speaker-1 (00:05)
A week ago we pulled out of the driveway of our house for the last time and moved into four hundred square foot of an RV. And since then we've gotten a lot of questions from you about what is it like to live in an RV full time.
speaker-0 (00:23)
So today we are gonna answer the top six questions I think that we are getting asked the most and we're gonna count down to the one that everybody asked us. And it's kind of funny because it doesn't have nearly as the dramatic answer as I think everyone expects it to have.
speaker-1 (00:39)
I'm Scott and this is Melissa and we just sold our home to travel full time with our two doodles.
speaker-0 (00:45)
So let's start with question number six. Do you miss the house yet? And how long are you gonna do this? Really two questions in one.
speaker-1 (00:53)
Yeah, that is two qu that's two very different questions. I think the first one is very easy. No, we don't miss the house at all. I mean, I haven't thought one time waking up is I wish we were still in the house.
speaker-0 (01:08)
And honestly, after really the last month of we've got to constantly be we've got to get rid of things, we've gotta clean out, stuff, we've gotta get everything out, we've gotta do you miss your garage?
speaker-1 (01:21)
No, I d I mean yes, during the winter it was nice to be out in the garage and to do things, working on my lathe, making pens stuff like that, but during the summer it was sweltering hot out there and very humid, so I didn't spend much time in the garage at all anyway.
speaker-0 (01:37)
'Cause I think as we talk to people who are camping that are in the campgrounds, but they do it part time, a couple of the guys have said to you, I could never get rid of my garage or my shed. I have all these tools and all these things. So I was curious if you feel like you were gonna miss that part.
speaker-1 (01:53)
Well, as far as tools, I took the things that I would most likely need, and those are with us anyway. so I've got a toolbox in the back of the truck, I've got some tools in the R V
Now, I don't have things like a table saw or circular saw, but quite honestly, I wasn't doing a lot of those projects anyway. so I've I think I've got the tools that I really need.
speaker-0 (02:17)
And you're not gonna be building furniture and renovating big renovation projects like that anyway on in here.
speaker-1 (02:24)
No, not
yet at least. I I keep thinking that every day she's gonna talk about tearing down a wall or something.
speaker-0 (02:31)
So that brings us to new settings for the podcast recording this week and moving forward we are in the RV. We're gonna give you a full RV tour
here in the future. But honestly, it has everything that our house had just on a much smaller scale. But like we talked about last week.
with the with the layout. That was the important thing. But we have the kitchen. Scott cooks outside for us a lot on the blackstone little grill. And so I don't think we really I I mean I haven't missed anything about it. either. And so I guess then that brings us to I guess part two of that is how long are we planning to do this. And I think we alluded to that last week too, but we we honestly don't have any idea how long we'll do this until we don't want to do it anymore.
speaker-1 (03:17)
Yeah, the way that I see it is we've entered the R V lifestyle and there are people who do it for have been doing it for ten plus years, right? so I think for us it's just gonna be is there something compelling that takes us off of the road?
speaker-0 (03:32)
There's a lot of places that we want to travel. And the way that we're gonna travel, which we're gonna get to in just a little bit, is gonna take us a while. So we don't have any plans of saying we're gonna do this for a year or for two years. We're just gonna kind of see.
speaker-1 (03:47)
Well, so before we leave this question though, is is there anything that you've reached for and said, we don't have that anymore or I accidentally got rid of that?
speaker-0 (03:58)
So besides, there's a few things where it's like I've got to find where I put that. I know it's here somewhere. We do have a little bit more organization to do. we actually have a whole basket of things that we are gonna take to a donation place. the first thing I think that we're like, dang, we got rid of that. Last night we were talking about organizing our coffee, and we weren't gonna save this particular one for the French press. And you mentioned something, and I was like, I got rid of the the the grinder. But you know what? It's like
twelve maybe fifteen dollars I could probably go across the street from us to Publix and buy one. That's one of those things that you like pick up on a shelf, order from Amazon, something like that. I mean you don't you can you pay for more than that for a meal so it's not a big deal. Anything you can think of?
