Gwen’s reply:
Hi Glenda: 
When we decided we didn’t want to own dirt anymore, we set some goals and had to keep our focus on those goals. Especially, when we were looking at some material thing that we thought we couldn’t do without. 
Our main goal was to travel. Our second goal was: there would be no storage shed for left behind stuff. That meant we had to find a home for what we considered important stuff! 
One of the first things I did was to scan all my photo’s - boxes of them. They are now digital and the originals were sent to family and/or thrown away. I purchased some flash drives and CD’s to store the photo’s on. I tease my kids because they will get a digital album of old photo’s instead of a paper album when I die. I digital scrapbook, therefore, the digital photo’s works well with this method of storage.  
We have a lot of music CD’s and movies. We took them out of their cases and put them in a storage wallet. Takes up less space. We purchased an accordion file for important papers. (Our new unit will have a file drawer! Yahoo!) We did take with us a couple of wall pictures and knick-knacks. But not much! I think what you put into your rig depends on wall space and storage space. Another factor is weight in the rig. What we brought into the rig had to be light to keep the pin weight and total overall weight down. That takes creativity! 
We gave all the memento stuff to family. Things my friends gave me I gave back to them, explaining why. We had a big garage sale (strapped for time or we would have had a couple of them), we put stuff on Freecycle.com and Craig’s List. Craig’s list was very good to us in our area. We sold many of our things there. Freecycle is just that – Free. People come and get what you give away free. We sent many of our clothes we wouldn’t need to the Gospel Mission, but our Goodwill and Salvation Army would not take a thing. That stuff was given away free or taken to the dump.  
I am not a material person, so this move didn’t bother me. Dale was another story, but we waited until he could actually do this. When the time came, he bucked up and got rid of his tools. It was hard but we had to keep our goals in check to get through it. Now that we have, we feel so free of the shackles that kept us tied to land and stuff. We have learned we can make do without all that stuff that just took up cupboard space in the home. 
We both work, therefore, we have work clothes. There are airtight bags you can buy to put your off-season clothes in and store under the bed. I have found that I don’t wear everything I have. So this makes it easy to get rid of what I don’t need. I give my clothes to women shelters or our gospel mission. 
Since we are sitting all year instead of full time traveling, I have brought things with me that I won’t need when we hit the road. Like baking dishes. They are heavy and take up room. I am slowly moving toward those disposal aluminum pans. We sold our home in October. Since November, we have cleaned out the RV a couple of times – knowing what we use and don’t use. I think this will be an ongoing process. 
One thing to keep in mind – sitting fulltime is very different from traveling fulltime. I believe when we finally take to the road we will see that we don’t need all that much. 
We have moved up in RV vehicles. We started with a 21-foot travel trailer. Next, we purchased a King of the Road, 2 slider. Now, we know we need more room so are purchasing a 3 slider, 36 foot 5th wheel. I can’t wait for the extra room. (we have a 6 year old Golden) So take into consideration the fact that the RV is your home and get what you need. 
It is still taking us time to realize that when we pull our 5th on a vacation that everything we own is behind us! 
I think one of the wisest decisions we made was to join the Escapees. We have learned so much about living in an RV from them. They are, also, a great bunch of people and when one is out on the road one needs friends. They will fill that important niche. 
This is an adventure and one we embrace. The change was difficult on different levels but we know what we want and where we are going. We decided we would not let stuff get in the way of that. In the end, it was all in our mindset! 
If we can help you along the way, don’t hesitate to email us. We pray your journey will be as exciting as ours! This is the life!
Dale’s Reply:

Hello Glenda:

Gwen has given you her point of view but I wanted to give you mine too.

The most important information is that deciding to sell or give away 2/3 of our stuff and keep only what we could tow behind us did not happen overnight. We had a small trailer before the fifth wheel and were never ready to return home at the end of a vacation. After the fifth wheel purchase, we lived in the fifth wheel for seven months of the year and vacationed for another month so we were not at our house for eight months of the year. That gave us time to realize what we really needed and what was just stored in various rooms of our house. It was still difficult to sell our stuff at a fraction of what we paid for it. It was not difficult to give things to our children, if they were things they wanted. It was a surprise to learn than Goodwill, Salvation Army and other non-profits did not want our stuff. I made several trips to the dump with things I thought had value and the non-profits would want but they didn't. One resource Gwen did not mention was eBay. I sold as many items on eBay as I could and got good prices for most. 
If you get one of the newer fifth wheels, you will find they have the space to store more stuff than you can legally carry. It's the weight of all the stuff that causes the problem. We are at maximum weight for both our trailer and tow vehicle now and we really don't have all our stuff into the fifth wheel yet. Since I still work, we have two vehicles because I commute to work. That vehicle's trunk is full of the tools I have not been willing to give up yet. The back seat is full of items I've taken off the King of the Road and plan to install on the new Carriage when it arrives. Additionally, we have items stored under our deck at Howard Prairie Lake Resort. During our month long Arizona trip, we took more items out of the trailer and stored them in my commute car. We hope to be traveling in about two years. All these extra items must be disposed of before then. 

