It's incredibly hard to remember all the details of everything that happened between that first text that led us to full time RV life and moving in the very first day. There's so much to remember. If you haven't read the first few entries, you can check them out here. Also, if anyone is reading this and has specific questions, I'm more than happy to answer them. Just find a recent post on our Facebook Page and leave a comment. That's the easiest way for us to see it. We get a ton of messages and sometimes they get lost in the notifications and sometimes they go to spam.
On the last entry, we had found the perfect RV and officially listed our house for sale. Then came the house showings and the "planning" for RV life. But the planning at this point was hard, because we knew we still had to sell our house before we could make this a reality. Our plan was to use the profits from our house to purchase the new truck and fifth wheel with cash. So, we were stuck at this point in a sort of limbo. It was emotional craziness. I just wanted the house to sell so we could move on to the next step. I also think I was trying to mentally and emotionally detach myself from the love I had for our house. Because, honestly, I think I was secretly afraid I would change my mind and back out of everything. But we moved forward and after many, MANY showings, we finally got the offer and accepted. We listed the house on April 20, 2022 and we got on offer and accepted almost a month later on May 19, 2022.
THIS IS WHEN THINGS GOT REALLY REAL!!
When we signed on the dotted line and accepted the offer for the house, we were super happy and excited. But the emotions of "what the heck have we done" started too. What if we made a mistake? What if we hated this lifestyle and couldn't go back? What if we gave up our house and changed our mind and then couldn't get into another nice house because of the insane market? These were all things going through my head. But I also had a lot of excitement for moving forward too. In just one month's time, we had to pack up an entire 3,300 square foot house, sell or give away everything we didn't want to keep, fit everything we did want to keep into a 10X20 storage unit, plus figure out all the details with the RV. And guess what... we didn't even have the RV yet! It was still "on the way" and that threw another scary idea in the mix. What if we had to close on the house before we had the RV in our posession? To say there was a lot going on was an understatement.
This is probably what kept me going and kept me from having an emotional breakdown though. There was always something to do. I literally didn't have a moment to really slow down and think about what was happening. Looking back, I'm glad it was like that because once again, I didn't have an opportunity to get cold feet and change my mind.
So, we started packing and planning and packing and planning. And we were also trying to go through the motions of regular life and taking care of two small kids. Oh, and I haven't even mentioned, at this point, the youngest of my three older sons was still living at home with us. He had plans to move to another state and start college, so I was dealing with all of those emotions too. My three older sons are 22, 20, and 18.
(Check out my video of them here, which explains a little of why I wanted this life so bad for my two youngest boys.) So, it was like I was going to be an "empty nester" with the three of them and let me tell you, that was NOT easy for me to deal with. The day he moved out, I completely lost it...for HOURS and HOURS. I Could. Not. Stop. Crying. I walked in his empty room, cried. I found something he left behind, cried. I saw a frozen dinner of his in the freezer, cried. It was rough!
After I got myself together and soldiered on, the planning continued. One of the most fun parts of planning was buying stuff for the RV. We knew it would be so different and we would need things, so we had days where we just had piles and piles of Amazon boxes piled on our porch.
Click here for a fun video on our TikTok about that. Click here for our LinkTree and you'll find everything in that video somewhere on that list. We realized that was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to stuff we needed to get started initially. Maybe someday, we'll add up everything we spent just getting ready to move in. But that was the fun part! For the next month, we didn't stop. We got rid of so much stuff. We sent an entire truckload to a local charity. We started moving stuff to storage and we never stopped moving. Towards the end, it seemed like there was no way we would finish everything that needed to be done on time. Check out that video here. But somehow, someway, we did it!