is hard.  Only keeping books that are not in e-form.  we have a lot of out of print stuff.   Not sure where they will all go, but those we will make room for.

 

If you have any local shelters, senior homes or jails in your area, they may take some of your books.  This is what I am doing.  I use my iPad with a nook and kindle app on it.  I do have a few books like my bible which I will always keep in book form.

Being that this is an older thread, be aware that folks that have posted before may have already found a solution to their questions.  Also, on some old threads that get "revived," some to the information is out of date.  Thus, it is generally better to start a new thread than revive an old one.

Terry