When we’re young, we go through an acquisition phase. We rent our first apartment or buy our first home and we need everything. Furniture, décor, linens and housewares of all types. It’s great fun to select and buy new things and decorate our nest.

Then babies arrive and take over your universe. No matter how much space we have, kid paraphernalia and toys end up strewn everywhere and piled into every available space. At least, it seems that way! “Stuff” becomes a headache. Eventually, though, the kids move on and take (most of) their stuff.

As we approach our fabulous RV adventure, we have to deal with all of this “stuff” that we’ve collected in our 2800 square foot 4 bedroom 3 bathroom two story home with two car garage. That’s a lot of room for a lot of stuff. (George Carlin’s routine about “stuff” comes to mind). You can’t fit a four bedroom house worth of junk into a motorhome! So what to do with it?

Well first, we’ve decided NOT to keep a house as home base. We do have two rental properties, but we aren’t maintaining any kind of a house or condo as a place to live part time. We will be living in the RV, full time. It just doesn’t make sense financially to pay for a property that we hardly ever stay in and can’t look after. It would just add stress and cost to our life.

Secondly, we’ve decided NOT to keep anything in storage. We don’t know how long we’ll be on the road. Keeping furnishings in storage for years really adds up, and they will only degrade as they sit, even in an air conditioned space. Plus, who knows what we’ll really need whenever we decide to come off the road? It makes more sense to save up those storage fees and re-buy what we need, when we need it.

So, we are going to lose the stuff. All of it. We are keeping only what we can carry with us. It’s a trade-off. We are trading the anchor of all of the possessions for the freedom and adventure of a life on the road. It sounds like a good deal to me.