So here I stand in our new RV..... - RV-Dreams Community Forum

scrappy · RV-Dreams Family Member

So here I stand in our new RV.....

Verja Guin · RV-Dreams Community Member

Eight towels?

scrappy · RV-Dreams Family Member

Um....is that too many?? That is a fraction of our towels...........I thought that was seriously downsizing!

Delaine and Lindy · RV-Dreams Family Member

You will learn real quick, that you really don't need all the extra STUFF. And we learned over the years, that if you don't use a item, them get rid of it. You will be amazed how much STUFF you will have inside the RV. We also learn no matter were we went there was a place to buy what ever we needed in a emergency.. When we cleaned out a RV in 2006, it took two days to get everything out. I couldn't understand why the 5er was so heavy, then I learned we had every space full of STUFF. We went from having two homes to empty out, and moved into 400 square feet.. If you have a W/D you only need 4 towels at the most. But it's for sure a learning curve. Have fun. Happy Trails...

scrappy · RV-Dreams Family Member

Then theres my 30 pairs of flip flops and 8 pair of cowboy boots......I feel a big slap of reality headed my way.......

Alie and Jims Carrilite · RV-Dreams Family Member

4 towels
3 washclothes
2 dishdrying towels
and 1 happy lab licking the plates clean!

Sorry,
It took us 3 months of doing something every night to load the 5'er and get ready for our first yard sale. It can be a daunting task, but there is a big'ole light at the end of the tunnel that says "We're going fulltime!"

scrappy · RV-Dreams Family Member

Oh gosh. I do like STUFF.

I wish my mother was still alive. She had zero attachment to STUFF. We all stopped buying her STUFF because she would give the STUFF away! I never understood it!

I did not inherit that particular trait...............but guessing I will be figuring it out here shortly!!

My darling other, he doesnt require stuff. But, guessing he wont be parting with any of his guns. *eye roll*

scrappy · RV-Dreams Family Member

Jims carrilite wrote:
4 towels
3 washclothes
2 dishdrying towels
and 1 happy lab licking the plates clean!

Sorry,
It took us 3 months of doing something every night to load the 5'er and get ready for our first yard sale. It can be a daunting task, but there is a big'ole light at the end of the tunnel that says "We're going fulltime!"

Oh I know it. Today we were marvelling in the thought that we will have a whole lot of nothing to do besides walk dogs. They will be super happy. But no yardwork, no farm chores, no 3300 of hardwood floors to keep clean............

Four towels? That's two days worth................*runs off to roll quarters*

rclvnv · RV-Dreams Family Member

Indeed. Downsizing is a process and a learning curve. We're two years living in our rig and everything we own is in it and we still have lots of storage space left. That said, it's been a process of looking at (by passage of time) what we use and what we don't. We went from a house to the 5er in one shot, but again as time goes on and your life changes you'll get rid of what you don't use. I can see where initially it is a real struggle. Just try to take it in small bites. The reward is the very liberating feeling of knowing that everything you own is there with you, once you get it down to size, of course.Enjoy the journey.

Richard

Lucky Mike · RV-Dreams Family Member

HHHHmmmmm........it wasnt that hard for me , she wanted a Divorce so I gave her the house with all the Stuff in it and I got to keep the RV......(and she thought she got the better end of the deal!!)

Terry and Jo · RV-Dreams Family Member

Mary,

Jo and I have been in our home (listed below) for almost two years now with two bath towels each, two hand towels each, four washcloths, and her "hair towels" (2 each). From your one comment, I suggest you learn to use a towel for more than one day at a time. We change "sets" each week when Jo starts to do the laundry.

There is an old adage that one needs to look at what one has and if something hasn't been used in a year, get rid of it. Also, take a look every year and re-assess what is needed or has been used. Granted, I might not have used my torque wrench (for the lug nuts on the trailer) in over a year, but that doesn't mean I'm getting rid of it. So, some things need to be kept, even if they aren't used much.

