The Transition... from Sticks & Bricks to Rubber & Resin

Moving into the RV

We now own an RV, a BIG 40 foot fifth wheel with three slides. By comparison to a house this is a tiny living space, our home in Dahlonega was 2,100 sq. ft. not including the basement or attic closets, the total square footage of that house was ~4,000 sq. ft. The RV is ~400 sq. ft. not including the basement ( storage area below) which would give us an additional ~40 sq. ft.

My point...much less living space and MUCH MUCH less storage space. As we started loading our stuff into the new coach we quickly realized just how much smaller!!! Take clothes you hang in the closet for example, both Ruth and I had been sorting though our hanging clothes during the wait period, I felt like I had done a pretty good job of picking what to transition to the coach. Well as I started loading my clothes into the closet of the RV I quickly realized...whoa, too much... it wasn't all going to fit...so back to the drawing board, time to get rid of more and get creative.

Here is the floor plan for our coach, by RV standards this is a large fifth wheel measuring just at 40 feet in length. There are larger ones but there is a price to pay, both literally and figuratively but I won't go there. My point, you have what you have so you have to adapt. We no longer have the luxury of just finding another place to put stuff, everything has to fit, there is no extra space. The other issue...weight, everything you bring into the RV adds weight and there is a finite amount of weight you can carry to safely move down the road without compromising something, the suspension, the brakes, the tires. The point... you just can't keep putting stuff into this thing, you have to make decisions about what you take and what you don't.

As you are most likely aware, we are posting these blogs almost a year after we got the RV, we are still trying to figure out exactly what we should carry in the coach, I think it will be a never ending task. Its very difficult to limit two grown people who like to have stuff to a mere ~1,600 pounds of belongings!!!

Learning...

We took delivery of the coach on April 4 2013, we plan to be out of the house before the end of May 2014. Not a lot of time to move into the new digs, check it out with short term camping, learn all the systems and adapt to a significantly smaller space, but we did it. Over the next month and a half we went on four different camping trips over weekends which gave us a chance to check everything out. If you remember, we had a problem with the hydraulics and had to take the coach back to the dealer the day after we picked it up, we had a trip planned the following weekend so the pressure was on for the dealer to get it fixed within a week. This doesn't seem unreasonable, a week to replace a hydraulic line, well it's just not that easy, they have to work with the manufacturer to explain the issue, get the part and get it installed and RV dealers are busy, it's not like a car dealer where you take tour vehicle in for service and get it back within a day. RV's take weeks, but when I took it in I told them we had a trip planned for the following Thursday and they got it done. I drove down to Southern RV on Thursday and picked up the coach and drove it to Lake Lanier for our first camping trip...the beginning!!!

We learned a lot, I mean a lot in those first few trips. The really good news...there were no other issues which required a return to the dealer. Minor things, sure, but nothing we couldn't resolve ourselves. Mostly just adjusting to the new lifestyle, learning to live in smaller quarters, we learned how to adapt so that we weren't constantly in each others space. To sum it up...we love our new digs and the opportunities that lie ahead with our new lifestyle.

As we were going on these test runs the one thing I dreaded...having to park the coach back at the house in Bogart. Backing into that driveway was not a pleasant experience and I dreaded it more than you can imagine. Our original plan called for us going to Duckett Mill campground over the Memorial Day weekend, leaving on Monday returning to Bogart for the remainder on May, then leaving the house permanently on the following Saturday, June 1st. I was telling Ruth one day how much I disliked parking the rig in Bogart and she said...why are we going back there after Memorial Day, its only for a few days...so, we didn't! We had already made our reservations beginning June 1st so we tried to bump the arrival date up for the same site but couldn't, so we reserved a different site from May 27th to June 1st.

Next up... Fulltiming, the beginning.