Add one more to the list

of things we said we'd never do, then actually did.

We bought a truck today on ebay. We didn't even know about this truck yesterday. But we looked this morning and there it was, a pretty blue, with a heavy duty fifth wheel hitch already installed, automatic...pretty much everything we were hoping to find down to the stereo with an aux input. And it was cheaper than any other truck we looked at. It's in Chicago, so Jeremy's going to pick it up tomorrow.

We also sold our van today to the dealer. We may have come out ahead in the long run by waiting for a private seller, but we needed the truck and we know we'll need to buy gear for the camper, so rather than have our cash tied up in an extra car payment each month we went for the quick sale. I think we actually did really well considering we bought a brand new car and then sold it to a dealer less than six months later.

We're becoming kind of impulsive, spontaneous people, aren't we?

Success

The open house went really well. Our realtor was nearly speechless with how the house looked. I think the low expectations may have worked in our favor. She couldn't believe the change we'd made this week. It really does look pretty good, I must say. I can't really relax here because I feel such pressure to keep everything looking clean and neat, but I do feel like I can breathe easier with so much less stuff lying around. At the same time, I can see why people who live in RVs for awhile see 'stick houses' as a big waste of space. Now that we've cleared out so many things we don't actually use, there is a LOT of open space that isn't really serving any purpose.

We're pretty worn out from all the work on the house, but at least maintenance should be a little easier than it was to get it this way. Think we could just let the kids live in the little house in the backyard until the house sells? Things would stay a lot cleaner that way.

This week we'll be learning the ropes on our new home! Hopefully we'll have a truck to take it home with us by the end of the week, but that's still very much a work in progress.

Showtime

Well, the house is pretty much ready, believe it or not. I'm sure our realtor will be pleasantly surprised. We hadn't exactly given her a lot of confidence when she came by on Wednesday. Jeremy has done a ton of work around the house and yard, touching up paint, taking care of the lawn, and fixing random things that were wearing out. I've kept working on the stuff issue, packing, sorting, pricing, and cleaning. Today we both hit things hard and now, at 11:45pm, I think we're pretty much ready for the open house. All we have to do is wash our breakfast dishes, put the laundry in the hamper, and keep the kids from undoing all our hard work before we leave for church.

The house looks better than it ever has since we've lived here. I hope someone comes to the open house tomorrow and falls in love with it. It really is a nice house. If it had wheels, we'd definitely be keeping it.

The days are blurring together

We have been working our tailfeathers off these last few days trying to get the house ready for the open house this Sunday and also trying to buy a truck so we can go pick up our new house next Tuesday. Craziness! So much sorting, packing, scrubbing, painting...it is going to be such a relief when we're done with all this. When we picked a date to have our house on the market, I wasn't really thinking we'd be moved out by then, but in many ways it feels like we have to be.

We do have some promising leads on selling our van and we've found another truck that would work well for us (the first one didn't work out), so things are encouraging on that front. Hopefully our house will move quickly too and we'll be free once we hit the road.

We are not our stuff

We didn't really think of ourselves as people who had a lot of stuff. For the 2005-2006 school year, we lived in Thailand with what fit in four 70 pound suitcases. It seemed like so little when we were packing, yet when we arrived we had more than we needed and wished we had packed less. In fall of 2006 we returned to the US, had our first baby, and moved into our first house. The following spring we purchased our first home, a three bedroom home with a partially finished basement, about 2100 square feet. Neither of us are big spenders or shoppers and we considered our home very modestly furnished without a lot of 'things'. Every time we moved, including moving into this home, we sold, gave away, or tossed many items.

So how is it that in the two years we lived in this home, we accumulated so many things? Something about having the space made us no longer need to continue to purge items we don't need, and we acquired more toys and furniture as we added to our family. It still didn't seem like a lot until we decided to move into an RV and get rid of all the things we no longer needed or used. We were ashamed to see how many things that really was. Box after box was filled. We rented a 14 foot truck at one point to move things out before selling our house, and our house was still more than adequately furnished after that. All over the world, there are families whose entire home is the size of that truck. And here we are, filling it with just some of our excess. It was enough to make us sick. Have we really been good stewards of our resources? We say that things aren't our focus, that people are more important, but are we really teaching our children that by the way we live? How many hours have been spent taking care of this stuff we don't even need-cleaning, organizing, and picking up-that could have been spent playing with our kids?

We are looking forward to this time to see how little we really and truly need in the way of 'things'. We'll go back to talking and playing games together instead of each person having their own toys to play with. And hopefully we'll shed the need to always be looking for our next new thing, and instead focus on the next new place we'll experience as a family and the next new friend we'll make along the way.