speaker-1 (04:43)
No, I I think that's the answer. I think we've actually had kind of the opposite is as we were trying to organize and put things in here, we're like, we don't need this. and so we've actually already gotten rid of a lot of stuff. And as Melissa said, we've got a basket over here of things that we're gonna donate and somebody else will get to enjoy them. I think for me the other day was unpacking a box of clothes and I I still have a suitcase in
There that has some clothes in it is I'm just looking through and saying, are these things that like I'm saving that I'll wear once in a while, or these things that I wear often? And so I'm sending more of that stuff to to give away and to donate because quite honestly I feel like I was saving stuff that I would only wear once in a while, if ever.
speaker-0 (05:35)
Yes, I agree with that. And so thankfully there's donation places all over the place. We did a lot of that as we were cleaning out the house. We've taken one load since we have been in the camper. We've got another one to take. And I think that's gonna almost be a constant thing as we live in a smaller space and try to organize things, or is are we really gonna use this? Kind of like when you when you travel and live out of a suitcase, because it kind of is that same thing. And so Scott, I guess that brings us to the question is
people say as a comment, I can never get rid of all my things. I can never get rid of all this stuff. And so people have been asking us, and so this is question number five, is what did we keep and did you get a storage unit?
speaker-1 (06:16)
So we did. We ended up getting a storage unit near our son and his wife. So that way if ever we needed to get something out of there, it's easy and convenient for them to go and access it. We set it up to where they could get access to it as well. But the things that we put in there, we tried to say, are they re number one is are they replaceable?
and then number two, is there just s such maybe a sentimental attachment to them right now that we're just not willing to to give them up? And we've tried to reduce that sentimental attachment factor as much as possible. And so I I literally think we have two, maybe three boxes in there that are just purely attached to sentimental, like
Maybe some photo albums, our wedding photo album, some things like yearbooks, annuals. That's one that I think eventually we'll probably say, you know what, w we don't need that anymore. I don't know. It's it's one box, who cares, right? If
speaker-0 (07:24)
If we have it stored to be.
speaker-1 (07:25)
we have a storage unit, if we decide not to have a storage unit, that's probably the first thing that goes. we put our golf clubs in there.
just because right now I couldn't even imagine where they would go on the R V. maybe eventually in the garage we'll have that sorted out for our as we think about how we wanna put our bikes and and stuff like that. But we don't play golf all the time and so that was an easy one. Let's just put in there, we'll figure it out and if we wanna come back and get we can. If not, maybe in the future we'll,
Choose to get rid of
speaker-0 (07:58)
And I would say because we decided to get a storage unit, it was almost easier to say, well, we have this. We're gonna put a few things in it anyway. So we might as well like put off that decision, which is fine because the things you're talking about, it's not like, I could just go buy that again, like the the coffee grinder. and so we can make that decision down the road. I will tell you, we did do a 10x10. I've had storage units in the past for my staging, so kind of trying to judge that. We got a 10x10. We definitely could have done a 10x5, I a five by five.
Five is a little small. We have the golf clubs on a stand. I guess if we got rid of the stand, I don't know. And
there's a couple of boxes for my two sisters and their families. we've got a couple of things that are gonna go to one of your parents' house to use there, not just to say we're gonna store things. And that was one thing. Why a storage unit and why not just leave some stuff at somebody's house. We just didn't want that to be a burden on anybody 'cause you just you don't know and heaven forbid something happened and then, our stuff is in somebody's way or or whatever. So we just decided
Let's just have our own separate space.
speaker-1 (08:58)
And quite honestly, if something were to happen to us and somebody had to clean out that storage unit, it would take all of ten minutes to do, right? So it's it's not a burden. We haven't kept a lot of stuff. We we we saw some friends this past week and we were talking to and we said, we got a storage unit and we started talking a little bit about it and they just looked at each other and laughed and they're like, We still have two storage units and we've got this massive house, right?
