Follow us on our FREEDOM journey in our RV, Ruff Road, with our dogs! We like looking at freedom!
We shared how we recently went through Ruff Road evaluating our space, purging and reorganizing. https://ruffroadrvlife.com/together-again-and-one-year-purge-a-versary/
Follow the link below to our You Tube channel, Ruff Road RV Life, to hear what we did to purge and reorganize our RV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMJF0T7fsbU
Together again! I’m home after 600 Appalachian Trail miles. I have 278 miles to complete the entire trail. It’s been a great journey but I really missed Gary, the pups, family, and my cozy Ruff Road bed. It’s good to be home. If you want to check out my Appalachian Trail Journey, go to Trail Gator Trail Tales on YOU TUBE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDhM9jZwVlQ
We have a list as we begin our plans to officially hit the road. We have been living in Ruff Road for a year and three months now. Our plan was to be on the road by now but with my hiking, hiking injury delay and other obligations we are still living at home base in Florida. We will be wintering here as we complete final tasks necessary before hitting the road. We will be sharing our prep list in the next post since it will include things we’ve done to date to prepare and our final TO DOs.
Our major TO DO for this week was to purge and reorganize inside cabinets and outside storage bays. My post from April stated: “They say if you haven’t used it in a year, it has to go. I think in a small space like an RV you need to assess the clutter more frequently.” This is definitely true since we have had more than one purge and organize in a year’s time. This time was more thorough for cabinets in the front of the coach. since kitchen and bedroom areas have been thoroughly reworked in recent months.
We threw away five bags of trash- mostly from the inside of the RV which included outdated and unnecessary paperwork. I know that’s a lot! I couldn’t believe it myself but when we moved in it was quick so some notebooks or folders were stored without a close review of contents. For example, our notebook containing product manuals contained a few manuals of items we no longer owned. Our outside purge yielded one large trash bag full of items not suitable for donation. In addition, we filled one tote of items for donation. This included those items that we thought we needed but never used.
The biggest accomplishment from our reorganizing this time was better utilization of space. For example, when we moved in we planned to group like items together. When that space was filled, we plugged in excess items as logical as we could but still had like items in two places. Also, we have learned over the course of a year, which items we used most frequently and moved them to the easiest accessible bay. We started out with what we “thought” would be important in grouping items and what to keep. However, as we put that into practice we learned that changes were necessary based on day to day reality. We realize that as time goes by, we will revisit our newly reorganized areas and go through the process again…and again…and again. That’s ok. That’s RV living.
Purging is like losing weight. It can be hard to do. It is easy to creep back on you. However, when you lose it or purge it, you do feel better.
TO DOs for Hitting the Road
What did Gary do while I was away for months hiking the Appalachian Trail and hanging out in Colorado?
Month eight of RV living has brought out the creativity, especially in Gary. What about me? Well as our RV becomes overrun with backpacking gear and Appalachian Trail prep, I couldn’t take it anymore. Things that have not been used just had to go and our RV, Ruff Road, was in need of some better organizing.
As you may know, Gary is a musician and a very talented one at that. He plays the guitar, bass guitar, and piano. No we don’t have a piano in Ruff Road but we do have multiple guitars. Comment below if you need or if you have guitar storage ideas!
Creativity! This month he has been busy writing lyrics and music to songs. We needed a theme song for our very young YOU TUBE channel. He has now cranked out three songs and the instrumentals will be used for background music on our channel. No music copywright issues here!
We will be posting more on our YOU TUBE channel. Right now, we have a couple dog videos up just as a test plus one campground review. The dog videos are short and funny. Our YOU TUBE channel is RUFF ROAD RV LIFE, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHRpIFHJItKn3X_7DKY77Mw?view_as=subscriber
Having the freedom to be creative through music, writing, singing, and photography has been a bonus of retirement. We are loving having the time to use our right brains to create.
This month’s challenges were an overstuffed clothes closet, clutter due excess gear clutter on top of the regular clutter and an ineffective dirty clothes receptacle. They say if you haven’t used it in a year, it has to go. I think in a small space like an RV you need to assess the clutter more frequently.
Gary had already gone through his closet and made a donation pile. He was ahead of me. I faced my clothes closet- it contained the remnants of my walk in closet from my big house life. It seemed I was always cramming, and I do mean cramming, my clothes in any nook or cranny I could fit them in because my cute little organizational square clothes totes and other containers were overfilled. In addition, unstuffed items would fall out when I opened the door. Now I probably wouldn’t have jumped right into this project just yet but in addition to this I now have backpacking gear taking up space. This caused me to re-evaluate the other items, especially items that seemed ineffective, unnecessary or unused.