When we started our downsizing, I spent time in the garage looking at all my "stuff," most of which hadn't been used in a much longer time. That made it easier to get rid of a lot, but when it came to my hand tools, that was a bit more difficult. However, I managed to trim it down.

I'm not even going to talk about the guns.....you see.....I lost all of those in a terrible boating accident.

Ahem.

I think as you apply yourself to your dilemma, you'll find a way to begin to eliminate the unnecessary and seldom used items. Good luck with it all.

Terry

JayKim-no regrets · RV-Dreams Family Member

I didn't have too much trouble getting rid of our STUFF, we are a military family and used to downsizing every time we moved. Even so, after 25 years we still had collected way too much STUFF!! Our biggest issue was hubbies books, he had collections still from when he was a youngster and was very reluctant to get rid of them. My solution was to buy him a Kindle, now he reads everything on there and has already forgotten all his angst over his much loved books!

He still has a few hidden away in drawers in the RV, but I am planning on getting rid of those too! Obviously, I have to do it on the sly

Good luck, it can be tough, but just think what you will have once it's all over:)
huggs kim x

scrappy · RV-Dreams Family Member

Terry. *ahem* terrible boating accident. Lost guns. How sad.

I'll make darling him wash towels...maybe that'll cut down on his two towel per day habit.

JayKim....I went the kindle route with him too............and then he found books about RV life on Amazon. Did he buy the kindle version? of course not.

I have things I just wont part with, so that storage locker in our future is getting larger. If it sits in there a while, then I will know for sure I can part with it. Thats my plan for now. And a big fat yard sale.

Everything goes!

now to find a home for two wonderful horses and a kitty. Those will be my biggest hurdles. Never in my life have I parted with a pet. Ever. *boohoo*

JayKim-no regrets · RV-Dreams Family Member

There are lots of folks that take 'kitty' along with them on their travels, I think we even have one member that is planning on taking the horse(s), not sure how that works! We have a rescue dog that loves the RV and is getting used to change!

We do have a few RV books that we picked up in Camping World, but I read them more often than the DH, he is more into the scyfi books!

You will find a happy medium, just not immediately

We still have a storage unit, it's full of STUFF that we are hoping our Son will need when he gets out of the Navy and moves from Hawaii to the mainland in July, if he doesn't want it, I see another yard sale in our future. I am not willing to keep paying storage fees on STUFF I have already given up.
huggs Kim x

FOSJ · RV-Dreams Family Member

We have been full timing for one year. Today, anniversary date, I spent several hours cleaning out drawers. I'm sure I will be doing this for awhile. Also rearranging things! But it's worth it!

WestWardHo · RV-Dreams Family Member

Scrappy & LuckyMike, you're both toooo funny!

Scrappy, we're doing the downsizing thing again, for about the kazilionth time and i bet we'll do it again after 6 months from what i read, but i can totally relate to your downsizing struggles. Hey i packed the china & silver - what the heck we have to hand wash anyway. But ive taken it out. Put a deposit on a new fiver today so i have a sneaking suspicion its goung back in, what the hell I say!

Sherry

MandV · RV-Dreams Community Member

We started living in our trailer full-time in a campground 10 miles from our house four months before we hit the road. It really helped finding out what we needed in the trailer and what we didn't need pretty quickly. Even when we get back from a trip on the road (we still have our house that our son lives in and Malcolm's employment requires him to sit at a desk at an office 26 weeks out of the year), we often have found a couple items we could live without and a couple we wanted to grab from the house.

Plans are to sell the house later this year. By then, our son will have what he wants of ours to take to his new place and we'll have a few totes of items to take cross-country to our daughter. The rest will be gone.

Yup. Four bath towels here. Two per week, the other two go off in the laundry hamper to be washed.

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

Having a lot of stuff, clothes, towels, dishes, etc., just doesn't work in an RV. It is simple living. Your neighbors in the campground don't have all that stuff and are happy, you will be also.

