Loosened Our Load - June 1, 2013

We bought our 2008 Itasca Meridian in January 2012 and put over 22,000 miles on it the first year. We enjoyed the traveling in the motorhome (MH) so much that, in September 2012, we decided to try “full-timing” and live in the MH. Our plan to FT included selling our house and all the furniture and move into the MH in the spring of 2013. We began cleaning out closets getting rid of stuff to prepare to put our house on the market. After 36 trips to Goodwill, Salvation Army, DAV and ARC in 2012, we were making good headway.

We took a month-long trip to Florida in January, returning to Colorado in early-February, asking ourselves “why come home so soon”? We continued clearing out closets and selling furniture, and by mid-April, were ready to put the house on the market. It went on the market on April 18^th as we left town for a trip to Austin, TX. We got an offer on April 20th within hours of its first and only showing. We were stunned it went so quickly, but after de-cluttering and many little home projects, it really was “move-in ready”.

We returned home from Austin and began selling our remaining furniture on Craig’s List in earnest and made many more trips to Goodwill. We rented a small storage unit to store our family photo albums, some framed pictures, china, pots & pans, and a few other items we wanted to keep. We (and our cat Shasta) moved out of the house (2,600 square feet) and into our MH (300 SF) on Sunday, May 19^th and closed the sale and handed over the keys on May 20^th.



Old home

 

We realize that this was a huge step, but we wanted to be “liberated” from our stuff and live a simpler lifestyle, seeing all the things we only passed by on those infrequent vacations. Now it is time to enjoy the country where every night we can sleep in a comfortable bed, eat food from the local farmer’s market, and return to our home on wheels. No we’re not “homeless”---we’re “houseless”.

New Home

 

We left Colorado Springs in our rear view mirror on Tuesday, May 27th and traveled to Sioux Falls, South Dakota where we established our new “domicile”. On Friday we went and got our SD driver's licenses, registered to vote, and re-plated our GMC Yukon. We’re using a mail forwarding service here in Sioux Falls as our new mailing address. We're staying through the weekend and head to Forest City, Iowa on Monday.