And so I think we've done well from that perspective.
speaker-0 (09:29)
I think we've done really well. So real quick before we move to question four, is something that we haven't mentioned that maybe somebody might be surprised or that you were surprised, like what is something that you put in the storage unit?
speaker-1 (09:41)
Wow, that's a good question. I d I don't know that I have anything that is surprising there other than those golf clubs, right? Is why would we put our golf clubs in a storage unit?
speaker-0 (09:51)
And then I think other than we haven't mentioned is we do have some little travel mementos that we have collected along the way. And that was one thing that I wanted to put in there. because it's not like you can just go order those or buy those. And that was kind of our criteria if you could order those or buy those or find something very, very similar. But if it had a memory like we got it from making beads with tribal women in Africa, or we got this from a little shop in Cape Town, or
Or something like that. And it has that particular story where I can't just go and order it. That was
speaker-1 (10:23)
We're
pretty we're pretty good about not buying a bunch of trinkets and stuff when we travel. We are more focused on creating a memorable experience and and having those memories more than things. But, sometimes there's the little things and we'll often allow ourselves that. Like, I've got a camel that I brought back from Morocco that was made of the stone there and so
but it's tiny and same with the elephants that we got at one of the camps that we stayed at. Little tiny elephants. and quite honestly, Melissa, you're looking for a little rack right now that you can hang on the walls of the RV where some of those little small things you can put in that rack and that we can have them with us still in the RV.
speaker-0 (11:12)
Yeah.
So as far as the storage unit we will reevaluate. probably when we go back that way in a couple of months or so we'll switch to the smaller one. we're obviously gonna, monitor the cost of that and then just decide in every few months, every time we go near there, we'll probably say, Okay, can we get rid of something? Can we go smaller? Can we eliminate this cost I think.
speaker-1 (11:33)
So one of the questions, and we'll jump into question number four that we're being asked, is what are you guys going to do for the holidays? And I'll just start by saying it's definitely changing the way that we do the holidays. we haven't a hundred percent figured that out yet, but we are working through right now Thanksgiving and Christmas this year and trying to
make sure that we have time that we're prioritizing spending with our families. but then we have some other exciting things that are happening as well.
speaker-0 (12:07)
So right after Christmas, at the very beginning of December for a couple of weeks,
We had already planned and booked a trip to the Germany Christmas Markets. This is something I had always wanted to do. We actually booked this before our three-month trip to Europe. We had some credits that were going to expire on Delta, and so we were like, we need to get this booked. And then when we got home, you went ahead and booked out hotels and kind of made a plan. Really, our goal in this is that we want to do a group trip to the Germany Christmas markets.
we want to plan it. We want to take a small group along. So we're scouting that. We're gonna also connect with some people that we know there. So we are excited about that. We are excited to bring you along with us. We're definitely gonna share.
where do we go? What do we find? and then have that as an open invitation to bring a few people. So we're gonna create a link in the show notes. So where if that's something you're like, I would definitely like to know more about that, you can just click on that link and drop your info in so that when we are ready to tell more about how we are planning that and what that looks like, you'll be the first on the list.
speaker-1 (13:13)
Yeah, so we want to find Christmas markets. some of the, big popular ones are definitely worth going to. But we also want to see if we can find some that are a little bit smaller, maybe a little more intimate or unique. And so as we plan out how we want to structure that trip, we're gonna visit, see what it would be like to take a group, as our
enough hotel rooms to take a group to these places. And so that's why we're doing that this year is to vet all of that information out. And then we would love to have you come and join us on that trip.
So the next question number three is a lot of people have asked us, what happens when you travel internationally like this trip to Germany? Or you're going somewhere? What do you do with the dogs? Well, we just put a bowl of food over here and we've got the waggle camera and yeah, we can just check in on them from time to time.
speaker-0 (14:13)
No, absolutely not. You're silly. so we've done lots of things with the dogs in the past. They're not cats. No, they're not cats. Definitely not cats. So we've done lots of things with them in the past. We've boarded them places, we've had Rover, we've done trusted house sitters, we've done a lot of different things. but I definitely think for this situation, we can't have somebody some and stay in our camper. I think you have to know how to do a camper. so we will be very intentional. we definitely will travel internationally less.