I took everything out of my closet. Next, I went through each clothes container and pulled out items I haven’t worn or wasn’t planning on wearing. I did accumulate a small pile to donate along with some of the baskets and an old drawer I was using for storage containers. They were not the best use of space. So not only were there too many clothes stuffed in my closet but I did not utilize the space effectively. In the small space of an RV, optimizing space is a must!
Organizing Tip: Make a diagram of your closet. This will help to quickly see where infrequently used items are stored.
Next, I looked around my bedroom and the items taking up floor space. I had tried a tall Thirty-One double hamper for awhile. It came from the big house but was too big so I gifted it to my daughter. I then tried a smaller Thirty-One tote I had on hand as a hamper. It wasn’t working out either because of the location being hard to reach. I discovered that it was a perfect fit for my closet. This tote became the holder of my bike shoes and equipment getting them off the floor and out of yet another tote they were housed in. Now I had the most effective storage in my closet to hold all of my clothes except underwear and work out clothes which are stored above the bed. As a result of reorganizing this area, we gained some much needed floor space in our bedroom.
What about our laundry though? We now store our dirty clothes in store recycle bags. Gary has one in his area. I have one hanging up on my purse hook. We have a third one stored in the shower for any nasty laundry. This is a new system so we’ll let you know how it works out. So far so good.
Let us know if you have any laundry solutions. Share on social media and subscribe to follow us on our journey.
Follow Sharon’s Appalachian Trail prep and hike on our Backpacking and Hiking page: http://ruffroadrvlife.com/appalachian-trail-section-hike/
Our Ruff Road RV Life Resources Page has been updated. Check it out!
http://ruffroadrvlife.com/resources/
You will find a list of items that we purchased or brought from our house to outfit Ruff Road. Remember, I am an overthinker so all of these items have been researched and pondered before hitting BUY. We have reflected honestly about them and will update as we add new purchases. Of course, this list doesn’t reflect all of the items from our hobbies that we had on hand such as guitars, speakers, mini sewing machine, art supplies, backpacking gear, bicycling gear, kayaking gear…but we’ve made room for these and did not include them on our list.
Your list will look different based on your RV, your preferences and needs. Use this, or any list, as a guide. It might jog your memory regarding something you may have forgotten about or that you were not aware that you needed. We looked at multiple lists found on the internet and listened to countless vlogs to help us with our plan to set up Ruff Road. We then made our own list prioritizing items we would need to purchase first. We took it step by step, one bite at a time. Little by little, our RV turned into a home.
We hope you find these resources helpful. Share some of your helpful resources. Was there anything that you discovered you needed but didn’t have? Was there anything you purchased thinking that you needed it only to find out you didn’t afterall? Comment, subscribe and share. We are looking forward to building this community. Thank you to our subscribers.
This is our first holiday in Ruff Road. It was almost one year ago that this dream began. My Facebook timehop popped up with One Year Ago today…my friend and I were taking pictures of RVs at a local dealership. This time last year, we had no idea we would be “looking at freedom” everyday. So here are our tweaks, tips, and trials at Month 5, as well as some general observations.
We are just days away from our first full time RV Christmas. The tree is up. The lights are hung. We are warm and cozy and happy. Peace to everyone.
Well here are just some of the adventurous learning lessons we’ve had so far. Laugh along with us. We are sharing so that you will be more knowledgeable and learn from our mistakes.
This one happened in the “big house” but the lesson is the same. The washer was acting up and I absentmindedly grabbed the dryer plug, attempted to unplug it but the housing fell apart causing a giant spark which somehow arched over to the back of the dryer which immediately began to flame up the wall! This happened in an instant and I called to my son-in-law, James, who immediately grabbed the nearby fire extinguisher and put the fire out. I flipped the breaker off. We evacuated the children to Ruff Road and waited for the fire department. They were most impressed with our fast action and knowing where the fire extinguisher was and how to use it. The outcome of this little mishap was that there was no damage, the washer works and the dryer works and I will never touch a 220 plug again!
Make sure that you learn about amps and what your RV needs. Make sure you know how many amps your electrical appliances use. Remember this: Amps = Watts divided by Volts. For example, a sandwich maker uses 1200 watts. We are running 120 volts in our system. So we divide 120 volts into 1200 watts and we find that the sandwich maker draws 10 amps, which is one third of what we have access to with our 30 amp hook up here at Happy Acre. So this device will go in to the use with generator or 50 amp only pile. How did we learn this? We discovered that our little electric pot that heats water for tea draws too many amps to use if the AC is running. We learned that we can only run one AC at a time. Also, we learned that we can’t run our on board vacuum cleaner while AC is on. So, as long as we are connected to 30 amp service, we must be mindful of our amp usage.
