Starting Over
Starting over. What an intimidating thing to do! Most people never try to start again, for fear of failure, or just getting outside of their comfort zone. I have the opposite problem. The wanderlust I feel almost everyday of my life is fanatical. Dreaming (both during day and night) of new places, locations marked in my travel bucket list, and having numerous Pinterest boards on different locations. So it would make so much sense for me, and my little family, to move into a home on wheels in order to travel whenever we want to, whenever we can! I still can’t believe we did it, three months in and we haven’t felt one bit of regret. We’re happy with the new set up we have and it is giving us something to look forward to everyday when we wake up.
So how did we decide this? Well my husband, being the intuitive soul that he is, brought up moving out of our house and living on the road - during a fight about the dishwasher no less- and it was an instant decision it seemed. We suddenly felt this excitement mixed with fear. How would we work? What would be done with all of our stuff? How expensive will this be? Yet among all of those questions stood one sensation more important than anything… eagerness. It would be hard and we would need to encourage each other through our doubts. Yes, we would need to get through a very long to-do list before the real fun would begin. But we were going to do it!
So. How did we do it, you ask? Well I’m not entirely sure, it all happened so fast! We started by going through our items, and then researched information for a game plan, which was the biggest thing. It was important to me that we have a schedule, or an approximation of when certain tasks could be completed, or even started. Once we had that plan in place, as well as getting our stuff organized and ready to sell, we contacted a realtor to put the house on the market! Following that, we had a huge garage sale! We joked about having an estate sale instead, but we still made lots of profit, while also taking about 1/4 of it to Volunteers of America. Our research found us a wonderful camper as well, she’s a Forest River Palomino Columbus 382FB, and it’s perfect. Have you ever seen a butler’s pantry in a fifth wheel? Neither had we! I’ll admit, some items were pretty difficult to let go of. One of the first things we sold was an electric fireplace/tv stand that we’ve had since our first apartment. We bought it for about $20 since the actual heater did not work, and it was one of my husband’s first fixes in our home. We also had to part with chairs and dressers, all of which we had from garage sales or hand-me-downs since our engagement. There were memorabilia items from childhood, books, papers, clothing! You never realize how much stuff you actually have until it is time to downsize, and we have only been married about 4 years!
After a “short” jog to Minnesota for our 5th wheel, we had finally gotten the camper home to Michigan. It took me a good week to get everything we were keeping in their place, yet it still felt like we needed to get rid of more. We also went on a few preliminary trips with the rig to work the kinks out. Hubby set up 50 amp plugs at both our parents’ places for when staying at our “home bases” we like to call it. We even found the money to buy all of the essentials** that don’t come with the rig. Things like chocks, water hose, special toilet paper, and even the sewer hose (we were genuinely shocked that it did not come with one of those). **I’ll write a post about all of the essentials when living/vacationing in an RV soon!
While we are still going through these changes in our lives, and taking care of loose ends, we are hanging out in Michigan for a while. Staying at our parents’ places (well, their driveways) has given us this sort of crutch to get through the transition. It’s been wonderful to not have to pay for internet or water/sewer bills (we help out with electricity if it gets high because of our ac in the heat) and focusing those funds on more dire things.
We don’t have all of the answers, and I don't anticipate ever having all of them, but we have a general direction to head in and that’s all we like to focus on at the moment.
Life’s too short and too valuable to create an intricate plan. You have to just do whatever sounds like the next right thing. No one ever has it all figured out. It really is like they say, “once you make a plan, you can hear God laughing”! So don’t plan your life around the expected or the safe, hope for it to be filled with exciting, adventurous, or even unthinkable things! Because in the end, when you are looking back on your life, nobody ever said “I wish I had traveled, pursued, or dreamed less”
From one dreamer to another, hopefully I can inspire you to let go of your limitations, then as you discover your dream- and chase it- follow us as we do the same. Thanks for reading!
-E
