Part Two: Prepping the RV
Purging the RV
Now that we are getting closer to launch, we’ve been working out what we would like to take with us in the RV. As we have been using it for the past 8 months, it already has a lot of the things that we want to take in it. But we did do a purge recently of things that we had put in there months ago, but never ended up using. When we moved from our old RV – Boomer to Matilda, we were in the middle of a dealership parking lot, so we all but tossed everything in to Matilda without going through. Then we had so much space in Matilda compared to Boomer that we weren’t pushed to be frugal with our stuff. So it all stayed. Until now.
We had a lot of dog related stuff that was duplicated or had gone unused. So we cleared that out. We also had a lot of storage items from Boomer that didn’t now fit as well in Matilda. We have also added a bunch of things to the RV including new technology stuff (which John will cover in another post) as well as more homey things as we will be living in it full time.
There are a lot of things we have bought to prepare for our journey. We will cover those things in a separate blog post with links so you can check them out at our favorite store – Amazon!
Clothes
For me, the hardest things to decide on are clothes and shoes. I think this is typical of female RVers. We want to have an outfit for every occasion, but the closet space isn’t endless, so I will need to be a little picky. I’ve already downsized my closet exponentially, but kept some work clothes as I will still go in to the office for these last few weeks that we’re here. I probably won’t take many (if any) of those clothes. I have a tonne of casual hiking/exercise clothes as we hike a lot. But I can’t live in that stuff, so finding a few regular outfits is key. I’m pretty sure I’ll end up purging again when we have been on the road for a few months.
As we are heading north for summer, we’re hoping to be in pretty temperate weather. So we plan on leaving our heavy winter stuff behind in our storage unit for us to pick up when we come back to Virginia Beach for our Thanksgiving / Christmas Holiday visit in November.
John is a little simpler. He purged too much! We had to order some more shorts (he threw away too many!) I’m secretly hoping he doesn’t take too much so I have more space for my stuff 🙂
Personal Things
It is really hard to draw the line on what to bring, and what to leave behind or get rid off. The RV is about 300 square feet of living space (with our slides out!) We currently live in a 2400 sft house. Fortunately, we used to live in a 4000 sft house, so have downsized once already. But this is a little different. We have decided to keep a few things in storage, but we also chose a couple of art pieces that we have acquired over the years that seem to go with the colorful color scheme in the RV. We have taken a couple of books and a few personal items that have meaning to each of us. Oh, and my coloring books (that have gone unused for 3 years!) and a couple of games (like Cards Against Humanity).
Honestly though, there isn’t a lot of personal stuff we are bringing. I did bring photos of family and pinned them on a cork board we made in the RV (in place of the ugly art that came with Matilda!) We also brought along two pieces of our art work that we felt suited our style. One is a Koi piece we got in San Francisco, and the other is from Hawaii (where we lived for a while, and were married).
Note: I published this after we had left, so will update once we’ve been on the road for a while with any further recommendations we might have. Thanks for reading!
