Friday, September 8, 2017

The downsizing dilemma

I have moved more than 20 times in my life, sometimes from a larger house to a smaller one. But always I had storage options. Even when I bought my co-op in Chicago, I had a storage space where I could stash boxes I had not opened in 20 years. (Yeah, I carted them all over the country. My moving costs were most always paid by my new company.)

Moving out of 40-foot motorhome that had around 400 square feet of living area and  huge "basement" storage compartments into a 26.6-foot (OK, round it to 27-foot) motor coach (RUV) is challenging, to say the least.
This is only part of the downsizing mess. I've already unpacked several boxes. We have many more in the garage. Jim has yet to sort through the tools and other "basement" items (such as chairs) we need to keep with us.

As I was boxing up our stuff from Junior, I found items we had forgotten we had and had never used. I even found a half-set of knives still in its thermo-plastic encasing!

Of course, we had to have an iron, "just in case." (I don't think we ever used it.) We had to have a pot and pan in every size, should I ever need it. We had to have several sets of sheet (even flannel ones) and several blankets, in case it got really cold or we had company stay over night. (Never happened. Well, it did get cold a couple times, but we didn't need so many blankets.) We had to have duplicate tools, again, just in case. We had to have several rain ponchos (never used).

I could go on.

We had seven or eight mid-sized boxes stowed in our attic. I filled all of them, and found other containers to fill up--all with precious "stuff" from our motorhome days. Now my dilemma is, "What do I do with all of this?"

Downsizing requires making tough decisions and getting back to basics. So, right now I am going through each of these boxes and deciding what we really need. Probably not nearly as much as we had. We just had the luxury of space in our first two RVs. Not so, now.

The other dilemma is how to stow the things we need. Our new RUV has quite a bit of storage in the cabin and bedroom areas, but it is not the same type of storage as in Junior, nor is it in the same places. I will probably forget where I put things. Oh, well. Eventually we will find them.

I'd better get back to my work.

Until later,

Your Reluctant RoVer,

Linda

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