Getting rid of it

Letting go of stuff is an important part of becoming a full-time RVer

Downsizing. I am starting to hate that word. Downsizing. I seem to have gone through the process a couple of times and it never gets any easier. A few years ago my husband and I sold our house and moved into our fifth wheel to camp host for a couple of seasons. We had a huge yard sale, gave away most of our furniture and put some things in storage just in case. Well “just in case” happened just over a year ago. We moved into a house since Barry was working full time in Langley. While living in the house over the past year, we started filling it up with stuff. Stuff that would never fit into our fifth wheel.

Here we go again.

Barry has officially retired and we are moving back into our fifth wheel and onto our RV lot at Riverside near Keremeos. Don’t get me wrong. We are happy about the retirement and the move but now that ugly word downsizing comes back into our lives, and again I am going through our belongings deciding what can be sold, given away or just tossed. How do two people accumulate so much junk in just over a year?

What’s important?

Of course in the process of deciding what is important and what isn’t we have to have discussions about how much room there is in the fifth wheel and how much junk I want to keep. I think every couple gets into this even if they are just vacationing in their RV. Deciding what you need with you, versus what you want with you.

We all have our priorities. With me it’s my computer and writing material, and Barry has to have his tools. But don’t forget all that food I had filling the cabinets within the house. Somehow I have to get it into the fifth wheel and not have it overflowing onto the floor. I’m a hoarder. Not the kind you see on TV with houses filled to the roof with junk. I hoard food. I don’t like to run out. It’s inherited, because my mother hoards food too, so it’s not my fault. Whenever I see things on sale I stock up—ridiculously sometimes. All those jars of coffee I got for half price have to fit somewhere—I wonder if there’s room in Barry’s sock drawer.

I know I am making fun of the process of downsizing and I know it is necessary. Once the stuff is out of sight it will be out of mind. However, it is still hard to do. I still have my son’s first sleeper for goodness sakes. See what I mean?

Storage for a year

Most of it has been given away or sold, and the things we just can’t part with are in storage. I really hope to go back into our storage unit a year from now and get rid of it all. But downsizing is a process and waiting a bit to throw everything away is okay. I have friends who opened their storage a year later and laughed at the ridiculous items they had saved. I hope I will be the same and we will have one more yard sale and be done with it. Downsizing can hurt even if becoming a full-time RVer is something you really want to do. Since I love being a full-timer I’ll get used to downsizing. I’ll have to. I’ve run out of room.