What Happened to our Stuff?

In May 2019, we lived in a 6,000 square foot house on 1.6 acres. A month later, we were living in a truck with a living space about the size of our recently forsaken walk-in closet. To know how we downsized this dramatically, read on.

It is a well known law of physics that possessions of a family will unrelentingly expand to fit the space available. Fortunately, we only had about three years at our house to accumulate stuff. We had moved from an apartment, so we had started out at our house with relatively little. But who are we to scoff at the laws of physics? 

Our Closet in our old home

We filled each room with furniture, installed shelves for books, built cubbies for shoes, called California Closets for a make-over, and outfitted the garage with a workbench and shelving units. We proceeded to fill all of this new found space.

Three years later, when it came time to downsize into our camper, our first step was to determine how much we could take with us. To do this, we test drove our new rig (affectionately known as the Buffalo) around Utah and Arizona for about ten days. We realized quickly that the truck was not designed with storage as a priority.

We had the truck manufacturer redesign to add the storage that full time living would need, including additional kitchen storage, a large closet forward of the shower, several book shelves, two cabinets in the bath, a dozen net pockets around the bed, and a small shoe cubby. We also converted a TV cabinet into a closet to fit most of my everyday clothes.

But we weren't done yet, since there were many opportunities outside of the living area. In the safari rack above the cab, we added three large storage bins that held everything from recovery gear to dry stores. Another valuable addition was a garage. We planned on having a folding e-bike with us (RAD Mini), and to accommodate it we had a garage built on the back of the truck opposite the spare tire.

The garage may have sacrificed a little on our departure angle, but not too much since the spare was already sticking out some on the other side. (Side note: We loved the bike so much, we eventually bought another one and kept that one in the shower, of all places).

Our New home

It was surprising how much storage was now available in the truck.

That said, we still had the monumental task ahead of us to whittle our possessions down to squeeze into our new lifestyle. Taking stock, though, we realized that in addition to downsizing what we already had we also needed to buy more new stuff.

We did not own much of the gear that we thought we would need. Most of our clothing was designed for success in corporate America and not the great outdoors. And a lot of our other possessions, like cookware, just took up too much space to be practical in a truck. So, we invested in an awesome set of Magma nesting pots and pans with removable handles (which we love! LINK ). It was a much better solution, but again - more stuff, and we needed to end up with less.

So what did we do with our stuff…?

Clothes

We were anything but minimalists when it came to clothes. I'd like to say it was all Jane, but I too had a shoe collection that would put many women to shame. So in our style shift from Nordstrom to REI, we used several channels for liquidation:

• Giving to my older sons: This was mostly ties and accessories but also, my son Aaron is close enough to my size that he was able to inherit some shirts and pants.

• Ebay: Jane's mom is an Ebay maven. She took care of Jane's extensive silk scarf collection, as well as some dresses and purses.

• Donation: We took load after load to Goodwill.

• Storage: We did hold on to select items, like a suit for me and several dresses for Jane. These are in Jane's parents' basement.

Books

Jane and I are big readers. Books are the only area where we both have a bit of the hoarder gene. It is not an exaggeration to say that we had a thousand books. Our business book collection alone was about a hundred. Here´s what we did...

• Used Book Store: a few dozen boxes went to Books a Million generating a little cash.

• UMKC: Through a friend at work, I connected with a teacher in the entrepreneur office at the UMKC school of business. After my work colleagues took a handful of the business books, the rest went to UMKC. We also donated a bunch of French language books to a nearby high school.

• With us: The bookshelves in our house housed hundreds for Wolf. We built a headboard storage area above the headboard in the truck. This was the perfect place for some of Wolf’s books, and a handful for me and Jane. Selecting which books to take from the thousand is a perfect representation of what this entire downsizing was like.

• Storage: We have some books at Jane's parents' house too. We also gave a bunch of books to friends who recently built some bookshelves in their office. We have an agreement with them to come swipe a book or two whenever we are in town.

Furniture

We initially planned to sell our furniture to friends or on Craig's list. But as our departure date started to coincide with our closing date on the house, selling so many pieces individually proved difficult to manage. We found a solution:

• With the house: Almost all of our furniture was included in the sale of the house. This worked well for the buyers since they were coming from a smaller house with furniture that needed updating anyway. From our side, it made logistics so much easier. Best of all, we no longer needed  to worry about moving our 600+ pound cement-top dining room table. I feel it also helped us close the deal. It's hard to say if we got more value in the sale price by including the furniture versus what we would have gotten by selling. What I can say is that we sold the house.

• Craig's List: There were several miscellaneous pieces that we did end up selling on Craig's list and we did give a couple of items like TVs to family members.

Yard/Workshop Tools

It goes without saying that my weed wacker and table saw were not going to join us on the trip. I had a nice workshop built out in our garage and yard tools appropriate for the many tasks required for maintaining our lot (chain saw, bush wacker, tiller, etc.). The garage was the last bastion for our possessions. We were showing the house, so every extra item ended up in the garage. This is what we did...

• Sold to friends: It turned out that I had several friends at work who needed what I had. One had just moved into a large place himself and needed many of my yard tools.

• Contractor tips: We completed an extensive renovation of our house to update it to be sellable. We had painters and a trim carpenter who were just outstanding. To show my appreciation, I gave the painters my table saw and the carpenter my chop saw. They certainly deserved the reward and would put them to good use.

• Payback to neighbors: We had great neighbors. There was countless times where they helped us out and never let us down. When it came down to the massive pile of tools and miscellany left in the garage two nights before we were leaving, I invited my neighbors over. As we finished off the last of my beer, we had sort of a fantasy football draft where they took turns claiming my stuff. It was fun, I cleared out my stuff, and I knew it was all going to be in good hands.

Miscellaneous

Of course there are a lot of items that did not fit into the categories above. We transitioned them as well:

• For several years, I made my own wine which requires a fair amount of gear – big fermenting bottles, a bucket, a capper, bottles, etc. I ended up making a fantastic deal with a friend of mine. He has a side business as a wine distributor. So I traded all my wine gear and a wine rack I made to him for two cases of fantastic Italian wine. It was the ultimate win-win.

• Another hobby of mine was film making. Over a decade, I had accumulated everything you need to make a movie. This included lights, mics, stands, etc. Even a 12'x20' green screen. I decided to keep a couple small lights and my digital audio recorder. The rest I gave or sold to a friend of mine who is well on her way to becoming a successful filmmaker.

• Our gym equipment was sold to a friend and the stuff that he didn't want (or, rather, couldn't be forced to take) left via Craig's list.

• Our half dozen or so framed pictures and any of the valuable, sentimental, or otherwise worthy items that we decided to keep are stored at Jane's parents' place.

How did we do?

Considering that we signed the deal to sell the house just a couple weeks before we drove off in our truck, we did pretty well. I could second guess myself thinking that we could have a couple more thousand dollars in our pocket if I spent more time and was more stringent about selling everything for the greatest cash value. But the stress of that would have been overwhelming and it felt, and still feels as I write this, very good to have given so much of our stuff to people who need and deserve it. So all things considered, we did pretty well. Writing this one year later, I can proudly say - Mission Accomplished.