Choosing the RV Lifestyle: Tips For Getting Ready And Packing Up Before You Hit The Road

After taking three years to make the decision, then telling everyone we were going to do it, the next thing we had to do was to get rid of "stuff" -- you know, all the things we collected over the years, the house, the extra car, the memorabilia of our lives.

I had one closet in my house where I kept photographs, my "party dishes", and Christmas ornaments. Going through that one closet took me 6 weeks. I cried a lot, smiled a lot, and finally, let go of a lot. I picked the best few photographs, a couple of Christmas ornaments, and two small platters to keep for myself, and gave the rest away.

We hired an estate sale company to do the rest. They came to our house, pulled everything out of closets and drawers, did the pricing, took care of advertising, and handled the sale. It was amazing what people bought: open boxes of food from the kitchen pantry, scraps of fabric and trims from old sewing projects, old stained sheets and bath towels. But at the end of two days, we had an almost empty house.

We put the house on the market to sell it, but after 6 months there were no buyers. We had a heart to heart discussion with the real estate agent, who told us we needed to paint inside and out, put in a new dishwasher, and replace all the windows on the front of the house. It was an enormous job for us, but a year later, we put a "For Sale" sign in the yard again, and ten days later were sitting at the closing table, and the rest is history.

During the year and a half between the estate sale and the sale of our house, the house was furnished with two LaFuma recliners, a 13" TV/VCR combo, our bed, a refrigerator, and not much else. We lived out of cardboard boxes, and pretended we were camping in our living room.

Do I regret it? No way! I look forward every day to a new RV adventure.

Our first RV home...