Final Preparations…They Almost Killed Us

Blog Post #7 - Written May 3, 2025

I don't have a great selection of photos for this 'misc' post, but here's one from the de-winterization process. Not pictured is the hour I wasted trying to figure out why the outdoor kitchen sink (above) wasn't draining...only to finally realize the strainer was also a plug and even after you take it out, it drains slowly...


Final Preparations…They Almost Killed Us


The thing about uprooting your entire lives to become nomads and live the relaxing nomadic life is, it takes a lot of planning and work!  Our lives for the 4 months of January to April were so incredibly busy and exhausting, I felt like this trip wasn’t worth it many times. 


Even before January, Megan was spending a couple hours every night researching where we wanted to go and planning routes and finding costs and details of like 700 places of interest. Mind, we’re only doing this for 12-15 months haha, so she then also spent hours paring down her list (with some input from me), to a more manageable scale.  And I was looking into the nitty-gritty of residency, health insurance, car insurance, mail-forwarding, and selling our house!


Meanwhile, I’m still working full-time, Megan’s still taking care of our kids and doing home school and we’re doing all the rest during our normal relaxation and together time in the evenings. So yeah, we were a little mentally and emotionally fried and stretched thin for a while, it’s a miracle we still love each other! Haha I’m only partially kidding, the point of this trip is to spend more time together and grow closer together, but there are definitely certain aspects and times that will try your patience and test your love and commitment! 


Anyhow, we got the house cleaned and prepped for pictures (Megan found a real estate photographer that did a great job for $185) and then listed (flat rate MLS listing, about $385), had about 25 showings in 8 days (that was especially exhausting for Megan and the kids, bless them!), and accepted our one and only offer (full ask price offer from a VA buyer that I had originally told to not bother touring because I didn’t want to deal with a VA loan/inspections. Luckily they didn’t listen to me!). Click HERE if you'd like to see what an amazing job Megan did cleaning our house for pictures and keeping it clean for showings; she's incredible! And yes, we really did downsize from a huge 6 bed, 3 bath home to a tiny 2 bed, 1 bath trailer. Why do you think it was so hard to get rid of everything?!? We had to sell/chuck/leave about 90% of our stuff.


We sold my car the first weekend after I listed it, which was great.  But Megan’s van took a while to sell and we didn’t get as much for it as we thought it was worth. But beggars can’t be choosers, and by the end, we were just grateful it sold (the very last day before we departed!).


We spent so much time and effort preparing for a garage sale, which turned out to be a bust because it rained on Friday and Saturday :(

But we sold plenty on FB Marketplace and the buyer’s of our home were gracious enough to take everything we didn’t sell or take! Literally everything.  Which was a huge blessing; we would NOT have been ready to leave for another week if we had to clean out the house too! It was already a mad scramble for like 5 days straight as it was. Again, this kind of idyllic trip is not for the faint of heart haha!


But in the end, after too many laughable catastrophes to count, we got the trailer and truck packed up with everything we need (I hope) and probably a bunch of stuff we don’t.

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