Dog Folks · RV-Dreams Family Member

Once you start full timing you will be amazed at just how little "stuff" you really need, so don't take it to begin with.

It's just stuff and there are WalMarts everywhere if you get rid of a needed item.

Memories cost nothing and do not add weight.

scrappy · RV-Dreams Family Member

Dog Folks wrote:
Once you start full timing you will be amazed at just how little "stuff" you really need, so don't take it to begin with.

It's just stuff and there are WalMarts everywhere if you get rid of a needed item.

Memories cost nothing and do not add weight.

Thanks for all the helpful pearls of wisdom. I knew I could count on y'all to help me over the hump (hump being my large pile of stuff....haha)

Once I get some big stuff gone and the house starts to look empty it will become a free-for-all! Everything goes!

I didn't want to come to work. I wanted to stay home and dispose of stuff. Guess that's a good sign.

Dog Folks · RV-Dreams Family Member

Also, the more you do it (Getting rid of stuff), the easier it gets. That giddy feeling you have is the sense of freedom you are about to experience.

Just keep a very few treasured items to make your new "house" on wheels a "home."

-- Edited by Dog Folks on Wednesday 20th of March 2013 03:48:26 PM

Ann-Hank · RV-Dreams Family Member

You will do just fine. We sold our house in 5 weeks and had to scramble. Sold, gave away and just dumped so much "stuff". The only thing I really miss that I dumped is a little plastic spoon that was about 10" long and had a small spoon that I used to get that last bit of mayo out of the bottom of the jar. I think it came from a tupper-ware party about 40 years ago.

Once you start purging, you just want it over with and you realize real fast that it's just STUFF. What's important is that we have each other, our dogs and will get to see family more offten now. Life is wonderful.

Good luck, Ann

Hina · RV-Dreams Family Member

My downsizing was from a 325 sq ft "tiny house" rental, to the trailer, (225 sq ft?) and I still made 10 trips to the Goodwill, with my car packed! It was interesting and poignant, not only did I have to get rid of "hard stuff" I didn't need, like wood working tools, but also "soft stuff" like mementos that may have lost their meaning, or turned bitter sweet. It's an opportunity to redefine yourself, and lighten the load, on a lot of levels. You may be surprised at how much you won't miss the past!

cherylbrv · RV-Dreams Family Member

I can't buy my RV until I sell my house, so I'm kind of working backwards. We haven't made any renovations in the 21 years we were living there, so before we can even put it on the market, we have to pretty the place up (since we don't have a huge chunk of money to do it all at once, it's been 3 years since we made the plan to full time and we're still moving forward at a snail's pace -- one small project at a time). In any event, we're told that potential buyers are more interested in seeing space than furnishings, so we're doing all our downsizing first - before we list. By the time we get to market, hopefully all the furniture and belongings we'll be using will be similar to what we'll need in the RV (ok, maybe a little bit more, but not much) - in other words, the place will be 95% empty. At least that's the plan ("man plans, God laughs!")

scrappy · RV-Dreams Family Member

A lot of it is sentimental, things that were my moms, things given to me by my son who is now half way across the country.

They will go to storage and eventually to him. Maybe Ill pick out one small thing from each to bring with me.

I can tell you I have the urge to purge and if I were home instead of the office, it would all be gone today! (yeah right)

NWescapee · RV-Dreams Family Member

We're also in the getting rid of stuff stage. I keep looking at all the things we're selling, giving away, etc. and keep wondering why we spent so much money on so much stuff over the years.

We've spent up to a month at a time in our previous TT so we thought we had a pretty good idea of how much "stuff" we would need. However, I'm married to a packrat and as I keep putting things in the yard sale stack, I'm finding that he's taking it out and putting it in the stack of "things to consider". I need to clean out the closets when he is busy on other projects!!

Yard sale will be held while he's on the road bringing our 5'ver home, I'm thinking that will be much easier for him to come home and just find that the stuff is gone.

