A descriptive look at traveling and full-timing with our second RV, a fifth wheel toyhauler.
Laura and Sasha started this adventure in April of 2005
for a two week vacation in a truck camper.
Checklist for Full Timers
What to do to get yourself ready to full time
Checklist for Full Timers:
If you have a question, please send us an email: Email@Laura-n-Sasha.com
A question was asked on RV.net and so I thought to put it here.
What I am looking for is a check list and guidance on how to do all the things necessary to be out of my house, everything sold (and I mean EVERYTHING without a storage shed) and living in the MH in 10 weeks. Just knowing EVERYTHING that needs to be done is what I need help with.
***My first advice - start immediately, stick with it. *** Definitely important, start immediately.
***Actually, organizing things first is the best way to go, that way you don't throw away important stuff.***
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Since you have less than 10 weeks now.
Go through the house, all of the drawers, starting with your
top room and head downwards. In each room, put into FOUR
piles: Keep, Throw Out, Donate, Sell.
Those piles:
1. Throw Out: in order to not overwhelm your garbage people,
do a little each week, because you will ultimately find more
and more to throw out.
2. Donate: Great tax write offs here, and you will want
write offs for next year. Take pictures of the stuff to be
donated and use Turbo Tax- ItsDeductible.com - make sure the
stuff is good or better quality, you can not give ripped or
torn clothing and expect a write off. We were able to do
over several thousands of dollars when we started
full-timing in 2007.
3. Sell - Use Amazon.com for CDs, DVDs, Books, and Videos to
sell. Use eBay for items that are shippable. Use
Craigslist.org for things that are not shippable but are low
priced items.
3a. Use an estate person for pricing your antiques that you
have no idea what the price is, but do not have them do the
sale for you - they usually take between 25-35% of the sale.
I would start doing Estate Sales in March - spring hopefully
has come to the area at that time, and people will be
looking. Plus it will give you some time to get the things
you want to sell ready.
3b. Put the estate sale up on Craigslist and if necessary,
your local newspaper. Put up the signs (THE MOST IMPORTANT
item for a sale to be successful!) - BOLD and Big, and not
blow-away-able.
Tell your family and friends that you will be selling everything. I've gone through the house and put price stickers on items that we plan to sell (not enough room in the garage for all of it). Next I'll invite the friend and family to tour the garage and house and buy what they want.
You can certainly do this, but make sure you
are firm on the price, unless of course you want your
friends and family to have it for free.
4. Keep:
During this process, you will come across: important papers,
pictures and memorabilia that might be hard to part with.
a. Papers can always be scanned, DO IT - especially the
important ones. If you need to password protect, make them
into PDFs and put a password to it.
b. Scan your pictures. Make them digital so it is easier to
deal with them. You can then ask family if they want the old
pictures.
c. Memorabilia - this can be the hard part; if family can't
or won't take it, you could try scanning it or taking a
picture of it....OR you could take it with you. Box it up,
put it into the storage of your RV, and if, after a year,
you NEVER took it out, throw it away or sell it. But
sometimes it is hard to do.
Once you have figured out about your stuff, then you need to
deal with the rest of your management stuff:
1. Mail - you can have your mail put on hold for
30 days. Or you can
have it be forwarded for 6 months, to an address that you
designate. This does not cost you anything. The biggest part
to this is deciding your domicile. Are you going to change
it? If you are, then this is just one of the steps to doing
so.
---Change of Domicile: would mean change of driver's
license, registration of vehicles, change of banks'
addresses, bills addresses, health insurance, etc. Unless you
can get better tax, health, RV insurance in other areas than where you are now. Escapees is in Texas, they are one of the best. The address is a regular address which works for banks, very important to have a physical address.
2. Switch over all banking to online. If you are reading this website online, anyway, I would think you know how to do this. But I
figured I should mention it.
3. Figure out how to get online. This is important if
you are going to still be working 5-10 hours a week or even if you are not working. Usually
a USB card from Sprint or Verizon seems to be the way most
people go, others do more complex and expensive ways. You
need to decide what you need.
4. Figure out how you will communicate with work and others.
Cell phone - obviously and I'm sure you already have it, but
you might want to check out a pay as you go phone rather
than one where you need a contract, only reason, you go to
an area for a while where you can not use it - no point to a
contract when you can't use it anyway. Cell phone lines are
tranportable, so you can easily switch to something else if
necessary.
5. Because you have gone through your stuff, and know what you
are going to put into your RV, you might want to get some
storage bins or organizers to help you out. Most organizers
are made for houses and not for RVs - with the bouncing and
everything else. What I did was measure every space we had -
the full volume dimensions so that I could figure out where
to put things, and to get stuff that would work. So:
6. Once you have gotten most of the stuff gone, bring your
RV over to the house. Park it and then CLEAN IT COMPLETELY.
You might as well do this, as campgrounds do not let you
wash the RV. Wash the outside and clean the inside. Wipe
down everywhere including the inside of the cabinets and the
refrigerator.
7. Now comes the fun part, should be starting to do this
at least a week before you move in. Do the measurements, figure out
where things should go, get the organizers that you need and
put them in, install them, whatever you need to do to get
your RV ready for your stuff. THEN:
8. Start putting stuff in. This will take a while. You
think it should be easy but it is not. Especially as a
full-timer. Where you think something should go, might not
fit or not work so well. There will be re-arranging going on
during this time. And of course, when you are on the road,
there will be re-arranging too, but this is the first step.
9. You will find that stuff you thought you needed, is now no longer needed. Throw out stuff you do not need. (this is why it is good to keep those trash bins until the last day - or even give them to the new person - do not let the trash people take them away until the last possible second.) If it is good stuff, give it to the next person coming in, or donate it.
Having a plan is one of the most important parts to this checklist, because once you have that, the stress of moving leaves you. It becomes a fun activity that you are doing before going on your new adventure.