We learned this the hard way on a trip to North Georgia this year. There was snow and wind and rain and freezing temps. No problem. We have two heaters and we are connected to 50 amp service. So we thought… As the temps dropped, our units did not heat Ruff Road. Furthermore, the system kept switching to propane. We stayed toasty warm with our propane, until it ran out. Nothing about the AC/ Heat was covered in our walk-through or in the massive, generic owner’s manual in our coach. So we turned to the internet. Here is what we learned. Only one AC unit has heat strips and this doesn’t work if the temperature is below 40 degrees. Then the propane heat kicks on and that will use your propane reserves in a matter of days. We also learned that our propane gauge was faulty. It continued to show that we had propane but sadly we ran out. Now we are more knowledgeable about our heating and cooling systems. The propane gauge is fixed. Lesson learned.
So on that same freezing North Georgia trip, we were sitting in our cozy, propane heated Ruff Road and suddenly heard what sounded like a loud bang, thud noise from outside. It was night, blowing wind and sleet. We knew our awning would retract in high winds but we didn’t think the wind was blowing at that speed. I went to the door, opened it up, and did not see our awning. My first thought was it had blown away, ripped from its mounts. On further investigation, we saw it had rolled up by itself. Why? We turned to the manual this time and learned that when the temperature drops below 32 degrees, it retracts. Good to know!
On one of our first outings we returned to find that our front right tire center cap was gone. It really affected the look of our Ruff Road. It made her look a little rough. Did someone steal it? We had overnighted at a truck stop. We didn’t know. Gary started looking for tire center caps online and stumbled across some discussion of missing center caps. Apparently, this happens so don’t be alarmed if it happens to you. We went to Freightliner and bought another one. Problem solved.
We were told by someone at our local RV dealership that we would have to replace each individual puck (fixture). We even started shopping for puck light replacements. Fortunately, this was false. In our unit, all we needed was the bulbs. Gary read several great reviews on LED lights sold on Amazon for a fraction of the cost that RV Stores charged. For about $70 we were able to replace all of our ceiling lights with LED lights. So far, so good. LEDs are much cooler and use a fraction of the watts that the hot halogen lights use. If you are thinking of making the switch, we recommend it.
(add amazon link)
There is nothing funny about this one. I allocated one of the basement bins to backpacking and camping supplies. Some items were stored in a tote but the backpacks and tents were stored in large garbage bags. As we adjusted to RV living, we found the need to rearrange things. It was during one of these rearranging sessions that I discovered that my backpack was covered in mildew, not the spare one but the one I use. The same thing happened to my good Big Agnes tent. I was devastated. Yes we live in Florida. Yes it is humid and wet here. Lesson learned, I removed my good gear and it now lives in my bedroom. All other gear is stored in storage containers but I know now to check things regularly. If I hadn’t gone into this bin, there would have been more damage to my gear.
This may be a no brainer to many of you but when you retire, it’s easy to flounder going from highly scheduled days to being left to your own devices. We set a schedule to keep ourselves sane and to keep us on track with the tasks of downsizing. We also have set routines to provide structure to our day. Of course, we are retired so we are flexible. But knowing that Monday is always dump day and laundry day helps keep us on track.
You will bang your head. Keep cabinets closed to avoid injury. Be aware of low hanging cabinets. I think I had knots and even broken skin the first month in Ruff Road. I’m better now!
Put wheel covers on before dropping the airbags to save your knuckles.
Small humidifiers work. Ours did. Don’t assume it won’t go flying. Ours did after weeks of no problems and now we have to buy another one.
Sweep everyday. Ev-er-y day.
You will constantly be rearranging to make things fit the best and to make the best use of space. Embrace it. Also, you will take things out. You’ll be ready to do it after you’ve moved something 50 times. It will suddenly lose its preciousness.
Weekly dump day is thorough cleaning day.
What are some of your lessons learned? Do you have any funny stories? I’m sure we’ll “learn” more as we move into this nomadic lifestyle. I can’t wait!
Picture this: A family of five moves into a house that is already full from 34 years of wonderful living with children, grandchildren, and grandparents. They bring with them an entire UHaul truck full of their household belongings, including furniture. All unwanted items from two households are stacked in boxes by the French doors in the dining room and spill out onto the large porch. If you can picture a maze to get into the house, you got it! ALL of these boxed up and unwanted items must make it to the yard sale tables ready for eager buyers to descend and purchase these treasures! I’m not sure this paints a picture of the massive amount of treasures we had to sell, but I hope you get the idea. We were overwhelmed by the “stuff”.
