I was genuinely excited to downsize to move into our RV. I’m an organizer and minimalist at heart.
When I go to visit my mom for a short vacation, I like to secretly organize her panty (you’re welcome Mom…) After I’m done with that task, I go into her bathroom. I find the 3-4 shampoo bottles in her shower that contain one and a half teaspoons of residue each, and I combine them together, just so I can throw all the excess bottles in the recycling bin.
Bottom line: I don’t like clutter. And I love, love, LOVE organized, clean spaces.
Downsizing for Full-Time RV Live
Despite my organizing passion, downsizing for the RV was a whole new experience.
In my mind, I was completely ready for this next adventure in our lives. The clothes in my closet and dresser were already pared down to the amount of space I’d have in the RV.
My other possessions were equally sparse. I had one 90L duffle bag containing all my hiking stuff. I had a small 8″ x 10″ box filled with books to read. And then there’s my laptop, my ipad, and a few odds and ends. That pretty much sums up my stuff.
I started to embrace minimalism about four years ago. I felt like a weight was lifted when I let go of all the personal possession that were just there, taking up space.
However, the other 2 members of my family are NOT in the minimalist camp, and they have NO desire to reserve a spot.
As we were going through old items in preparation for our big garage sale, Keith pulled out a race t-shirt from 1988. Seriously?! Who needs a ratty old t-shirt? That you got for FREE. And I guarantee you haven’t worn it in at least two decades. But, seeing that old shirt triggered some serious happy memories for him.
Dealing with the Memories
So how do you tell someone you love to please just throw those memories in the trash? Especially when he has large plastic bins full of dozens of other nostalgic items. I mean, *maybe* I referred to him as a hoarder in a moment of sheer exasperation, but that’s not really the point here.
How do you nudge along the spouse who is getting misty eyed over his jr. high school yearbook? Or your son can’t part with any toys because every single one is just too “special” for the garage sale?
Answer: You quit trying.
I’m not normally and advocate of quitting. But, you see, we moved approximately every 18-24 months while we were in the Army. That meant professional movers came to our house, broke the majority of our nice stuff every two years, and forced us to unpack all that detritus at the other end.
This process kept us from accumulating 20 years worth of junk in our basement or attic. It also meant that we purged a good deal of items because we were too lazy to unpack them…yet again. So maybe downsizing wouldn’t be a complete chore.
I soon discovered the things we had sticking around fell into three categories:
- The truly important items;
- Stuff we felt we needed our sticks and brick life; and
- Stuff that we were “saving” for whenever we settled down.
And that’s exactly how I chose to tackle them.
Downsizing the truly important items
The smallest of these categories to downsize was the truly important items. So naturally, I attacked it first.
Let’s face it, you aren’t really going to reduce too many of these items. No one is getting rid of their passport, Social Security card, important legal documents, or laptop computer.
That stuff is either coming with us or going to a trusted family member for safekeeping. Once I had that category sorted out, I just had to decide whether we needed the original or a copy.
I decided to digitize some of these items, like old tax returns, school records, and the like. Then I shredded the originals since many of these items had personal info on them.
So, all in all, downsizing Category #1 was easy peasy.
Please note: if you are going to take the time to digitize these items, make sure you make at least one backup copy. Just in case. It takes so little time, and this extra step is REALLY worth it!
Downsizing our sticks and bricks life
The largest category of possessions to downsize was everything we needed while living in our house.
This category included things like our washer and dryer, the toaster, our TVs, large pieces of furniture, six sets of wine glasses of various shapes and sizes…
These things aren’t coming in the RV, and the chance of them being in the good condition after years in storage is pretty darn slim.
All of us agreed it made complete sense to sell these items. Far better to get a little money out of it now than to come back to a non-functioning item that is completely worthless after the movers or storage company get their grubby hands on it.
Downsizing Category #2….done.
Downsizing the “treasures”
With two categories easily disposed of, we head into the hard one.
You probably notice that treasures is in quotes here. That’s because that value of those items is completely in the eye of the beholder. This is where those pesky sentimental race t-shirts go.
Forcing someone to part with those beloved items before they are ready to just creates drama, resentment, and frustration in the downsizing process.
Asking your pre-teen son to sell the Lego sets he spent hours building is just developing issues for his future therapy sessions (where you will likely take the fall for ruining his entire childhood).
These items are going to be in storage. If it gives your family some sense of security to know they have something to come back to, so be it.
Once we get into the RV, none of you will be thinking about those “treasures.” Who knows, maybe they will even be willing to let go.
After all, the whole point of this adventure is to get started, not convert them into my way of minimalism.