Downsizing for RV Living

Downsizing for RV Living

Making the decision to downsize

Deciding to live full-time in an RV meant extreme downsizing. I went from a 3,000 square foot house with a pool on over a half acre to … very small. Maybe 200 square feet?

Over the past few years, I had been working on cleaning out my garage, where all the stuff seemed to end up. But I had been doing it very slowly.

That all changed once I made the decision to sell my house and move into my RV to travel the US.

Downsizing steps and strategies

Know the size of your new space.

Having that in mind, it made it easier to make decisions about what could stay and what had to go. If it didn’t fit in my new house on wheels, it had to be sold, donated, or tossed.

I could no longer take baby steps, I had to move quickly. By February I had put a plan in place to move into the RV by June. Four months, or so I thought.

I chose one big thing to work on each month. This was my original plan.

February - clothes, Ebay

March - sell my truck

April - Facebook Marketplace

May - Yard Sale

June - sell car, move

I planned to sell things in the order of higher dollar to lower dollar, saving the things I knew I would make the least amount of money on or that I still wanted to use for a while for the yard sale.

But things didn’t go quite as planned. Early on I decided I needed to keep the truck to help me get things to Good Will! So I actually held on to the truck until the first week of May, the week I closed on the sale of my house.

I listed the house for sale on the Thursday before Easter, and it was sold by the next Monday, with the stipulation I would be out of the house by the first week in May.

Now I had just 27 days to get out!

Step 1: Purging my clothes

I had a large master closet that I didn’t have to share with anyone, as well as 2 other bedroom closets I had also started to fill up with my clothes.

I started by taking the clothes I knew I wanted to keep and moving them to the smallest wall in my closet. That really cut my clothes down by ⅔. Mostly my business clothes were on the bigger side, because I didn’t plan on getting a corporate job ever again.

I knew that the clothes I did not choose to keep were going mostly to Good Will, but I didn’t plan on giving away the clothes until May, just in case I changed my mind about this whole full-time RV life.

I did the same thing with clothes in my dresser.

I was aware of the size of the closet I had to work with in the RV, and the size of the cabinet I planned to use, with storage containers, for the items that didn’t have to be hung up.

If it didn’t fit into those spaces, it had to go. And the clothes I had relocated to the small side of the closet still took up double the space of the RV closet.

So, I went through those clothes again. The clothes I was keeping:

Had to be in perfect condition
Had to be clothes I had worn within the last year
Had to be washable in a washing machine. No more dry-cleaning

Those three “rules” helped me to limit my wardrobe to a manageable amount.

If you are starting to downsize, or considering downsizing, your three things might be different.

I also bought four soft, pliable storage boxes that would fit in the upper cabinets.

I labeled them with the items I was planning to put in them, and I filled them up with the clothes I planned on keeping. Bathing suits and pajamas, jeans, shorts and yoga pants, and T-shirts.

I used the same three rules I used for my closet, and filled up the containers. If it didn’t fit, I put it in the Good Will pile.

Labeling these containers makes it easy for me to pick out what I want, without having to search every container for what I want.

Step 2: Purging everything else

The downsizing process:

Keep

Kitchen supplies

Pots and pans, utensils, small appliances. I kept what I knew I would use on a weekly basis, and what wouldn’t break in an RV, and I gave the rest to my daughters, friends, and family.

Furniture

I did the same thing with furniture, tools, other household items. I took pictures, texted it out to family and friends, and saw if anyone wanted it.

If no one wanted it, it went in the for sale pile, even if it broke my heart.

I had decided early on, based on reading about other peoples’ RV life experiences, that I was not going to get a storage unit or store my belongings at other peoples’ houses.

As I continued on in my purging process and time started to run out, it made it easier to make decisions about letting things go. Everything eventually started to go so quickly that I didn’t even have time to feel badly about what stayed and what went.

Toss

As I was downsizing my closet, I was also tossing out bags filled contractor bags two times a week.

Old makeup, clothes and bedding that I didn’t want to donate to Good Will, old empty paint cans. You know, all the stuff that collects in your drawers and your garage, or at least it did in mine.