We will keep a small storage locker, I've been a scrapbooker for over 12 years and I'm not willing to part with all of those momentos, plus we have a few family heirlooms that our daughter does not currently have room for so we will store them for now.

And Yes, kitty is coming with us. Tazzy Kat already has a few thousand miles of experience and absolutely loves being petted on demand when she's on the center console between us in the truck.

scrappy · RV-Dreams Family Member

NWescapee wrote:
We're also in the getting rid of stuff stage. I keep looking at all the things we're selling, giving away, etc. and keep wondering why we spent so much money on so much stuff over the years.

Ain't that the truth?!?!?! Things I ABSOLUTELY had to have and now, havent even unpacked in the last 18 months......

Had to laugh at his "things to consider pile". *giggle*

NWescapee · RV-Dreams Family Member

Scrappy - keep giggling, you'll need that sense of humor to get through the down sizing. 11 1/2 years ago we had a corporate relo from Dallas to Seattle, the professional movers packed and moving everything (and I mean everything including the trash and that week's newspaper). That was our first downsizing experience as we moved into a house 400 sq ft smaller.

We put several boxes of "stuff" from the old house into the storage room that is part of the garage of this house. Fast forward, 3 years later I noticed we had at least 1/2 dozen boxes of "stuff" where the tape had not been removed. At that time I told him we just needed to get rid of those boxes and their contents, obviously we didn't need it if we hadn't even opened the boxes in 3 years. I left town for a biz trip, came home and found all the boxes opened and rearranged so I had no clue which boxes to get rid of!!! So now we're going through those boxes together and I'm wondering why we couldn't have done this years ago when I first mentioned it.

So keep giggling, a sense of humor and anticipation of the new adventure is getting us through the difficulty of paring down a lifetime of things we "just had to have".

scrappy · RV-Dreams Family Member

I had a sudden flurry of interest on the items I have on Craigslist. Not scammers, real people! Yay! That makes me want to sell more! Sell! Sell! Sell!

Clay L · RV-Dreams Family Member

When we changed our minds about building or buying a new home and decided to become full timers, our stuff from a 4000 square foot home was already in storage.

Everyone told us to just get rid of all of it. So about four years or so later we went back to NH to get rid of it all. Our old neighbor owned the storage facility and let us hold a yard sale.

We sold about $10,000 worth of stuff for a $1000 but there was so much stuff that we didn't want to part with that we still ended up with a 10 X 20 storage unit that was pretty full.

After eleven years of full timing we decided to get a home base while we are still pretty healthy for the day when we have to leave the road. We bought a summer home in CO last summer and had a moving company take all of our stuff from NH to the new home.

As we started getting the house ready to live in we were very happy that we had kept our stuff.
My 20 X 30 metal shop building has a lot of unpacked boxes in it and it's going to take several summers to get them unpacked since we will now be snowbirds.

The point of all this is that getting rid of everything may be right for some folks but wasn't for us.

Sushidog · RV-Dreams Family Member

Pay close attention to your CCC (and weight distribution) when loading your RV. Also consider water that you might be carrying and any mods that might not be included in the CCC calculation, like dual batteries, generator option, awnings, spare tires, electric jacks, etc. When loading my small trailer I put a kitchen scale and a notebook by the door. I then weighed everything (in my arms) as I entered and recorded the net weight (subtracting my weight, of course) in my notebook. I was surprised how quickly the CCC was reached. Let's just say that a full refrigerator, kitchen and cupboard weigh a lot by themselves, even with the bare minimum. You might want to consider allocating weight. For instance, if you have 3000 lbs of CCC to play with, let's say you allocate 2,000 lbs for your common items (such as pots and pans, appliances, towels, linen, food, tools, cleaning supplies, etc.; allocate 500 lbs per person for your personal items, like clothes, shoes, craft items, mementos, etc. Of course use your own numbers and let it serve you as a tool, not a hard and fast rule. This will help you decide which items are "mission critical" and which are unessential.

