Transition to Full Timers

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PrairieParson

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Our plan is to convert to full time RVing in 1 1/2 years.  We have a house with the basic furniture, most of which is good quality, but is certainly not new.  Our plan is to full time at least for 5 years, but then, if health or other circumstances change we will have to give it up.  So, what do you all think, sell the furniture or store it.  Some are very nice pieces in very good condition, but frankly, some of it is over 35 years old and is far from "like new."  My first thought was to sell it all.  Five years of storage could easily cost $5,000 or more.  So, I'm ready to sell it all. 

However, if we had to replace it, it would be a challenge to replace it for that price.  Any thoughts or suggestions.  Our climate here is perfect for storage.  But we can't leave it with any family and friends.  Any advice is appreciated.  My wife only loves a couple of pieces, so its not a big emotional trauma to sell. 
 
Tough call, but I would probably sell. We aren't in love with our furniture either, nor would we insist on top of the line new ones later.

35 year old stuff doesn't seem worth the price of storing commercially. It would be different if you had a place that was cheap.
 
I would sell everything.  You could get some good prices by selling things on Craigslist.  The same would be true if things didn't work our and you returned to a stick built.  You could buy used which could exceed the quality of some new stuff being sold today.  The storage costs could exceed your estimate and the cost to move the stuff in and out of storage will add to that cost.  Don't forget insurance. 
 
Plus, I just thought of another cost.  We would not resettle here, so if we had a bunch of stuff in storage, we'd have to rent a truck to transport it to our new location. Thanks for the advice. I'm already to sell anyhow, but its nice to bounce ideas off of others that see life and priorities in a similar way.
 
We sold ours, most who store end up wishing they had sold it.
 
We stored a lot of the hard goods - dining room set with hutch, entertainment center (custom made), end tables and chests of drawers, dressers , etc. It was very good quality stuff.
We stored a lot of kitchen items, small appliances, linens and bedding. We stored all of my guns, reloading equipment, complete woodworking shop equipment and electronic lab equipment, my wife's shop equipment for building miniatures, her original oil paintings and all of her genealogy files.
I am very glad that we did.
Replacing it would have cost much more that the storage cost for 11 years did.
Just replacing appliances like washer/dryer, along with beds and mattresses, living room furniture  cost over $10,000.
 
We plan on going full-time in 2 years.  First thought was to sell everything.  But furniture is one-thing, but then you have to consider all of the "other" household goods.  We have already begun consolidating things like Christmas decorations.  Special ornaments, cards, pictures in frames, etc.  All is in only 4 totes down from 8.  We also consolidated our serving and baking items.  Kept only the best pieces and sold or gave away the rest.  Since we already have some of this that we are not willing to part with, we then decided to keep just the furniture that we really love and will store that.  Most of the pieces will go.  After 2 years of full-timing then we'll decide what we want to do.  Maybe we'll continue on and if so, then we'll have to decide on the items in storage.  But if we decide to go back to a s&b, then we'll have our favorite items and  furniture.
 
We stored quite a bit of household goods for over six years while we lived on our sailboat and I'm thankful we did - replacing all of that would have been extremely expensive especially my tools that I had accumulated over the years.  All of our stored goods did very well in a non-climate controlled space and this was in central Florida.

The other reason we stored our things is we didn't know if we wanted to live aboard for a year or ten years, in hindsight we made the perfect decision for us.
 
We got rid of everything except for what could fit in a 10x10 storage area.  We are keeping that for two years and then will reevaluate.  I just wasn't comfortable with letting everything go and frankly you don't have to.  But we did get rid of TONS of stuff.
 
Well, we took a big first step to full time.  We bought our first new vehicle in 38 years of marriage.  A Chevrolet 2500 6.0 crew cab truck for towing the trailer.  Its big, but I'm a novice and the last thing I wanted was to buy the trailer and find out the hard way, we should have bought a bigger truck. Almost universally, we were told, you need a 3/4 ton truck, so now we have one.
 
We had an inexpensive place to store a truckload of stuff for the 5 years we were full timers.  The furniture we kept did not fit into the next space we had for it.  The styles I liked changed as well.
I was glad I kept my big mixer and nice pots and pans.  It was fun to see our stuff again when we opened the boxes.
bottom line it will be your call.  Enjoy the process!
 
We did the storage thing, in our ex home town, the storage units are cheap, 10x20 for $600 a year. We stored a few pieces of furniture, a roll off tool box loaded with tools and a bunch of shop equipment, along with family china and the like. We will settle somewhere and the bedroom furniture will be needed, along with a few other pieces of furniture. And my tools are always needed. We can afford a couple of years of storage fees to save $20,000 in replacement cost. We did sell a bunch, including most house furniture to the buyers of the house in a personal property deal.
 
Betty Brewer said:
The furniture we kept did not fit into the next space we had for it.  The styles I liked changed as well.
Click to expand...

That was the DW opinion as well. When we came back from full timing, we didn't want the old stuff anymore. Other than a few special pieces and some tools, we sold it all.  I kept some tools, and mementos from the work days, but everything else went.  All we needed was a 5X5 storage for all of it.
 
When we first sold the house, hubby didn't want to get rid of the furniture. After paying to store it for a year, we gave it all away except for the almost new Whirlpool Duet washer and dryer.  Went from a 10x20 storage building to a 5x10. Hubby laughs at me because half of that is the Christmas stuff I couldn't part with. All the tools are in my Dad's storage building and important pictures are in one of his extra closets.
 
We just kept the place and remamed it Storage Buildings! Paid for, taxes and insurance are reasonable. Blew out the pipes and left. We stop for a few days once or twice a year staying in the MH using the 50A outlet I put in outside.

Ernie
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