How To Downsize For RV Life Without Being Overwhelmed

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So, you want to travel full time and suddenly realize you can’t bring all your stuff with you? Moving out of your current home to pursue your full-time travel dreams? Time to downsize! Don’t start looking around your current home feeling overwhelmed. Just relax and we’ll show you how to downsize the easy way step by step. Even if you have a huge home full of stuff, we promise that downsizing is not as difficult or overwhelming as you may think as long as you just take it one step at a time.

Step 1: What is your goal?

Why are you downsizing? It’s a question we all need to start with. Are you going to live full time in an RV, boat or something else with very limited storage and weight capacity? Do you only intend to travel full time for a short period of time and then return to another house, apartment or something else? Okay. More on those questions later. Time to get started.

Step 2: Being organized makes downsizing so much easier!

Let’s keep things simple and start with four piles: sell, donate, trash and hold. Your sell pile should include those things you reasonably think you can make some money on to help boost your travel funds. Consider donating anything that’s in good enough condition that other people or charities could still use. This could be small decorations, clothing, furniture and more! Trash should be things that are either broken beyond repair, expired or used to the point where they aren’t useful to anyone anymore. Your hold pile is for everything that doesn’t fit into the other three piles, yet. This should be your smallest pile! At least we can hope, right?

Where should you start? Downsizing can be done one room at a time or the whole home at once. Whatever is easier for you. Of course, some things may be too big or just not practical to physically move into a pile. Try using post it notes, a colored sticker or even just make a list of what pile big things go into that you’d rather not move just yet.

Step 3: Get rid of the easy stuff!

This is where you finally get rid of everything you’ve always wanted to but were too lazy busy to get rid of before.  This round of downsizing is as easy as it gets, so have fun!  Grab things with no emotional attachment, things you’re not sure why you have in the first place and things you’re quite sure you’ll never need again.  Also, remember your goal?  Get rid of everything you’re positive you just won’t need in your full-time travel life.  Put all these things in your sell, donate or trash piles.  Congratulations, you’ve started downsizing!  Doesn’t it feel good? 

Step 4: Look at your downsizing piles!

Every so often you’ll want to look at everything you’ve sorted into piles already. Are any of your piles getting too big to manage? There are a couple different ways to deal with your growing piles of downsized stuff. Some people prefer to save everything until the end of the process and deal with it all in one big sale, trip to the donation center or haul to the dump. Some people deal with the piles a little bit at a time as they go. Really, it’s up to you. There is no wrong way as long as you do eventually deal with those piles.

Step 5: Use it or lose it!

Now, it’s time to put everything you haven’t used, touched or even looked at in over one year in your sell, donate or trash piles. Let’s face it, if you really needed it or actually couldn’t live without it, you would have done something with it or at least looked at it in the last year. For this step to be successful, you need to be honest with yourself whether or not things make the one-year cutoff or not. That should make it easy to downsize a lot more stuff into the sell, donate or trash piles!

Step 6: Downsize your wardrobe!

How are you going to be traveling and how much storage room will you have?  For example, we travel in an RV full time and have enough clothes for three weeks.  Additionally, we each have a rain coat, winter coat and a few other cold weather items such as flannels and sweaters.  How many weeks’ worth of clothing are you going to take with you?  That should help you decide how much you need to downsize your wardrobe.  Apply the steps you’ve taken so far for everything else to your wardrobe and you’ll be fine. 

Step 7: Downsize your pictures and videos!

These days, pictures and videos are usually either digital or physical. However, If you’re like us you may have a few (thousand) physical pictures and some old video tapes or DVD’s stuffed away in a closet somewhere and don’t want to get rid of them. Consider converting them all to digital so you can take them with you in your travels without physically taking them with you.

For converting photographs to digital, all you’ll need is a color scanner. You can scan all your physical pictures and save them on a physical hard drive, cloud storage or both. We scanned multiple pictures at a time. When you’re finished, you can either throw away the physical copies or move them to somewhere for long term storage. Now, you’ll be able to view the digital copies of your pictures whenever you want without taking up a lot of space in your RV, boat or whatever you’ll be traveling in.

Convert old video tapes to digital and save them as well as DVD’s on a hard drive or the cloud. There are devices you can buy to convert video tapes to digital yourself. However, there are also many businesses out there that can convert your video tapes to digital for you. Just remember to ultimately save everything, including home DVD’s, to either a hard drive or the cloud for future viewing whenever you want without having to physically take them with you as you travel! Again, after converting and saving your videos, you can either discard the originals or put them in long term storage somewhere.

Step 8: Downsize your paperwork!

Paperwork is just a part of life, even in this technical day and age. Your paperwork could be paper copies of tax returns, bills, other official or important paperwork or even greeting cards and letters. Taking all your paperwork with you probably won’t work if you’re moving out of a stationary home to travel full time.

Just as you did with the rest of your stuff, consider what paperwork you actually need or want to keep and get rid of the rest. Now, of all the paperwork that you’re keeping, how about making a digital copy and getting rid of the original? If you decide it’s important to hold onto the original physical paperwork, decide what has to go with you and what can be stored elsewhere long term. Storing paperwork in waterproof plastic bins or containers might be best for long term storage. Remember, paperwork can add weight and take up space quickly in an RV, boat or whatever you’re traveling in.