Because this is what we want to do. We want to be with them. So they will be staying with friends and family. If there is short times where the timing doesn't work out, we may have to board them for a few days. We've already kind of come to that realization, but we're gonna do what's best for them in that situation. So that's kind of how we're gonna handle that. And then what about the RV though?
speaker-1 (14:59)
there are lots of places where you can pay to store it. And we'll do that. on this Germany trip that we're doing. We're taking it down to the dealership and having the remainder of all the service and warranty work completed on it. I gave them the timeline. I said, you have it from this day to this day. Make sure you get everything done during that time.
And so that's actually not going to cost us anything because they're going to have it there doing the the warranty work on it.
speaker-0 (15:29)
That was actually my idea. And Scott actually said, that is a brilliant idea. I'm just gonna tell him that right now. So thank you very much. but yeah, we we don't really plan over the next bit to do a ton of that. We won't do any extended trips. We also do next June have a trip to Norway planned that's a cruise with some friends. So
speaker-1 (15:48)
Yeah. But, the the reality was we said that we wanted to travel and we wanted to travel with the dogs. so we're making that a priority. We're gonna make sure that the majority of all of our travel has the dogs included.
speaker-0 (16:02)
All right, Scott, the big question. And this has a couple of variations. I think what most people have commented is I could never live in 400 square feet with my spouse, with my family, or, whoever they would be camping with. And have you killed each other yet? Kind of goes hand in hand. So what is your honest take on on
living with me in four hundred square feet.
speaker-1 (16:25)
Well, I think it goes back to the last twelve, thirteen years or more of my career. I work from home. you primarily work from home and so we've been around each other every day mostly since then, right? And we've done trips together, like the one we did earlier this year where it was three months living in small spaces, but getting out and exploring
And to me, this is just no different. listen, we have the bedroom, we have the family room, we have the garage area that eventually we're gonna transform into mixed use or mixed living space. But then we've got the great outdoors around us, right? And so even this morning we didn't need time away from each other. But Melissa was working here in the living room. It was beautiful outside.
I went out and sat at the picnic table out under the awning and worked for a little while and I don't think it's any different in my mind.
speaker-0 (17:25)
yeah, I don't think so either. And I think some of the things like it we don't feel like we have to do everything. sometimes I'm like, you go to the store and grab this stuff or sometimes we both go or you had to go to Camping World yesterday. So sometimes, staying here with the dogs and one person running errands. I I think it will be a way to do that. But we definitely will spend most of the time we do like each other. Yeah. We do fight, but we do like each other.
speaker-1 (17:49)
We always make
speaker-0 (17:50)
We do. but but I think the other th question is, and this mostly comes when you are packing the RV to move it or pulling in or driving it, that kind of thing, is have you killed each other yet? Because we've commented just a while ago while we were kind of prepping for this episode and people are pulling in and Scott's laughing at a lady who's, giving the motion.
speaker-1 (18:09)
She's given
some kind of hand signals and I told Melissa I said I have no clue what those hand signals mean and so let's just be clear is when I'm backing up I need to know what the end of the vehicle is doing. I don't care about anything else unless I'm gonna hit something, but I wanna know what the end of the vehicle is doing because that's the piece that I can control the most.
speaker-0 (18:32)
Yeah. and I think that that will kind of lead into how we will travel so that we are not packing up the RV every single day. We're not towing it every single day.
speaker-1 (18:45)
I think f as looking around the campsite, I think this is true for most people, is there are different responsibilities in the setup and teardown process. and that's true for us too. So Melissa usually takes care of the inside, making sure that all the decorations are, put away or, at least tightened down, make sure the cabinets are are clean. There's some things like cleaning the floors so that
in case something is trapped underneath it doesn't scrape up the floor when we bring the sides in. Melissa takes care of all of that, and then I usually take care of all the things outside. So hooking up the RV, unhooking the sewer hose and the and flushing those tanks, unhooking the water, and just really getting it ready to for the point that we can bring in the slides, make sure it's fully hooked up to the truck.
and then heading out into our next destination. And it's probably about an hour or more of work for both of us every time that we do that. So that's why we don't want to move all the time.