I’ll be honest. I’ve had a couple of yard sales years ago and didn’t make enough money to feel it was worth my time. We live off of the main road so visibility is one issue. We live on the quiet side of town and not much traffic here is another issue. Finally, we live in a neighborhood of working middle class folks, not considered high end which I know many yard salers avoid. I was hopeful because this time, we had more than ever and some really nice things. I know that we didn’t have the time to “present” items as we would have liked but they were grouped together in an organized way.
How’d we do? We had steady traffic on day one and a trickle of traffic on day two of the yard sale. We made some money and did get rid of some things. It was fun to see others excited about our treasures. But…there was ALOT left over. In fact, it looked like we hadn’t sold anything at all at the end of it.
Well, our clothes and shoes were so nice, barely used we were thinking, my daughter Michelle and I spent the next couple of weekends and hours and hours staging and photographing the clothes and shoes to sell on Facebook Marketplace. What did we learn from that? Just go ahead and donate and save yourself the time. We had to store these items. It’s Florida in August with rain everyday so we were combating moisture and mildew which decided the fate of many things that were ruined as a result.
So the next couple of weeks, I spent every day going out to the yard sale tables, taking the tarps off and sorting the items to be sold on EBAY or Facebook Marketplace, donate, trash, keep. I know what you are thinking! Didn’t we already do this? We did but consider this the final purge. Everyday the amount was less and less. Rain clouds would form and I’d retarp the area and wait for rain to clear or begin again the next day. Meanwhile, Gary made trip after trip to the dump and to donate to local charitable organizations.
I remember the day that the area had returned to its uncluttered state. That was a happy day! Inch by inch, anything is a cinch. Mile by mile, we’ll get there in awhile! We were making progress. We had purged our house of 34 years of “stuff”. We had purged our yard of the leftovers. We were living happily in our cozy little Ruff Road everyday. We were blessed to be Grandma/ Grandpa School Transportation to our grandchildren. We weren’t on the road yet, but we were happy. Life couldn’t be better!
We were making progress but there were still two sheds to deal with. The sheds were the next stop on our to do list. Inch by inch, this is getting done, too. Our goal was to be completely done by the end of the year and at this updated writing, we are almost there. The only things left to do at this point is sell off our EBAY/ Marketplace inventory or donate it and finish the scanning and digitizing of our photos and videos.
Even though I do not care for yard sales, I liked getting all of the “stuff” out of the house. Things that seemed so precious in the house lost their appeal on a yard sale table making it easier for me to say goodbye. We were able to move forward with the final clearing. It was freeing, just like when we purged the house. We felt lighter after the house and even lighter after the yard sale purge.
If Gary were doing this on his own, it would be a much quicker process. He’s not as sentimental or as much of an overthinker as I am. So if you are like him, you will get done in half the time or less than we did. However, if you are the least bit sentimental and tend to overthink things, then welcome to my club. I’m sharing because if I can let go and do it, you can too. Happy Purging!
If you have some yard sale reflections you would like to share, add them to the comments and share. 🙂
Here was the plan: My daughter, Michelle, and her family were moving back to Florida and planned to buy our house. We knew about when they were coming. My last day to work was June 30th. Then we get word that they would be here July 22nd. Yikes! That gave us about three weeks to downsize plan, box up and move into Ruff Road! Now I’ve watched many downsizing videos, but none of them started with the amount of stuff that we’ve accumulated after six children, several grandchildren, parents passing, and 34 years! We are not hoarders by no means but we did have…stuff! Lots of it!
Here is my system for purging which I affectionately call the 3 Step Purge System for Over Thinkers. It is a multi-step process which probably goes against what the experts would say, but it worked for me. Let’s start with clothes. I worked in the professional world and had a walk in closet full of professional clothes, which will no longer be required in my retirement life.
Step 1: I ask myself: Do I love it? Yes or no? If NO-Box up to donate. If YES- Then it was hung up to keep. Of course, there is not much room in an RV so I knew that there would be a second purging.
Step 2: After a day or two, I returned to my YES clothes and I repeated the process. Do I love it? I found that I was able to let go of a little more this second round. It became easier.
Step 3: This was the final round. Do I love it? Yes or no? To my surprise I was able to let go of a few more. I did add favorites to a box for my family. Even though I counted this my final round, as I packed to take my clothes out to Ruff Road, I purged even more.