I was amazed at how much stuff my family had collected over the years. I knew it was a lot, but it seemed to never end.

I also had a ton of old paperwork like old tax returns, bills, etc. I decided the fastest and most secure way to dispose of these items was to burn them.

I had a burn bin I bought from Walmart, and after a couple of burn sessions, my pile was gone.

The important papers I needed to keep were put into a soft-side, lockable fireproof file for safe keeping.

Give

I asked my daughters, my family and my friends if there was anything they wanted.

I found the easiest way with my daughters was to first box up any of their things and deliver it to them.

Taking the time for them to look over every individual item, as I was doing, would have been too consuming, and I was running out of time.

I also found that there were a lot of emotional triggers that came with going through every item. Some days I would look at an item, a picture, or an old greeting card, and I would have to stop for the day. There was a lot of emotional baggage in that house.

Then I boxed up the things for my family and loaded it into the RV to deliver to them along my route.

And friends either picked things up or I dropped it off.

I just had to get things out of the house quickly.

When the realtor came to the house to take pictures, we moved the boxes from one side of the room to the other and staged the house with any remaining furniture.

By this point, I had almost everything that I had decided to keep moved into the RV.

I was living in the RV in my backyard with my pets while the house was being shown and during the inspections. It actually made the whole process a lot easier and less stressful for me.

I would recommend an RV in your backyard for anyone selling their house! It was so much better than having to constantly leave the house every time someone wanted to come through.

It also helped that I didn't have to keep the house clean, because I wasn't living in it. Just moving boxes out whenever no one else was planning on being there.

Having a 30 amp RV electric hookup on the house really came in handy so I had electricity in the RV, and it was actually a selling point! A level piece of land you can store your RV on with a 30-amp electrical hookup.

Donate

A dozen to two trips to Good Will with items like toys, small furniture and appliances, anything I thought would be hard to sell or not worth the effort for a yard sale or on Facebook Marketplace.

I got receipts for everything, and documented the drop offs with a picture for tax purposes, just in case. Because no one would actually believe the amount of donations I had!

Most people there dropped off a bag or two. I was able to fill at least two of their rolling bins every time I went.

Sell

I decided to sell things on Ebay that were easy to ship and that I thought I would make more money on than if I put it out at a yard sale.

My highest ticket items ended up being older video games from when my kids were little. They had already taken the games and game systems they wanted. These games were also the easiest things to ship.

I did very well with Ebay for about a month. Then I didn’t. Who knows what happened there, but I decided to sell whatever I hadn’t sold already at my yard sale.

Except I didn’t have a yard sale, or use Facebook Marketplace.

Time was not on my side, and with just 27 days to clean out the house and move, I decided to have an estate sale, run by a company that would take anything that didn’t sell and donate it to charity and give me the receipts.

The estate sale people took a week to take inventory and stage the sale and two weeks to sell.

Watching your beloved treasures go for pennies on the dollar was sad. I knew what to expect, but it was still surprising how little many things sold for.

There was a lot leftover, but they boxed it all up and took it away, to donate to charities.

An overview of the extreme downsizing experience

Whatever really happened to the stuff after it was removed from my home was no longer my business.

When the whole process was complete, I was so tired and over it that I really didn't care. It took me a couple of months to decompress and recover, and traveling was the best therapy.

I had a lot of time to rest, reflect, recover and move on.

The end result was that my house was empty. Goal achieved in a record time of just three months from decision to done.

Once in a while a thought of something I used to own creeps back into my mind. But not having so much “stuff” has been very freeing.

I kept what I wanted and what I needed and let the rest go. Now I go through my things once a month, and donate or share what I haven’t used or have no need for.

I appreciate every inch of space I can gain in my tiny home.

Shopping has become much simpler, and spending money on things that I really don’t want or need is a thing of the past.

Thanks for joining me as I explore more in this full-time RV life.

If you have any comments or questions about extreme downsizing, or if you want the complete list of the items that did make it on to my RV to help me start my new life, click here and ask for the RV essentials list.

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