So, we did a thing ... Start the Motorhome!
We did something a little unconventional, and maybe a little crazy this month.
We sold/ gave away 98% of what we own, and moved out of our 6 bedroom, 5000 sq foot house and hit the road with our 7 kids, 2 cats and 2 dogs.
Let me back up just a little.....
We have been planning this (or something like it!) for a while.
Our initial plan was to spend this summer in France, but obviously Covid changed that!
Then we thought we would wait until the new year and slowly remodel and deck out a motor home in the meantime.
In Boulder, Colorado for training
Last month, Mitch and I went to my week long intensive training in Boulder, and we fell in love with Colorado! So we started talking about moving the date up, and doing it all sooner. We began researching the exact motorcoach we wanted, and planning how we would gut it/remodel it and moved the date to the end of October.
But while we were gone, we had a major leak in one of our AC units, and discovered we had been living in a dangerous mold situation that was being made worse because it was summer and the unit was running nonstop.
Looking back, it made perfect sense as none of us have felt normal in months! I am crazy grateful for our clean and healthy diets, quality supplements and strong immune systems because it could have been so much worse.
So anyway, we decided to quickly get rid of everything, and get gone ASAP!
Man, typing that out sounds a lot easier than it actually was! Even though we have always been somewhat “minimalists” - we still had a LOT of stuff!
Two dining rooms, 6 bedrooms, an office, living room— all with large pieces of furniture ....3 car garage, and 3 vehicles, golf cart, a huge deck full of patio furniture and bbq pits, trampoline, bikes outside toys.....
One month later and it’s all gone!
I remember learning years ago from Dr Schulze that one of the main steps in healing from disease was to get rid of 33% of your belongings.
We are all so addicted to STUFF, and we have WAY TOO MUCH!
Every time something left our house, it felt like a weight was lifted !
We found that the more attached we were to something, and the harder it was to let go of- the greater the weight lifted when it was gone.
So why did we do it?
Honestly, our kids are growing way too fast, and we feel time slipping away from us daily.
We were all tired of the daily grind, and we all felt like we were cleaning or doing chores ALL THE TIME. Living in such a large space with so many people is a lot of work!
I have always worked from home, but the with social distancing Mitchell was forced to stay home and it showed us that we could both easily work anywhere!
It also made us realize that we don’t want to be caught up in the panic and fighting that has been going on all around us. We are refusing to give any more of our time to worrying about what could happen next.
Even though we have been extremely positive and mindful from the beginning of all of this, it is still impossible to fully escape the stress when you are stuck home every day!
Covid has also given us the gift of really taking care of ourselves. Obviously health has always been a priority in our family, but we have been super consistent with our daily routines with supplements and diet, and I know this is why we weren’t wrecked by the mold in our home! So I am extremely grateful for that!
Our kids are no strangers to travel. Most of them have been to France twice, Canada multiple times and to several different states. So we all kinda have gypsy souls and don’t seem to stay anywhere long. Being stuck at home for social distancing was HARD! Our yearly trip with my company to Hawaii was also cancelled, and it really emphasized how much we don’t like being able to travel!
We started the process by having each kiddo fill two tubs. One is for anything special to them to go in storage, and another to go with us on the road. The only thing I kept were a few special paintings we bought last time we were in France, our bed, and a few tubs of baby pictures from the kids. Mitch kept some tools, and we kept most of our kitchen items, as we all love to cook and plan to put most of it in the motorhome.
Mattresses and sheets on the floor in the living room, when that was all that was left!
This was honestly pretty easy for most of us, but we do have one kid who loves to try and keep everything. 😂 This is the same kid who every year at Christmas when we clean out toys to donate, never has anything to donate. She wants to keep it all. She’s been like that since she was tiny, and it always cracks us all up! Clothes, toys, shoes....she thinks she should keep them all. She even goes to everyone else’s piles and tries to claim whatever they’re getting rid of. I always admire her honesty and authenticity. She is not a people pleaser and does very much what she wants. So we gotta respect that! Ha!