More of the same

So, aside from the fact that we're still rather disgusted with ourselves that we had enough junk we don't really need to fill a 14 foot U-haul, today was a pretty good day. I found my missing van keys, and we found Rinnah's missing pacifier. Jeremy got mirrored closet doors hung in Rinnah's room which really brightens things up in there. And I got more stuff sorted, priced, stored, and pitched.

You know, when we were in the earlier stages of planning this (like 3 or 4 weeks ago), I would read on forums where people were in a similar spot to us, only they were planning on leaving in spring 2010 or even 2011. That made me kind of nervous and rightfully so. This would have been a whole lot easier if we had given ourselves more than four months. Well, next time we want to sell 80% of our belongings, including a house and two vehicles, we'll know better.

Moving day

Today we moved out. Or at least, it felt that way. We rented a Uhaul and moved out some of the biggest furniture that we had to clear up some space. We took out our king-sized bed and put up our queen guest bed in our room. We moved out the piano. We returned the treadmill we'd been borrowing. Several other awkward-sized items went too, like my bicycle and a computer desk we'll be selling. And a ton more boxes, mostly for the garage sale but some boxes of pictures & other memories items we're not ready to get rid of just yet. It was a lot of work, but it feels so good to get rid of things. I think this stuff-purging is getting addictive.

We're actually thinking now about selling our car too. Why keep a car we won't be driving for two years? We can always get another one later when we need it. We kept it when we moved to Thailand for a year, but that made a little more sense since we kept very little else and figured we'd need a way to get to job interviews and potential apartments. But if we could sell it now, that would be nice since we own it outright and it could help with cash flow issues. And all the reasons we had for keeping it seem pretty silly anyway. It's just a car.

My garage sale pile is getting rather enormous. I sure hope people want to buy this stuff, because I don't want to have to rent a truck again to take it all to goodwill.

Thank goodness

Our furnace stopped working over the weekend. We noticed since we got a crazy cold snap and it snowed. Our furnace was happily blowing away, only the air was cold. Clearly we can't sell a house with a broken furnace, so we had the guy come out today. He told us we needed a whole new furnace. It would be around $4000 and a salesman could come by in a few hours to talk to us.

Before we plunked down that kind of change, we decided to call a different serviceman just to get a second opinion. Best $78 we spent all week. He basically (in as polite a terms as possible) told us the first guy was trying to rip us off. The problem could be as simple as the wind blowing down the chimney just right, or as complicated as we need to replace a $200 switch if it happens again. No new furnace needed. Praise the Lord!

Needless to say, we won't be calling the first place ever again if we have trouble.

One of the hardest things to give up

I love couponing.

It's not just using a coupon here and there. It's a whole different mindset on grocery shopping. You don't make your list with what you'll eat for the week. You make your list by what's on sale, then fill in the items you need and don't already have in stock. After awhile, you do most of your shopping out of your own pantry, and each week you're pretty much just buying the sale items for the week plus fresh produce, milk, & bread. It's changed our diet dramatically-we eat much healthier meals, with more fresh ingredients, and our monthly budget was cut in half.

Obviously, I'll need to make a bit of a paradigm shift when we move into the RV. I will no longer have the room to store 50 boxes of cereal, 20 cans of soup, or 30 bags of frozen veggies, just because they're free. Plus, since we're planning on being in a new place each week, every Sunday I'd need to figure out which paper in the area carries the most coupons and where I can go to buy a copy. And every week I'll need to figure out what grocery store is in the area and find what's on sale there. I won't be able to follow the normal 2-3 month cycle of sales since we'll always be moving to a new area. That sounds like a lot of work for much less benefit than we get now.

I know that logically, it makes much more sense to use the coupons I have, but give up on buying papers and going hard-core. I can do the occasional coupon clipper service for items we know we will buy regardless and switch to Aldi/generics as much as possible. Even if our grocery bill goes up a little, it will be worth it to have the space.

But it still will feel strange to simply walk through the store, fill up my cart, and pay.

I guess this is good practice

for when we're in colder weather.

Our furnace is dysfunctional today. We had just made it into spring weather and now we're getting this funky cold snap with snow tonight, and of course it picks now to break. It doesn't look to be anything too expensive (fingers crossed!) but it's not lighting so we have no heat. We've got space heaters going and our house is staying around 64 for now. Obviously we will be fixing this since we're selling the house, but we don't want to pay $$$ out the wazoo just for calling on the weekend, so we're toughing it out until Monday. Probably good practice for those times when we wind up in an unexpected cold spell. Yes, we got a four seasons unit-but I'm sure we'll still be stingy with the propane like we're stingy with our utilities now, and we'll prefer to put on an extra layer and sleep with an extra blanket. It turns out 64 is a lot warmer than it sounds, especially with an occasional warm breeze to fool you.