From my experience, for your husband, the hardest thing are the tools. I sold all my stationary power tools I used in my wood shop. I learned that some of the better RV parks have a complete wood shop available to residents so if I feel the need to build some custom item for the trailer, we'll rent a month at one of these RV parks and I'll use their shop. One of the hardest days for me was the day of our garage sale, selling many hand tools and hardware at a fraction of their cost. For example: I had about five cases of those little plastic drawers full of sorted screws, nails, nuts, bolts, etc.accumulated over 40 years.  I sold each case for $3. I just had to suck it in, grit my teeth and bear it.

As Gwen pointed out, when we begin traveling, we will go through our trailer again and throw out stuff we haven't used. We have a rule now ... buy something new, throw out two old things ... so far, we've done well by this rule and it's working to help us clean out stuff we don't use and keep us from buying things we don't really need anymore.

You can't believe how many RV people we run into who say they are "fulltime RV" but we soon learn that they may travel much of the year but just can't bring themselves to sell their house. When everything you own is on two axles towed behind you, it takes some getting use to. You must learn to trust yourself for security rather than all the stuff owned.

Good luck with your adventure.

On February 22, 2007, Steve and Cheryl (http://rvecafe.com/hpstaff.html#0601) read the email from Glenda and our response then sent us a copy of their journal dealing with the same problem when they began fulltime RV travel in 2002. 

It’s Wednesday night, Cheryl & I have landed in Clermont, Florida for a 2 week shakedown of the motor coach.  I’m not sure it’s the coach (we call it the “Bug”) as much as us that need’s shaken down.   Oy Vey, what a day “Departure Tuesday” was!!  Tuesday was the final closeout of the apartment and loading of the motorhome.  What a nightmare!  Cheryl & I have spent several years researching this lifestyle and thought that we were knowledgeable and well prepared.  No way we’d be surprised by the unknown!  We budgeted, re-budgeted, took RV driving classes, studied mail forwarding and bill paying options, read books on how to prepare for the “full timing lifestyle.”  What crap!!!!!  Squeezing your 1800 sq. ft. home to a 900 sq. ft. apartment to a 300 sq. ft. motorhome in one year is quite a challenge however, that last day is gut wrenching.

Space is at such a premium that absolutely every single item you own is subject to the trash it, store it, donate it, sell it or take it decision making process.  Needless to say, many gut-wrenching decisions are required and none more emotional that those on the very last day before we start those engines and head off into the sunset with, what we hope are the things we need and things we love the most.  Unfortunately, we ran out of time before we ran out of things.  We needed to be out of the apartment and on the road by 4pm to reach our destination (outside Orlando) before dark.  It is much easier to set up a 37 foot motorhome with available sunlight.  Cheryl concentrated on putting things away in the Bug while I emptied the apartment and made runs to the dumpster and Goodwill.  When 4pm came and went we threw everything left into the Bug and hit the road (think of an airline flight with everyone’s luggage piled high down the aisle ways).  Cheryl and I never argue however, there were more than a couple of snarls & hisses directed toward one another that Tuesday as we left behind life-long possessions.  

As noted, we arrived in Clermont after dark.  Too difficult to find a permanent campsite at night so we just pulled into what’s known as a “pull-through” (think of a double long parking spot in the middle of the Home Depot lot, way too much concrete but easy in & out).  We plugged into the electric pole, ate dinner and restarted the sorting process.  After only 3 hours we ere able to walk through the main cabin (sort of a kitchen, living room, dining room combo) with only four boxes of stuff left on the floor.  I was so pleased with our efforts and exhausted from the experience.  So after a VERY LONG day, I was ready to fall into bed for some well earned rest.  As I walk into our bedroom in the rear of the coach, turn on the light, I’m stunned to find the queen size bed completely covered with boxes, suitcases, plastic tubs of stuff and inability to walk around the bed because the bedroom floor was filled with the same.  “Cheryl, what is ALL THIS?” I wonder out loud (politely I might add as, at this point, I do not want to taunt my increasingly short fused wife).  She replies that as we approached 4pm that day, I was bringing stuff from the apartment faster than she could find space for it.  I can tell you that the fold-down sofa bed in the living room is quite comfortable and is the desired alternative to having my wind-pipe ripped out of my throat for suggesting that we clear the bedroom too that evening.  We were both a bit testy and needed rest which came to us quickly.

Wednesday and Thursday were spent making more “stuff” decisions, finding places for the “stuff” and then reorganizing our outside lower storage compartments called the “basement.”  We have twelve compartments around the outside of the coach of varying size, shape and capacity.  One is devoted to our generator (for city-slicker camping in the wilderness), one for utility hook-ups (electric, sewer, fresh water, telephone and cable TV), ½ compartment devoted to a 25 gallon LP tank.  Using our Detroit bred math skills, it appears that there would be 9 ½ compartments left for Cheryl & I to store “stuff” into.  Did I tell you about our two “cat mutts?”  We have two alley cats (masquerading as pure bred Siamese); Brutus at 18 lbs. and his sister Gracie at 14 lbs.  Needless to say, the amount of poop from 32 pounds of cat can be quantitatively disturbing.  Especially in a 300 sq. ft. motorhome.  One of these very valuable storage compartments for “stuff” has been reconfigured into a restroom for mutts (I never had a private bathroom when I was their age).  We cut a hole for a cat door from inside the coach, through 3 bulk heads and into the storage compartment (can you say nightmare?).  They are able to utilize it at their leisure and, all of the finer qualities of cat litter stay pretty much down there.  However, this left us with 8 ½ compartments for “stuff” which we were able to fill up by Thursday evening.