So there's just a lot of time that you waste in the s set up and take down process. It's necessary, but you just don't want to do it all the time. Is there anything else you want to add?
speaker-0 (20:07)
Yeah, I don't think so. I think it's just a good opportunity to also help you clean things a little bit, say, get rid of some things, throw some things away before you move and that kind of thing. And then I think once we get the RV closed up
just then spotting you, helping you take out the tar stops, we're hooking up the trailer and doing things like that. But yeah, I don't I mean if you had to do it two days in a row, it is what it is. we we have had we have done that and we'll have to probably do that w right before our trip to take it back. I mean it's not the end of the world, but I don't want to make that a regular habit because we don't have the need to move all the time or rush to a place either to where we couldn't take a break two days in. So yeah.
speaker-1 (20:48)
I will say the closest we've come to killing each other is backing the truck up to the trailer and trying to get it on to the to the fifth wheel and yesterday morning when we were trying I don't know why that particular campground so difficult, but we had a a wagon in the back of the truck, which I'm gonna be putting on Facebook Marketplace, so please buy that from us and come pick it up. But we had a wagon in the back of the truck is blocking my camera, so I couldn't
and see the the hitch ball and Melissa was trying to, give me some verbal clues about how to get it lined up properly and it just wasn't working.
speaker-0 (21:27)
Yeah. That one is on a steep slope too. I think the other times where it's been really flat, it's been easy. And I think we need to I
speaker-1 (21:33)
By myself. I didn't even need you.
speaker-0 (21:35)
think that particular one. So I think we need to get our lingo, like you said. but there was a couple of times where it was flat and we were like, this is so easy and then here we are yesterday and these ladies are thinking, They still haven't gotten it yet? Like it's been over a month. Like, what are these people's problems? But I definitely think it's the parking. Good.
speaker-1 (21:50)
Well at least they did invite us back. They
did. Maybe we were good entertainment.
speaker-0 (21:56)
Yeah,
for sure. So that brings us to the number one question I think literally everybody has asked us. And that is
speaker-1 (22:06)
Where are you going first? and quite honestly, for a while we weren't able to answer that question. We were like, we know we're gonna want to stay in the area. we had some work that we needed to do on the RV, we needed to close the house and get that taken care of. But now most of that is behind us and we've actually started doing some planning.
And surprise, surprise, we have through the first of the year already planned and all the campgrounds booked.
speaker-0 (22:36)
Most people have said, are you going out west? are you going here? you going h there? are you going up north? Are you going to the keys? Where are you going? First, somewhere super exciting. But here's the thing. As we've mentioned, the holidays are coming up. we've got this trip planned. So no, we're not gonna head out to Utah right now. No, we're not gonna head out. It's also going to be winter.
in a lot of places. It's starting to get cold. It's even a little bit chilly here. in Florida. We're still yeah, this is temporary. We're still in Florida. so it I think it surprised a lot of people. No, we're not gonna do some huge trip yet. but we are gonna take the opportunity to see some things in Florida. We've got to go over to our domicile location and take care of licenses and
speaker-1 (23:18)
Ready.
