"What are we going to do? We have way too much stuff!"
Sound familiar? This was us when we made the decision to start paring down everything in our five bedroom, two bathroom house, to make it fit into our 34 foot motorhome. The funny thing is, we uttered these words right after discussing how freeing it would be to live a minimalist life. Well, we still are not living a minimalist life, but after a lot of procrastinating, we managed to pare everything down to a more manageable size.
This is how we did it.
The Overwhelm
I took a walk around the main level of our home, taking note of each room and what we had in each.
Room #1: daycare napping room: cots, playpens, art supplies, stuffed animals.
Room #2: daycare playroom: giant kitchen, toys of every kind, extra mattresses stuffed in the closet.
Room #3: bathroom: bathroom stuff...way too much bathroom stuff!
Room #4: living room/kitchen: double recliner couch, huge daycare table and plastic chairs, our dinner table and four chairs, books, kitchen stuff, 2 wingback chairs...
Then I got overwhelmed and went for a coffee break.
This is the process that consumed me over and over for about two weeks. Finally, one morning, I told myself, "This is non-negotiable. You have to just do it!"
The Process
Our basement was pretty empty in the main area, so I decided to make two piles down there:
get rid of
I'm not sure
I then cleared out a room upstairs for one final category:
move to the rig
I took on the tedious task of going room by room, item by item and asking myself three things:
is this a necessity
will this be used
is this essential for our day-to-day life
All of the items that ticked off those three boxes went into the "move to the rig" piles. Everything else from every room got photographed, piled up in the basement, and posted on buy/sell sites in our area.
The items which I wasn't sure if I wanted to, or if I was ready to, part with went into the "I don't know" pile, so I could re-go through them all after everything essential had been loaded into our rig. I did this to insure that whatever wouldn't fit, simply didn't come.
As you probably know, this is a very difficult process, especially if items hold sentimental value or memories which are deep rooted for you. However, when doing something like this, you must think logically as well. These types of items are the "non-essential" items that are not pertinent to your life or your survival in your rig.
By the time a few days had gone by, and I was almost through everything, we had well over eight hundred items on buy and sell sites...and our house was half empty before I even started because we don't believe in keeping excessive amounts of useless stuff.
After everything was posted, we had an incredible amount of pickups happening every day! My cell phone would not stop buzzing! It drove me crazy, but I knew it was all in the name of our new lifestyle.
The biggest thing we learned by selling everything was not to be a stickler on pricing. We needed it gone in a certain time-frame, so if no one came to pick it up, we would be stuck with it. If someone asked to pay lower, we gladly countered, or accepted their offers.
When all was said and done, we had made over seven thousand dollars for simply putting in some of our time. Let's be honest, LOTS of our time haha.
So what about everything that didn't sell?
All of the items that we were not able to sell, or found late in the game, we either gave to anyone and everyone we met, knew, or thought could use things. We shipped a ton of things to a girl's school in Africa, as there was a gentleman in our area who sent shipping crates over a couple times a year. The rest was taken to thrift stores, or thrown in the trash if there was even the littlest sign of wear or damage to them.
The True Deciding Factor
So what was the true deciding factor?
Test run life in your rig of course!
A coupe weeks before lift off, although it was very cold some nights, we lived in our rig in our driveway. We were sure that we didn't take anything at all into it except bare essential clothing. At the end of the two week period, we knew that whatever had not been brought into the rig for use over the course of those two weeks, were things that were not essential to our lifestyle.
Once you hit the alarming realization that even with all of the paring down, you still only use a fraction of what you thought you "needed", you realize very quickly how much "stuff" you truly had that you didn't need at all.
Everything else is just icing on the cake. So whatever room was left, fill it with whatever you want. As for your storage underneath, we split it up into sections. These were:
tools
all of our liquids to top up on the road
a very small bin half full of Christmas/half full of Halloween decorations
outdoor toys/beach items/outdoor games etc.
folding table, barbecue, outdoor shower flooring, solar shower bag, heaters, fans etc.
We are fortunate enough to have a fairly large storage enclosure on top of our rig. Inside of that is all of our winter gear (ie. one pair of ski pants each, two jackets each, two pairs of mitts each, some scarves, and one pair of boots each), as well as one Halloween costume each that would still fit our boys the following year.
Now What?
Terrific! This is all done!
This was the point that I went downstairs and saw my wedding dress (which I have not worn yet), my photo albums, large suitcases, and my filing cabinet.
...overwhelmed all over again! These would never fit!
Under one of the seats at our table there was storage. I folded my wedding dress in half in the carry bag it came in, pulled a big garbage bag over it so it wouldn't get damaged, shoved it into a suitcase, and crammed it under the seat. A little unorthodox, but it worked.
Hmmm...what about the rest?
We still had three large suitcases, four small suitcases, all of our filing, and all of my albums!
After a quick trip to Dollarama, I managed to get large vacuum-seal bags. All of the items I had placed in the roof storage was removed, put into these bags and placed into suitcases, then reloaded into the bin. This was a way to bring two more large suitcases and three small ones with us. The other set of suitcases we gave to Kris's mom because she travels every year.
I had an antique looking suitcase/box that I had picked up a Michael's years before, so I took all of my photos out of the albums, put them in the box, and shoved them with the suitcase under the seat by the table.
Two problems solved!
Now to figure out what to do about important papers and tax information.
Every single little scrap of paper I had kept, or filed, was meticulously looked over. The things we needed to keep were put into a garbage bag, put into an extra diaper box, and stored under one of the kids beds between the hot water tank we never used and the shower wall.
The End Result After Paring Down
For me, it was an emotional journey, filled with ups and downs. The first while on the road, I felt as though I was somehow "missing" things that used to mean so much to me. It took a while for me to realize how blessed we were, and to fully embrace the freedom we found with all the "stuff" gone. We still had all of the memories in our minds and in photos, we simply got rid of the physical clutter that accompanied them.
To support us on our mission to purchase a new home for our family, please check out the links below. We offer quite a few books and courses to help us earn money to achieve this necessary goal.
The PYHOOYA Challenge (90 day challenge to change your life)
Whole Food, Plant-Based, Here's the Truth in Your Face, We're a Brainwashed Human Race, Guide to Complete Health (paperback or ebook)
The Road to PYHOOYA (life changing paperback)
The Road to PYHOOYA (life changing ebook)
Operation PYHOOYA 365: Life By Design (rewrite your life paperback)
Operation PYHOOYA 365: Life By Design (rewrite your life ebook)
The Magic Pill (formula for a better life ebook)
PYHOOYA to Wellness (health guide ebook)
The Whole P.I.E (passive income empire course)
P.I.E For Beginners (passive income empire beginner course)
Blogging For Dollars (complete blogging course)
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