Checklist for Full Timers

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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.***

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 on May 10th for 30 days. So on May 1st, mail can be held for you. 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. Since you stated that you could live in MH while not traveling, then I would not suggest doing this. There is no point. Unless you can get better tax, health, RV insurance in other areas.

2. Switch over all banking to online. Since you are a tech person anyway, I would imagine this is already done. But I figured I should mention it.

3. Figure out how to get online - will your company pay for some of it, all of it or none of it? This is important if you are going to still be working 5-10 hours a week. 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.

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:

5. 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.

6. Now comes the fun part, should be starting to do this around April 15th or later. 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:

6a. 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.
6b. 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.