speaker-0 (23:18)
Registration. Voter registration, car registration, that kind of thing. So we will definitely tell you how that goes and what that process is like once we get over there in the next few weeks. but I think also just relaxing because it was a very exhausting experience to clean out the house, having to take things back and forth. We did a lot of driving, taking things. we went to Atlanta a couple of times. so I think too, we're just we're just tired. And so
If you are thinking about going through this process, please take our advice and don't just as exciting as it could be, like day one, maybe head in that direction, but day one plan to like, okay, I'm going straight out west or something like that, because you will be very, very tired and you will have other little things that you want to take care of. So at least kind of give yourself some leeway. so we plan to explore some local areas and not feel rushed, some state parks.
we wanna visit like every ball of twine in the US. so St. Augustine is known for its fountain of youth. We haven't checked that out yet, so we're gonna check that out. So stay tuned. each week we will say, here's a few cool things that we did last week, especially if it's not like a huge destination episode. We will still have some of those where we share everything about a specific destination, even if you are not an R Ver.
but yeah, we wanna we wanna do some of those things too.
speaker-1 (24:40)
Yeah, and I want to say we've stayed in some really small campgrounds, not the ones that you always hear about or you'll read about. and so we've really enjoyed those. We're gonna talk about a few of them as we go along in the the podcast. but
right now we're in as Melissa said, we're in Saint Augustine, Florida. We're enjoying this time. It's not far from where we used to live, but it was something that we just never took the time to explore here. Or we would just come down for an evening and see the Christmas lights or something like that. So we will go and try to find that fountain of youth. And
some of the other things here in Saint Augustine. But right now we're in a beautiful little park, and we're enjoying this. We're really enjoying meeting all the people and talking to the people. I just tell you, I don't know what it's like where you live, but the people that we're meeting in the campgrounds are so much more friendly, it seems like we're all sharing a common
goal, a common philosophy of life is get out and explore. And so, we have a lot of shared interest and and things to talk about.
speaker-0 (25:51)
And I think a lot of people will add to our bucket list. I we always hope that we're adding to your bucket list. we talked to a couple last night and she was like, you have to go to South Dakota. You have to go to Mount Rushmore, which is definitely on our list. That's something that's been our list. She said there's this amazing tour and it's so informative. And they gave us a lot of other historic sites that you have to go and see. And so there's just so much out there that I think if we take it slow and go see some of these amazing places.
some of these amazing historic sites. And then that way we can balance local places to eat and then cooking in our RV or outside just like we are at home. So in the immediate future, if you have some suggestions for St. Augustine, whether it be state parks or things to do or places to eat, please put those in the comments. If you also have some things for the Orlando area. I mean, yes, we've been there a lot. We've been to Disney, we've been to Universal. We want to go to places like Mount Dora.
Scott actually used to have an office in Lake Mary. He went in that area, but that was just for work. So if you know of other places, I know Winter Garden, I believe it is, has a cool little downtown. So anywhere around that Orlando area where you think that we need to stop and see something cool. I know there's some springs and different things around there that aren't, just the theme parks. I think I'll have to get my Disney fix, of course. but other suggestions if you have those, we would love for you to share those with us.
And then one bonus question that I think you may be curious about. I don't think people have asked us this face to face because it would be a little bit awkward. But a bonus question is well, how much is this really gonna cost? How much should your RV cost? How much should your truck cost? What is it gonna cost? And so next week we're gonna share a little bit more about what we invested in, why we invested that, why we ended up buying new, and then along the way, we're gonna share some more month-by-month breakdowns about what different things cost, maybe some membership.
That we've joined that will help us as well. So stay tuned for that. But next week we promise we're going to bring you some of the initial cost.
speaker-1 (27:50)
And we'll also talk about
little bit about St. Augustine and some of the exploration we've done. So don't feel like that we're turning this podcast just into a pure camping podcast because it's not. It's just right now we're in the season of trying to get this up and running and going from our experiences with selling the house buying the RV and getting started. But as we keep going we're gonna have more and more destinations.
Focused content that we'll put out there. So there's a lot for everyone who is tuning in.
speaker-0 (28:28)
plus an R V tour. and then of course as we talk about those destinations, as we visit those destinations, we'll have a few more on location little videos that we take and and show you more about a few things there. So stay tuned.
