Downsizing to Live Small

  Today's topic is downsizing and organizing in preparation to move our family of 4 plus the pets into an RV full time. In about 3 weeks the kids and I will will finally be in Texas with my husband moving into our brand new RV. My husband is already there living in our cute itty bitty camper that I still plan to remodel and paint.

side note: if it isn't obvious I really like blogging with lots of pictures

Downsizing my junk

   

He just put the deposit down for our new camper that we will all live in hopefully for the next few years while we work on becoming debt free. The price of this unit was really reasonable plus the space seems great. Now for the hard part. I myself haven't been in this model because I am still in Idaho so all I have are the pictures from the website. I have packed up most of our stuff for storage and sold quite a bit of my furniture but I still have a ways to go. The last several houses we have rented were pretty big and the bigger the house the more stuff we obtained to fill up space. I know I can get by with much less, which is why we are even doing this. Right now it's all the drawers full of little things. I'm having a really hard time sorting through it all because I hate to get rid of it if I can use it again but will I? I mean how bad do I really need it? So for now I'm going to sort out all my drawer junk then move on to my next major dilemma of our clothes. As it is I have a hard time keeping my clothes neatly contained in a large closet so maybe downsizing and sorting into warm and cold weather clothes, keeping one in storage will help. Or I won't be able to reach my bed due to the clothes monster. Eh, we'll see.

   Here's some pictures below of our new RV. I'm going to have to get really creative with what little storage I will have compared to a sticks and bricks house but I'm excited to see what I can pull off with the help of my favorite store. IKEA.

My two biggest concerns at the moment are...
1) Where am I going to put a litter box for the cats?
2) Where can I place a tiny Christmas tree?

Mom & Dad's Bedroom

The girls bedroom complete with their own couch

Dining Area

Kitchen & Living

Fulltime RV family

'Our new home'

This is my dream vintage rv

   That's right , we are going to do this, we are going to full-time live in an rv. So here's what happened to lead to our decision. We have been living in Idaho when my husband was given a job opportunity back in Houston where I'm from. It was a good opportunity doing what he loves so we decided to go for it but we were in the middle of a rental lease making things more difficult. We bought a cheap vintage camper trailer that he could park on my parents back property and stay for free in Texas and the kids and I would stay and ride out a few more months of the lease until thanksgiving break so during our final transition to the south there will be less missed school for the kids. Our original plan was to buy Our first house when we got there but looking more into it we just aren't ready for that kind of debt and commitment and I'm so done renting.  With a lot of very stressful decision making we decided our best option is to buy a larger, newer rv that we can live in for at least a couple of years while paying down our debt.    This is our plan as of now. We have found our dream rv for under $27,000. It has a back bedroom for the girls with tons of space and storage for them. Plenty of kitchen and living space for us. We Will be able to park it at my parents for low rent to help them out a little. On holidays we will travel and have fun in our home :)  we will work on paying the rv off quickly as well as paying off our other debts. After the first two years we will decide then if we will buy a house or continue fulltiming. This will give us plenty of time to decide if and where we want to permanently put down roots rather than making a hasty decision we regret later.
   Originally I personally wanted to find a 1950s aircraft spartan rv to refurbish and live in but my husband really wanted something new so I caved for now. Although I fully plan on finding one to use as a guest house when we do buy a house one day. For now I will work on remodeling the little vintage rv the hubby is living in now for fun camping trips.
    I gotta say I'm really excited for this. It will be ours for a fraction of the price of a brick and mortar home. I've asked my kids ages 10 and 6 over and over if they will be ok living in a small space and they are excited for it. So here we go, living the small and simplified life. I'm packing my belongings to be stored and selling off furniture we won't need.

  Our vintage camper that I plan to paint and remodel 

with a fun mermaid theme.

Have any of you done this or considered it? I would love to hear your stories.