PAPERWORK WARNING

This is quite serious. Never throw away any paperwork with important personal or business information on them such as Social Security numbers, passwords, account information or anything that could be damaging to you or others if it fell into the wrong hands! You’ll want to shred those types of documents using a micro-cut shredder at the very least. Do not ever use the old-fashioned shredders that cut in long strips or large cross cut pieces for important documents because they are NOT secure! Want an easy solution? There are good businesses out there that can securely shred your paperwork for you.

Step 9: Let’s get emotional about downsizing!

Now for the not so fun part! It’s time to go through all that stuff you haven’t touched yet because you have an emotional attachment to it. We’ll call it your emotional stuff. Try to remember that it’s only stuff and your memories stay with you no matter what happens to the stuff. Some people do cry in this step because it can be very difficult. Then again, we know of people without any emotional attachment to anything and this step is easy for them. Everyone’s different and that’s okay!

Remember the questions we asked in the first step? If you decide to put any of your emotional stuff in your hold pile, think about how that will affect those questions you answered.

If you know you need to get rid of the emotional stuff but can’t bring yourself to sell, donate or trash them, there is an easier way! Tell your family, friends and everyone else who may have any connection to or interest in your emotional stuff to come and get it, if they want it. Think of it this way, it may be easier to part with these things if you know they’ll be in good hands with people who will actually appreciate them to some extent. Also, don’t forget why you’re downsizing! Move as much of your emotional stuff as you can to your sell, donate or trash piles.

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Step 10: Stop cheating!

What? You don’t think I know that you’ve been taking stuff out of your sell, donate and trash piles and putting them in your hold pile? All right. Just put it all back in the piles you got them from and everything will be okay. Remember, you’re downsizing so you can travel full time. You’re not rearranging your home simply for the fun of it.

Step 11: What to do with your hold pile!

Congratulations! Look around because absolutely everything that’s not in your sell, donate or trash piles is now in your hold pile. Sorry, that’s just the way it is. This is the stuff you somehow have to deal with long term. Remember that whole full time travel thing you decided you’re going to do after moving out of your current home? I’m guessing you can’t bring everything in your hold pile with you. So, what do you do?

Time for storage! Take a good look at all the stuff in your hold pile. Do you have a family member or friend who will store everything for you? If not, it’s time to go visit the storage place of your choice. Yes, even in this age of do everything online you’ll need to physically go in person to the storage place you’ll be using. When choosing a storage location, you’ll want to consider the crime rate of the area. Also, consider extreme weather events common in the area such as flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages and more that could affect your storage unit.

Look at the storage units they offer in person and get prices for both climate controlled and regular uncontrolled units. Remember, some of the things you intend on putting in storage may not survive uncontrolled hot and cold temperatures. Climate controlled storage units usually cost more. Now, before making any commitments on storage, go home and do a couple more things. You’re almost done.

Step 12: One final round of downsizing!

This is your final round of downsizing and it comes in two parts. First, consider how your monthly payments on storage will affect your full-time travel budget. Would it be better on your budget to get a smaller storage unit? You don’t want your storage unit payments to stretch your budget too thin. Take one more look at your hold pile and downsize enough to fit it all in the storage unit that’s best for your budget.

Second, think about all the stuff you’re actually taking with you on your travels. Also, consider all the equipment and stuff you still need but haven’t even purchased yet. What is the cargo carrying capacity of the RV, boat or whatever you’re going to be traveling in? Think about the weight and space all that stuff will take up. It adds up quickly, trust me. It might be worth taking one last hard look at all the stuff you intend on taking with you.

Step 13: Sell, donate, trash, storage!

Time to finish selling what needs to be sold, donate what needs to be donated, throw away the trash and move the rest to storage! Congratulations, you’ve downsized and it’s now time to get on with whatever’s next for you in your journey to start your full time travel adventure!

BONUS TIPS:

–WARNING: If donating or recycling old computers, ALWAYS remove the hard drive and have it shredded by a business that will let you actually watch it get shredded. Do this to make sure that it actually is destroyed. This is important because simply “deleting” personal or business information from your hard drive is NEVER enough!

-With kitchen stuff especially, try to bring things with you that are multipurpose. Such as an air fryer that is also a pressure cooker that is also a slow cooker.

-Selling tip: Bundle related things at a discounted price for an easier sale. Here’s an example, we bundled together all our shovels, rakes, gardening and lawn tools and sold it for one low price. It’s a great way to sell something that might not sell on its own!

-Selling tip: Always have two prices. Have the listed price and your bottom line you’ll let people talk you down to. Hopefully, you’ll get more than your bottom line price though!

-Internet selling tip: Meet in well-lit public places when you meet people buying your stuff such as a police station parking lot! Back when we lived in a house, our local police department specifically recommended the public using their parking lot for internet sale exchanges.

-Furniture tip: This is a money saving tip! Do you plan on only traveling full time for a short or limited period of time and then moving into another house, apartment or other permanent home? If so, figure out if it cost you more to put your furniture into storage or purchase new furniture when you move back into a stationary home. One more thought, many people who only intend to travel full time for a set period of time end up extending their travels.

Want to see our downsizing experience?

We actually have a video episode taking you through some of our downsizing experience. Check it out here! Also, stay tuned to our Travel Life Blog for our next exciting blog!

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