DECIDING WHAT TO KEEP OR GET RID OF

For those that don't know, it cost a lot to store stuff. Storage units that are large enough to hold a household worth of furniture and other things, can easily cost a couple of hundred dollars a month. Unfortunately that adds up to a couple of thousand a year to store stuff that is barely worth it if you are going to be storing it for a few years. Electronics become obsolete. Furniture becomes dated. Kids things get out grown. Things just don't hold their value. Obviously there are just some things that you might not want to take with you in an RV but just can't bear to part with, such as kids mementos and family heirlooms, but if you are going to RV fulltime, for any length of time, it only makes sense to get rid of most all of your stuff that you aren't planning on keeping forever or taking with you.


We had about five months to move into the RV once we bought it. It was 1Feb2014 when we took delivery of the RV and we were moving to Virginia Beach in July. We decided to aim for whittling down our keep sakes to what we would keep in the RV, and nothing more than could fit in a U-Haul trailer and ultimately a 5x5 storage unit, which is about the smallest you can rent. Since you can stack heavy duty storage bins pretty high, this still allows for quite a bit of keep sakes, and even though I could have gotten rid of more, or persuaded my kids to get rid of more, it was easier to soften the blow by allowing them to use up the space, and keep a few extra items.


None of our furniture was very high end so that wasn't a problem to part with. The only exception was a dining room table that I had built my wife. She wasn't going to let that go. My son had been given a Classic Pinball Machine by a Great Uncle of his and we decided to keep this also, but build a crate around it to protect it and allow us to stack things on it. My daughters prize possession was a Three Storied Doll House that I had built her and even though she was outgrowing it, she wanted to give it to her daughter someday. We built a crate for that also. My exception was a roll around tool box that housed most of my aircraft tools. I might need that if I get back into that line of work sometime, but it too would be something hard to replace for the value and thought it would be good to hand down to my son sometime. Everything else could fit into heavy duty bins for easy stack ability and, if labeled properly, for ease of finding. Now to get rid of the rest.