We went to the Springfield RV show today. It was more a diversion and a chance to destress, since I can no longer relax in my house. (I just look around and see all the things we need to get done in the next week.) We were disappointed at how small it was, and how few vendors there were (we were hoping to shop for some accessories), but it was still a nice way to spend the morning and think about the lifestyle we get to adopt so very soon.

I also emailed a lady who is living in a fifth wheel with her husband and their two year old. She had some great advice for how she keeps her son entertained and what things look like with a little one on the road. It's reassuring to know that there are other people out there doing this successfully and happily, even with very young kids. You can see their blog at http://www.bigtrucknewhouse.blogspot.com/.

We've rented a truck for Tuesday to move out more unnecessary furniture and storage items before our open house next week. And we've scheduled our RV orientation (and first night in our new house!) for April 7th. That will be a great reward for making it through the open house, and I think we'll be able to enjoy it a lot more since it will be after the bulk of things for our house are done.

Just keep pressing on.

Simpler

This is supposed to be simplifying our lives, right? It sure doesn't feel that way yet.

My head is spinning with all the things we need to do. Packing and moving out random stuff, rearranging and borrowing furniture, staging the house, buying some items for staging the house. Relisting the van for sale, calling dealers to see what they'd buy it for, looking for backup options. Arranging financing for the truck, working out an agreement on price, figuring out how that purchase will work. Finding time to pick up the camper, doing the walk-through, camping for the first night, figuring out what we'll need by then, looking for checklists and tips for the walk-through. Making lists of what we need for the RV, shopping for the best prices, prioritizing what we need before we leave and what can wait. Pulling out things for the garage sale, pricing them all, organizing them, and getting them ready to sell. Packing and organizing the things we're keeping in storage. And somewhere in there, keeping track of where my two kids are and when they need to eat, sleep, and have their diapers changed.

In six months our lives will look so different from now. I'm sure there will be stresses, but they will be different. At least we won't have the stress of all the stuff and what I have to do to take care of it.

The Stager

The stager came today.

It was a little stressful, since I was picturing having another week or so to get ready. She came in, gave us some ideas, and left with our furniture all out of whack and halfway to a new arrangement. Now things are everywhere. So much for my nice clean house and only needing to work on the basement.

We're also still working on selling our van. No leads yet. I hope we're able to sell it for a fair price. We're not looking to profit a ton off it, just enough to pay for the truck we need that has a lower value than our van.

Oh, and the Oprah show called today! They did a "simplify your life" show awhile back about inspiring people to declutter and I wrote in telling how we're getting rid of most of our things to live in an RV for two years, and how I hope that this will be a good learning experience for us and our kids about not always needing a lot of things or needing something new. They called today asking for more information about our timeline. She was a little disappointed when I said that we had already decluttered a lot of our house and we were leaving in June 09, not June 2010. I'm not sure if anything will come of it or not. It would be fun to do one of the short little bits where viewers Skype in to the show live. Who knows?

More preparation

It makes me feel a little sick to think about how much time I've had to spend getting these piles and piles of things we don't need out of the house. I'm not even done yet and there is an enormous stack of boxes and tubs of things we're selling. What does it say about us that in only two years we've managed to accumulate so much unnecessary clutter? It's amazing how you (and your things) just grow to fit the available space.

We've also been working on our RV "shopping list". Seems kind of silly to have to buy stuff when a big part of this trip is all about getting rid of things, but there are some things there's no way around. We need to buy some sewer maintenance & electrical items for the trailer, and there are other items too like bed tents for the kids (replacing their current cribs) and certain tools that we don't have. Hopefully the money from selling a lot of our current stuff will pay for the bulk of what we need.

Open House soon!

We met with the realtor today. It actually went really well-she said that many of the improvements we made to the house should help with marketability, and we're in an awesome spot for a family (quiet cul-de-sac in the best school district). She's optimistic that with interest rates being so low, there will be some buyers out there. And she gave us a number to list our house at that is higher than we thought she'd say. Obviously no guarantee we'll sell it for that price, but it was encouraging that she doesn't think it's overpriced there.

We're planning to have the open house on April 5th. Definitely still have work to do, but I think that's realistic. We're the kind of people who just need to pick a date and call that our deadline, or else we'll never manage to get it done. So this is a good thing.

We haven't gotten any bites on our van yet. I think we may take it to a dealer and ask what we could get for it from them. We'd prefer to find a private seller, but we are on a timetable so we'll have to see what we can get. We just need to sell it for enough to buy the truck, and our van is worth more than the truck, so it *should* work out. Just have little details like sales tax to figure out.

Tomorrow's the day

we meet with the realtor. Hopefully it will go well and she'll be optimistic about our chances of selling soon and recouping most of our costs.

