Downsizing - 2 yrs and counting

Estate sale -- our real estate agent arranged it.

If you think about it, you really only live in the living room, kitchen, and bedroom. You have two years - get rid of the stuff in all the other rooms first. Get rid of the stuff piled in the attic or the basement. That should keep you busy for six months. Then start whittling down the duplicates and triplicates you have.

The first, most important thing: stop buying stuff!

I quit my job on June 30 and renovated the house and got rid of stuff for six months. January 26, we went full time. We also had a four bedroom house. After the first two rooms were emptied and painted, I used one for storage stuff and one for full time stuff. Any time I noticed the pile in either getting too big, I went in and parsed what was needed vs. what was wanted. Moving the stuff around, particularly the stuff destined for the RV, helped pare down what was left - all that weight and bulk had to be carried...

We have now been fulltiming for 1.5 years. We have space and weight to carry more stuff but I often think we have too much stuff. We have stuff we haven't used in more than a year! So we will pare down some more before we hit our second year.

As for an exit plan, we sold our house after fulltiming for six months - we wanted to make sure we liked it. We did. We put the profits away for a rainy day - the day we decide to stop full timing.

We don't miss our stuff. Everything we need we have. Replacing the stuff we don't need - household furniture - won't be too expensive; people buy new furniture every 10-15 years anyway. Our storage stuff fits in a small closet in a relative's house. Most of it is photographs/keepsakes and power tools.

We only 1/2 time but let me ask what the exit plan is in case I do consider FT some day. Thanks

The other side of the coin is that if you add up how much it costs to replace your "stuff" - the figure is astronomical. You have to be 100% sure you don't your stuff anymore. The cost of replacing later is prohibitive. If not sure, get rid of the junk and put what you don't take with you in storage. You can always get rid of it later. Yes storing things costs $ and takes time to properly pack and store, but it might be stuff you want back someday.

Todd

Yard sale three weekend in a row. Just too much stuff. It worked but was a lot of work. Probably should have done the estate/auction style instead.

We decided to full-time in May and took off with everything gone in August. Once we started it went fast and was a VERY good feeling.

Start a room at a time and put aside things you'll take along. You'll probably look at those piles a few times and still eliminate some things - especially kitchen stuff and clothes.

Then we asked the kids to take what they wanted. It was just a few things because they had their own 'stuff' and tastes.

Then we sold big items by advertisements.

Then the garage sale, Goodwill and finally the dump. What a relief!!

We never had a feeling later that "we should have kept.....". We had everything we needed in our RV.

Good luck in your new lifestyle. We thoroughly enjoyed our travels and volunteering for 16+ years.

WE told family.....come get what you want NOW!

Then we told friends....come get what you what NOW!

Then we put the basics in our 5vr.
Then we put what we wanted to keep in our 5vr (being extremely conservative)
Then we put what we thought we might need in our 5vr.


THEN Estate Sale.....
Contacted auctioneer. He came out---we told him EVERYTHING goes. And we want it know that it leaves day of auction.
He advertised for 3 weeks prior to auction date.
Workers came out week prior and sorted/boxed items up into 'lots'
Day of auction 130 people showed up (out in the boonies of So. CAL. High Desert -----1 mile of dirt road to house from asphalt road)
Auction started at 9AM......5PM EVERYTHING was sold.

Some things went cheap...some things went for more......some for a lot more.
Auctioneers cut..25% (Advertising/sorting/boxing/handling sales/accounting)
Our cut...75% and we didn't do anything but sit back, watch and be entertained by folks bidding on our junk.

Easiest chunk of money I ever had placed in my hand.

I would think many ponder the question, and I ask for some clarification first.

It's stuff, but is this an experiment, have you spent months together in a small space before? How much are you willing to sell off now and say goodbye to forever, or will you want to store just to be sure?

Will you have a base somewhere, where some good things could be kept while the rig wanders, or will it only be what is inside the rig?

In any case, I think we would make a huge list of stuff first, then put a bunch of values to it. Some would come up as easy to dispose of, others would have sentimental value or perhaps just $$ value, and be more difficult.

If it's worth it for you to get maximum $$, then you have to spend the time on e-bay and other buy/sell sites, but if it's not, others might appreciate your charity.