When you're done I also recommend getting your rig weighed (each side separately) at a local CAT scale to see how well you've followed your plan. Then reallocate weight front to rear and side to side as needed to stay within your rig's design limits.

Chip

kb0zke · RV-Dreams Family Member

Good points, Sushidog. Now that we have our coach home, we're going to take out the few things that are in it, and go fill the fuel, propane, and fresh water tanks. Then we will weigh each corner (with us in it). Subtracting that from the 30,000 GVW will tell us how much stuff we can carry. Then every item (or box, tub, etc.) will be weighed. I'm going to work up a weight and balance sheet to help us try to distribute the load properly. Once we have the coach loaded for travel we'll weigh each corner again to make sure that we haven't accidentally overloaded a tire. If we have we'll redistribute the load and weigh again. Of course, we won't have the toad for a while yet, so I'll have to allow for that in the calculations.

In the meantime, though, there are plenty of things to fix and learn about. We really need to spend a day just hanging out in the coach and imagining how we will live in it.

scrappy · RV-Dreams Family Member

We have been "living" in the RV for two nights in our driveway. So far so good. Well, until our breeding female GSD came in heat so we will be delivering her to the breeder for a few weeks. She is part of a breeding program and will contractually have one more litter of puppies before she is spayed but not sure this time is the time we will agree to a breeding. When she is bred, she will remain with us until one week before pups are due then she will live with the veterinarian until pups are born and weaned, approximately 8 weeks. 8 weeks of three dogs instead of four.

The dogs have all found their spot and do very little moving around through the night. Everyone sits before entering, everyone sits before exiting to allow time for leashes. So far so good.

Today we have a lot of big stuff on Craigslist so hopefully it goes!

Ive only banged my head once on the thing over the bed....more to come im sure.

Alie and Jims Carrilite · RV-Dreams Family Member

Well in a week of craigslist response and another yard sale, we have 4 large pieces of furniture left! No one haggled on the craigslist price either, much to my surprise. Now the yard sale crowd would offer pennys on the dollar off the marked price.
Good luck on the future sales!

cejones4210 · RV-Dreams Family Member

Clay L wrote:
When we changed our minds about building or buying a new home and decided to become full timers, our stuff from a 4000 square foot home was already in storage.

Everyone told us to just get rid of all of it. So about four years or so later we went back to NH to get rid of it all. Our old neighbor owned the storage facility and let us hold a yard sale.

We sold about $10,000 worth of stuff for a $1000 but there was so much stuff that we didn't want to part with that we still ended up with a 10 X 20 storage unit that was pretty full.

After eleven years of full timing we decided to get a home base while we are still pretty healthy for the day when we have to leave the road. We bought a summer home in CO last summer and had a moving company take all of our stuff from NH to the new home.

As we started getting the house ready to live in we were very happy that we had kept our stuff.
My 20 X 30 metal shop building has a lot of unpacked boxes in it and it's going to take several summers to get them unpacked since we will now be snowbirds.

The point of all this is that getting rid of everything may be right for some folks but wasn't for us.

Clay, I agree we have discussed back and forth, fulltimer or part-time fulltimers. In N. Iowa it's just too cold to RV during the winter months, but I cannot bear the thought of not being around family during holidays. We are currently 2 hours away from children to the west and 2 hours from extended family to the east. So we decided to build closer to children and be part timers. We will be around during winter hilolidays, then take off for warmer climates. Then back again to experience spring in the Midwest and then off again to explore. Kids can keep an eye on the house while we are gone and we will have our place if we grow tired or too ill for travel. Just decided we couldn't see ourselves without a house. That's the beauty of an RV, go where and when you want.

Trix · RV-Dreams Family Member

Keep the cat. Ditch 4 towels.

:)

PS I agonized over the same towels!

scrappy · RV-Dreams Family Member

hahaha. i will ditch the towels, but the cat wont be happy, he is a barn cat. i think i found him a home with a friend in alabama, we will just have to deliver him.

WestWardHo · RV-Dreams Family Member

Trix,
Love it!