1. Live as if…
We had been planning to become full-timer mobile residents for over 3 years. One way we helped ourselves was to deliberating begin to live ‘as if.’
We measured a few motorhome spaces, and began to move ‘into’ the space in our own home. This included moving from a master suite to the smallest bedroom in our house, and using the smallest bathroom. We also downsized to one dresser and small closet.
We then grouped our office desks (we own a business and work-where-we-live), our TV and couch space into the equivalent of a 2-slide motorhome living space. We couldn’t ‘move’ the kitchen, but we narrowed all our dishes, pots, pans and gadgets into one small set of cabinets on one side of the kitchen.
We lived like this for 9 months while still shopping and eventually purchasing our motorhome. We also started purging house items and memorabilia as soon as we got serious in our shopping, so by the time we moved into the MH we had only to use a small storage unit for a few items and our business documents that have to be maintained.
2. Study your fingers off
We decided early on that a motorhome was our choice of vehicle, and began learning all we could about these units – including reading lots of magazines, blogs, reviews and forums. And when I say “we” I really mean Marc, because he is the analytical one. My part in that was to look at which ones were pretty and had nice furniture! After a lot(!) of searching, our decision was to purchase an older motorhome that was of higher quality in its heyday. This fit our need for quality and affordability.
Night after night Marc searched RV sales websites, CraigsList, and any other sources we could find, including friends and families – everyone apparently has a relative with an RV for sale. We purchased a 2003 Travel Supreme late May 2016 and began the process of moving into it.
3. Talk about it till you are blue-in-the-face, to everyone you know
They will get sick of it, tired of hearing once again about what new deal you may have found somewhere. This activity however, helped our family. They began to see how serious we were in this new season of our lives and really supported us in the process. They traveled from other places to see our new home, just as they did when we first purchased our S&B home.
Just because we prepared more deliberating, doesn’t mean we haven’t discovered some things we weren’t prepared for – that, however, is a story for another day.