When you're packing up your house for life on the road there are no right and wrong ways to do it. Some people keep their house and rent it out while others sell their house and everything in it. Some people put things into storage, while others do somewhere in between.
Travel Tip: Declutter as much as you can, less to store will save you $$$$
If we had have planned to travel when we sold our house we would've done things very differently. We put all our furniture into storage and the contents mostly went to Jamie's Dad's house (very lucky to be able to store things there). He has also being looking after all my plants and doing an amazing job. If we had made the decision to travel when we sold our house we would've sold a lot more furniture. We did declutter to move (I'm grateful for that), but we did keep a fair amount of stuff.
When we did decide to travel we cleaned out what was at Jamie's Dad's house and sold some bits and pieces on buy swap sell. The good thing about selling some things we didn't want anymore, was that we had some extra cash when we started. I'm not sure about you, but having a little extra spending money was handy.
What did we keep?
Anything that was important to us. We all have little treasures and nik naks that are important to us (even if they aren't worth anything) they were all on my invisible list to keep. Any furniture that we really liked. Plants that we loved. Books, we have a huge collection (little miss included), you can never have too many books so they were firmly on the keep list.
What did we sell?
Some of little miss's toys. She found it a really hard concept because she was having a lovely time playing with them and then they were being taken away. We estimated that we would be on the road for maybe a year, so any toys she would outgrow or had outgrown got sold. There was no need to keep toys that we could replace later and we could reduce what we were storing. Her play kitchen and little tikes car had to go. They were too big and took up way to much space. Baby books and puzzles were all packed up and sold. Kids dvds that weren't watched went as well. It did make the process a little easier when we explained that instead of having those toys we had some money to visit places or buy an ice cream. Once she realised what she would get out of it she was excited.
I went through all my clothes and donated (or chucked) anything that I hadn't worn, didn't love or had worn out. It seemed like a bit task to start with but once I started it was easy to keep going. All my underwear got chucked as well, and I bought fresh stuff for our trip.
Little miss's clothes had a thorough going through. I'm one of those people that buys bigger sizes and puts them away for the future. It makes those growth spurts easy to manage and when she goes up a size I see what shes missing and fill in the gaps. It saves money, means I can grab stuff second hand or cheaply at the end of the season for next year. When deciding what to pack for travelling I pulled out all her clothes in the current size. I kept the stuff I loved but at least half of her wardrobe got bundled up and sold. It was a big effort but worth it. I did keep the next size up, but in hind sight most of that could've been sold as well. Keeping what clothes were practical and we loved made getting rid of the rest easy. By the time we go past Jamie's parents before Christmas we will refresh Little miss's clothes (and probably sell some of the next size up). You can check out what we did take with us here.
Next on the chopping block was our shoes. Again all of little miss's shoes that didn't fit were donated or thrown away. Any that were broken or she didn't like went. I did keep a few pairs of shoes for myself but a majority of them went. I haven't worn them in years and was keeping them just in case or they hurt my feet so I didn't like them. They all went. It was amazing how much of a relief it was to reduce so much.
All old baby items that I'd kept just in case we had another baby were sold. Travelling means no more kids for us (I don't want to be pregnant on the road, hats off to those that are) so that all went. Any baby clothes that I'd horded all went (except for the special handmade items or ones I really loved). All my maternity clothes went as well.
Household items that we didn't need, vases, nik naks all donated or chucked. I went through my sewing bits and pieces and culled what I didn't need. Old patterns and sewing books got sold.
I even sold some of my plants.
Now I didn't do all of this in one stage and I haven't listed everything that I sold, donated or chucked (otherwise we'd be here for ages).
I started small and went through small sections at a time and looked at each item. Was it worth keeping? If the answer was no then I decided if it was worth the trouble of selling, if it was worth donating or just needed to be chucked. I went through each section more than once and each time more items got added to the list. It did become a bit addictive, the more I got rid of the more I wanted to get rid of. It really was a great feeling to sort through all our stuff.
When it came to donating items, I had baskets and basket of items. I took them a bit at a time to the donation bins. This did take multiple trips, but each time items went it felt like we were one step closer to our goal.
Selling items, regardless of the platform, is time consuming. It does take effort to photograph and list all items, as well as being available for when people want to pick items up. For us, not everything was worth selling, or if we did put it up we put it up in bundles meaning more items sold. Covid 19 did also make it trickier to sell items and in the end we decided it was too much of a risk and stopped selling.
Everyone is going have their own way of deciding what to cull and what to keep. It would also be worthwhile getting quotes for storage, that may be the determining factor as to how much you want to keep vs get rid of. We do count our storage costs in our budget, you may decide not to, it gives us a good idea of how much money we're spending each week/month.
Did you keep everything? Did you sell everything? Somewhere in between? Just starting and not sure what to cull?
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