How do to you prepare to leave for a year? We have made lists upon lists trying to cover our bases. We know things aren’t going to be exactly perfect but hopefully the majority of it goes right.
We met with our future renters and feel comfortable with that arrangement. We know them, we really like them, we’ve camped with them, and see no issues in this area. What we do worry about is the house. We have been in our house for almost 15 years and things are worn down and breaking down. So on top of trying to prepare our truck, camper and trailer for our life on the road, we have to address the issues with owning and leaving our home.
This is actually one of the topics that comes up frequently in our garage talks. We absolutely love our house. We designed it and contracted it ourselves. We touched pretty much everything that went in it. The 20 tons of rock in our fireplace was handled many times and eventually put in by Craig and his Dad. I stained every single piece of wood and it was all installed by Craig and my Dad. It was definitely a labor of love that took 2 ½ years to complete from date of purchase to move in. We planned to retire here.
But here we are, almost 15 years later and even though we sit in our living room still admiring all our hard work, we both cannot stop talking about getting out on the road. We have started to feel like the time and effort we continually have to put in to keep up our home is exhausting. We’ve always felt the relief of it all the minute we got on the road together. We travel whenever we can and found our talks gravitating toward places we would love to live and things we would do differently.
We definitely have emotional attachments to our house. We are really hoping this trip clarifies a few things so we can truly know what we want when we come back. We are not trying to pack our emotions away. We are trying to come to terms with emotional attachments we have made. If we take the house out of the equation, what would we really go do?
So on top of getting the house ready for our renters to move in, we are working on selling stuff, packing stuff away, and making sure the people we take care of are being taken care of. We do not take leaving lightly. I know I’m going to be homesick. We are going to miss our families and our friends. I’m going to miss my mom terribly. She does so much for so many people, including us. I don’t think she realizes how needed she is. But in turn, we try and do whatever we can for her. So leaving affects her. She has great family and friends and I know she will be very well taken care of. But the thought of not seeing her is one of my greatest fears. Hopefully we can Skype and talk on the phone and I won’t be completely homesick and want to come home within a few months.
We are going to miss our Saturday afternoon clubhouse gatherings with Craig’s dad, mom and neighborhood friends. It’s a given that we all meet in Dad’s barn, have a few cold ones and chat about whatever is going on that week. It’s always so nice to catch up with everyone other than just seeing what is going on via Facebook. We hope we can get a few people to come out and visit us and have the ultimate clubhouse gathering with a beautiful mountain view.
Even though we are going to miss so many things here, we just can’t contain our excitement about this adventure. We’ve had our moments of “what are we doing” but it always came back to both of us wanting to do it and doing everything we can to make it happen. Craig has been planning and working on getting us ready. He installed flooring and cabinets in the trailer. He’s figuring out our water system and shower, and we’ve done some fun DIY projects that makes the trailer feel a little more like home. It’s a lot to think about to make sure we are comfortable without spending a ton of money. This preparation time has been frustrating and fun and just adds to the anticipation of it all.
We love that our planning and preparation is a team effort. We know that we will carry that through to when we are on the road. It’s going to be an amazing time for us and even though we feel we won’t actually be completely prepared, we’ll be prepared to handle whatever happens.