Bottom line: My clothes fit into the space I planned for them. I still have variety in my wardrobe. My purging system worked for me. Some may be able to do this in one round or even two. This worked for me. For the overthinkers of the world, the three step purge system is recommended.
Our home had four bedrooms, three bathrooms, kitchen, laundry room, dining room, living room, and two porches. Our brother in law was staying with us when this grand purge began so that was one room that he took care of, thankfully. How do you take all of the items, the books, the paintings, the décor, the STUFF and make a plan?
My plan started with sorting. I began to gather all like items in the living room. All of the children’s books go here. All of the photography equipment goes there. All of the fishing décor goes over there. Everything in the house was sorted, which began emptying out rooms. Of course, during this sorting process I was also following my PURGING process. We began posting items that we could sell on Facebook Marketplace. One half of our living room became our selling warehouse. That worked out well and one by one many items were sold. The rest was boxed for a giant yard sale. Anything we wanted to keep with us was considered carefully, space is a premium in an RV. Keepers were boxed up to be taken to Ruff Road.
So one of the bedrooms had become a scanning station for photos. We took down all picture frames and removed the pictures as part of our sorting process. All boxes of photos and photo albums were sent to this room and there is ALOT! I fancy myself an amateur photographer so just add that to the many family pics. I stood in that room for four days, morning to late at night, scanning and there are still boxes and tubs left to do. I finally had to just stop so I could get the sorting and purging done.
When downsizing, scanning your photos and digitizing your home movies are the two most time consuming things you will do. There is no fast way to do this unless you pay to have it done. That wasn’t an option for me. Later on, after the move, I ordered an Elgato to digitize the home movies we had on hand. I am sentimental and I love seeing my parents and brother again in the movies. It’s always fun to see the kids when they were little. If any of you have suggestions on how to get all of this done quicker, please comment and share!
Each day I had a TO DO list to keep us on track. We’d follow the list, adjusting as needed. I used a regular spiral notebook to keep my list in. I’d designate if it was Gary or me, cross off completed items and carry over what didn’t get done. We had a general timeline of what we wanted done by when so that’s how we prioritized the list. This was essential to us being ready to leave our house July 22nd. Anyone downsizing or planning a move, it is amazing what you can get done when you plan it out on paper and look at it every day.
Why yes, we did- well the majority! We spent our first full time night in Ruff Road, with pups, the night of July 22nd. We handed our house over to our daughter that night and haven’t looked back. We had sorted, boxed, donated and purged. We only had a few items left in the office, and closet shelves that I weeded out the following weeks. We had moved all of the things we were keeping into Ruff Road. This took several hauls and I organized and put it away each trip to make room for the next haul. Honestly, I am amazed at what we put in here and I was able to put it away neatly.
Ah, so now we could sit back, sip our coffee and relax in the comfort of our new home. We still had some selling to do and sheds to work on, but the biggest job was done.
Downsizing is what it’s cracked up to be. It is freeing to rid yourself of “stuff”. This realization began as I had to go in and clean out my mom’s house after she passed. She, like many who grew up during the depression years, kept everything. She lived with me her last few years but didn’t want us to do anything with her “stuff”. I discovered that all of that “stuff” had deteriorated, molded, it was of no value to anyone. And then, I felt the overwhelming burden of all of this stuff. It opened my eyes that at the end of the day, our stuff will not stay new, will get eaten and chewed on by bugs, will fade, will deteriorate. It weighs us down. You feel lighter inside with each letting go. Have any of you gone through a downsizing process? What system worked for you? Comment and share. 🙂
Our original plan, of course, was to move from our house to our RV. However, we fell in love with Ruff Road and ended up with a house and an RV. So now, we need to set up our RV as our second home since we will be taking some trips in it. There are many RV lists on the internet to help you in this process and that’s exactly where we went to research what we would need to set up Ruff Road. Here is the process we followed to outfit Ruff Road and some of the items that we purchased.
This organization was for Ruff Road as our recreational vehicle for trips. We were pleased with our organization. On our March trip to north Georgia, in freezing cold weather, we were able to welcome my daughter and her family into Ruff Road for a couple days. We had four adults, three children/ teenagers, and FIVE dogs! It worked.
At this time, we were still living in our home. However, in just a few short months, we would be making the transition from 2,000+ square feet to full time living in our Ruff Road with our dogs! Follow along and see what our process was to downsize.
Comment to share positive suggestions, experiences, or even lessons learned to help others outfitting their RVs.