Full Time RV Living — Becoming Homeless

We finally did it. After being marooned in Missouri for what felt like forever, we sold or gave away (nearly) all of our material possessions, put our house on the market and are now on the road full time. In this post we talk about the process — the things we did to get there, and the many things that we did not expect.

We drastically underestimated how long it would take us to get our house ready to sell. We began in earnest in the middle of February with plans to be out of “the big house” by the end of March. This was unrealistic.

We began by selling all of our furniture. We then had an indoor garage sale for some of the smaller household items. What didn’t sell was donated to charity.

Around this same time we called our good friend and realtor to take a look at the property. We asked her to tell us what we would need to do to make it ready for market. We began work on her suggestions immediately.

Make Ready

Some of our family helped out with the outdoor tasks. We usually do everything ourselves, but watching after a toddler significantly reduces a person’s ability to work on house projects. We are eternally grateful to everyone who pitched in to help us get the property grounds ready.

More hands make less work

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After the outside work was completed we began on the indoor make-ready tasks. These included flooring the basement, adding trim to the basement, hanging “barn doors” in one bedroom, touching up paint throughout the house, and more. It took several weeks to complete everything, but we were able to get the house on the market by the middle of April.

Meanwhile …

Home Base

We knew that we wanted to have a “home base” that was ours. When the COVID pandemic began many RV’ers found themselves unable to check into campgrounds. We did not want to end up in this situation, so we had been looking for a small piece of property with basic utilities, but no house. We only needed a place to park the RV. After looking at several places we finally found one that looked like it would work. We put in an offer and went under contract.

And then the drama began.

We may write a post about the ordeal that it was to purchase the property, but we will save that for another time. It suffices to say that the deal almost fell through, but everything lined up at the very last possible minute to make the sale go through.

While we were glad to have five acres that are ours, we could have done without all of the drama. It took away much needed time from us getting “the big house” on the market.

But we did get it on the market. Not only that, but we had a buyer the first weekend. And it wasn’t a property management company snatching up more of America for rental property, but a very nice family from our neighborhood. They loved the area, and didn’t want to leave, but their family had outgrown their present house. Ours provided the space they needed, and it is less than half a mile from where they live now. We did not expect such a perfect situation for all parties involved.

Jacks up! Oh wait …

With “the big house” under contract and our home base secured, all that was left was to get our conex box moved and get on the road. We planned to depart in one week after having done some remodeling in the RV basement to make more space for storage.

And then … more RV troubles.

Anyone who tells you that buying an RV new will keep you from having problems is either a fool, or a liar, and possibly both.

Our galley holding tank had a leak when we bought our RV. We had attempted a cheap-hack fix, but it didn’t hold. As an appointment with a service center would take too long, and since we are very capable DIY’ers, we decided to take down the belly boards (again!) to fix it ourselves.

We decided that we would replace all three holding tank blade valves while we had the belly open. The valves installed at the factory were sticky enough that we were afraid that we would pull the handles off when we had to open them. Changing them turned into an ordeal worthy of a post of its own.

We also had a bit of “while we’re in here” syndrome, and ran new 6/3 wire from the shore power plug to the front bay of the RV where we planned to install our lithium batteries, Victron inverters and solar components. We also ran, or finished running, all of the cat6 for wired ethernet jacks.

Outside the belly, we installed SoftStartRV soft-starts in our two air conditioners so that we can use them while on generator power, and to reduce the load on the to-be-installed Victron inverters.

Believe it or not, we got all of that done in one short week, and with a couple of rainy days.

Jacks up! For real this time!

We said goodbye to our old house and old life on May 2, 2022.

We took one final walk through of “the big house” and the property. It was bitter-sweet, certainly. Our son was born in the master bedroom of that house. Our daughter spent half of her childhood in that house. But, we also lost three of our beloved family pets while we lived in that house. The COVID plandemic happened while we were in that house. Sam left “big tech” while we were in that house. So many memories.

It took a week for it to really sink in that we would never be going back to that house. Maybe it’s still sinking in. We are both still having occasional “Did we really do this? Are we crazy?” moments. But we also feel very liberated.

We both worked very hard for a lot of years to get to where we were in life — too hard, much of the time. We realized that life was passing us by and that our kids were going to be grown far faster than we wanted. So we gave it all up, cashed in our chips, and now we are on the greatest adventure of our lives. So far.

Thank you for a frightening, confusing, strange and dangerous time.

“Dream A Little Dream”

Life is an adventure. Whatever your adventure is, make sure you are living it to the fullest.