The weather was beautiful today. We got to spend a few hours playing in the yard, and even then Ian didn't want to come in. I think he'll do just fine with spending time at campgrounds and parks.

June?

We've been reading a lot of forums of RVers, especially those traveling with kids. One thing that seems universally agreed upon is that the Fourth of July fireworks at Mount Rushmore are unmatched and definitely worth seeing. There's apparently a huge all-day celebration too. It sounds like a lot of fun. That, combined with the fact that becoming South Dakota residents is looking increasingly promising, is making us want to do this earlier start to our trip:

Start off heading to visit our good friends in Kansas City, then head north to Sioux Falls to get mail forwarding & residency things set up, then head over to Mount Rushmore for the 4th of July. Then we'd have about two weeks to get down to Colorado Springs to meet my family. It looks like a nice route, doesn't it? And it's heavier driving, but very doable IF we can get out of here by early-mid June. What are the odds of that?

So we've been thinking about what's next. We're calling the realtor tomorrow morning to list the house-hopefully this will sell quickly but we all know how the housing market is. We also need to help clear out some more space in my mom's basement so we can store some things there, and if need be we'll buy an outdoor shed to store the overflow. We also need to sell our van so we can buy a truck so we can bring our camper home. We need to camp in it several times (as many as possible) so we can work out the kinks and feel totally comfortable with operating everything before we leave. We need to stock the RV, which involves purchasing many items and learning to use them. We need to pack & store everything we're not taking. We need to be fully moved out of our house before we leave so we don't have to come back if it isn't sold before we go.

No problem, right? Surely we could do that in a little over two months. :)

The weekend

Yesterday was nice. It was pretty low-key around here, but Jeremy did get some yardwork done and I have straightened up the basement a little, and done a few more small things like listing items on Craigslist and pull more things for the yard sale. We also went to the park with Ian and took some adorable pictures of Rinnah there and in the tub. (Ian was not so cooperative for the camera.)

From Late Feb/March

From Late Feb/March

From Late Feb/March

From Late Feb/March

Not too happy about her brother splashing her.

From Late Feb/March

From Late Feb/March

We also spent some time compiling a list of RV books that look interesting. There are so many books out there about RV maintenance, and living in an RV, and cooking in an RV, and where to go in your RV....I think at minimum we'll need to purchase a good atlas, a good campground directory, and a good basic maintenance 101 type book since we have no idea what we're doing yet. It's just hard to decipher which will be the best from the descriptions online.

More cleaning

More cleaning today. We have more or less gotten the first floor ready to show now. It's kind of strange; it almost doesn't feel like our house anymore. All our pictures are put away, and most of our personal stuff. We put away most of the kitchen appliances and decorations. A lot of things have been sent to my mom's to get ready for the garage sale. It just looks kind of....sparse. I mean, that's the whole point-make it look big and open and impersonal, so people can imagine their own things here. But it still feels strange.

We're still trying to decide what to do this weekend. There are so many things we should do-rake the yard, fix things around the house, move out some furniture, touch up some paint, clean out the garage, price things for the garage sale....we have hours and hours of work to do. But we've worked hard all week and we need a little downtime too. Maybe we'll look through all the brochures for exciting campgrounds we picked up at the RV show and see if any places should be on our destination list. That would be fun, and it's almost productive even.

Slow and steady

Ian went over to a friend's house again this morning, and Jeremy arranged it so he could take a little time off work. Jeremy did some work on the yard and I scrubbed the kitchen floor and worked on getting that room ready. Hopefully we'll be able to call the realtor next Monday and list the house. And hopefully she won't need any pictures of the basement, because that will need a little more time.

I also got more things priced and packed for the garage sale, and listed a jumperoo on Craigslist. I'd like to get some car seats and some other large items listed there, because I think it will be easier to sell on Craigslist than at the garage sale.

In between, we got to go to the park. We're starting to get some warm weather and Ian was super rambunctious and wild today, so it was a good day to go let him run. Rinnah is also really enjoying the slides now, so she had fun too.

Wanna buy a van?

We listed our van for sale. :( It's kind of sad in a way. We were SO excited when we got that van, and now here it is only five months later and we need to sell it. At least someone will save some money off buying a new one. Once we have this sold we can buy the truck we like. It belongs to one of the employees at the RV dealership, and he isn't in any huge hurry to sell, so he's probably going to wait until we're ready to buy it. That's pretty awesome.

I was thinking today about how this whole RV thing is going to bring back so many things I enjoyed about my life before kids-travel, the ability to pack up everything in one vehicle (okay, so one vehicle with a really large trailer, but still), enjoying the great outdoors, camping.....there are so many things I love about this plan.