More than half of our belongings we gave away to family or friends, and the rest we sold in an estate sale, on our Nextdoor neighborhood app, or on FB marketplace.
I gotta say, our “getting rid of everything” didn't look promising at first.
If you guys have read any of my past social distancing posts, you’ll know that I *sometimes* have a problem with buying needless items.
So the night before our very first day of selling stuff I posted several items on our neighborhood app, Next Door.
I woke up the next morning, still half asleep and hopped on the app to see if I had any messages, only I happened to first see a neighbor selling eight Disney VHS tapes for $5 each.
Lord help me I am still not sure what I was thinking, but something deep in my subconscious remembered a random news article I saw once where old Disney VHS tapes were worth tens of thousands of dollars on….. eBay.
I jumped out of bed and stumbled into the office where Mitch was and told him to quickly text our neighbor and tell her WE WANTED ALL OF THOSE VHS TAPES! THEY WERE A GOLD MINE AND WE WERE GOING TO MAKE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS GO GET THEM NOW BEFORE ANOTHER NEIGHBOR SEES!
Y’all. I still cannot type this without laughing so hard about it all. Bless my sweet husband. He did as he was told and texted them and told them we would take them all, and he’d be over with the $40 ASAP. I’m certain he thought I was crazy but it’s pretty freaking awesome that he went and got them for me!
While he was gone I had time to fully wake up and and did a quick eBay search to find that not only were we definitely NOT going to make tens of thousands of dollars, but we wouldn’t even come close to making back our initial $40. Our neighbor WAY overpriced those tapes.
When he came back carrying those mother effin’ VHS tapes I lost it! We both laughed so hard we cried.
Day 1 and I’m literally starting at 7am $40 in the hole.
I can’t.
I
Just
Can’t .
I remember how confused the little kids were when they saw them. They were so excited because they looked super fun! But quickly disappointed when they realized they weren’t toys, they were tapes, we had no way to watch them.
I can’t tell you how hard I tried to GIVE those tapes away! No one would take them!
One of my older son’s friends was over a few days later and he said they were so cool and retro and he wanted to take them home...so I told him I would GIVE him $20 if he promised to take them.
Later that day his dad came to pick him up and I’m not even kidding as he was walking outside, tapes in hand, his dad saw and said,
“what the hell are those? No. You’re not bringing those home! Take that crap back in!”
😂😂😂😂
The kids ran the estate sale, and Calandra set up a few experimental items with enticing labels to just see if they would sell. She labeled one of them “extremely rare VHS, $50” to see if she could trick someone into buying it.
… owned by Adam Sandler
The other 7 we listed as free.
No such luck.
She also priced a random picture $1000, and marked it:
“Owned by Adam Sandler”
I’m surprised not even one person asked about it!
To be fair, estate sale people are not the joking type. I always forget how entertaining people are at any sort of garage/estate/yard sale. It’s like an extreme sport for some, and gets super competitive.
I listed a picture of our estate sale on FB marketplace a few days before, and had 30 messages or comments within 5 minutes, asking if they could come early and “buy that lamp in the background” 😳
“I claim lamps can come now!”
Or when someone asks “is this still available?”
I respond “Well someone wants it, she’s just measuring her room to make sure it fits”
who’s ready for an estate sale!?!
Or “it’s pending until they pick it up Friday”
The responses I got from these people, all saying they can come RIGHT NOW and SELL TO THEM THEY ARE BRINGING $10 CASH NOW FORGET THE OTHER LOSER AND CHOOSE THEM!!!
It always makes me laugh when people say they’ll bring me cash RIGHT NOW!
I’m just confused as to what else they thought I was accepting? I mean cash is what I was expecting for each of the items! If you really want to win me over offer me like $40 in peach pies, or tell me you’ll pay me in puppies or something. But trying to entice me with cash isn’t that exciting!
To be continued ....
S’mores on an empty back porch the last night.