RV Living Full Time: How We Did It
Deciding to live full time in an RV with your family (and most likely pets) is a pretty big life decision. So how did we go from happy little family in a nice 2400 square foot home, in one of the best neighborhoods in the mountains of Colorado, with high paying jobs and backyard chickens, to selling over half of our belongings, and hitting the road full time, living in less than 400 square feet?
Big Life Changes
It was May of 2021. Our son was 4, and our daughter was only 9 months old. The gardens were newly planted, the chickens were growing their healthy spring feathers, and John was working primarily from home ever since COVID changed how things were done. We felt more together than ever. We were planning a trip to the Wisconsin cottage in June. The previous year, we had looked for a home with more land (a near impossible request in Colorado Springs), and after not selling our home as quickly as we thought we would, decided to stay put.
We had a wonderful, wonderful life. Every day I woke up and thanked God for the beauty that surrounded me and for the life that we built together.
But we longed for something different.
We were maxed out on our property. We had the most chickens we could possibly have (7), and they tore up their run the previous year. We had the most gardens we could fit, and it only yielded a a few bowls of veggies. John’s work was so stressful, he was facing high blood pressure and turning grayer by the minute. Through the pandemic, we witnessed what (scarily) everyone else witnessed… a power hungry government that could say and do much of anything they wanted (I’ll just leave it at that… I could go on).
We didn’t feel sustainable. Our debt from the adoption felt heavy and overwhelming. John’s job was getting in the way of our family life, and the stress just didn’t seem worth it.
He got off a work call one day, and he asked my permission to quit. Quit without any other job lined up. Quit without knowing what was next. Quit with there being very, very little in our savings.
And I asked “when has God not taken care of us when we’ve trusted Him? Let’s trust Him to provide. No job is worth this.”
So he did. He quit.
That’s when we were catapulted into me working more full time with my business, John searching for what career path he wanted to pursue, and us questioning everything. Including how we were going to pay for the house we were in and support our debts while not having John go back to another stressful and demanding job.
That Big Crazy Dream
You know those crazy (and somewhat terrible) conversations you have with your spouse about “what if I died, what would you do?” Or put a lot nicer – “if we had never met, where you be and what would you be doing?”
Well John’s answer was that he’d be in a small RV traveling the country.
This upset me, because I was the camper of the family! I’m the one that grew up camping, and took my husband on bold new adventures tent camping, and then convinced him to buy a pop-up camper and renovate it with me. What’s this “live in an RV and travel” dream of his?
That stuck with me, because it’s something I’d want to do, too.
And that’s when a whole new world of the “full time RV families” surfaced. I thought they were unicorns, or just older retirees. But I quickly learned it was a whole popular “thing.”
Then I learned about a new friend who was living with her family in a camper on land in Colorado.
LAND. In Colorado. I knew we couldn’t afford a big beautiful house on a lot of land. But… could we afford an RV on 5 acres in Colorado?
And then when we felt like it, we could take off on a vacation! It seemed like a pretty great compromise and fulfilled a lot of our desires.
Potential property we looked at as we were considering buying land in Colorado. We loved it! (Until we found out we couldn’t stay on it in our RV.
The Search for What Was Next
We looked at land in Colorado… and turned up short. Mostly because of county laws prohibiting RVs to be lived in on your land for more than 4 consecutive weeks. True story (thanks, Colorado).
Fall was approaching, so we stuffed away our ideas and decided to resume our plans in the Spring. John applied for several jobs, and life moved on.
And then…
Then we talked with some friends who were relocating to Montana, and to get there, they were going to sell their home and move into an RV. And they found a great place to stay all winter.
A quick side note: decisions often happen based on the people you know and what they’re doing. We considered adoption because I watched a good friend adopt. We thought about rving because of the friend we saw rving. And now, we were going to sell everything and move into an rv at an rv park through the winter because some friends we trust are doing it and found a place where it was possible!
I told John to stop applying for those terrible jobs. So he started focusing on our family, making updates to our home preparing it to hit the market, and RESEARCHED what in the world this rv thing was going to entail. Then we were going to ride our small savings right into the sale of our home, pay off debt, and move into an rv staying stationary through the winter while we made updates to it and allowed our son to attend his final year of preschool at our absolute favorite school.
Timeline of Events
Just a glimpse at the large amount of toys we PURGED!
August 2021:
We got home from our Wisconsin cottage trip, and started purging and organizing. On that trip, we were able to disconnect, take a deep breath, pray, and make sure we were proceeding with clear heads. When we got home, we were completely ready to move ahead with our audacious dreams.
Reality: I mourned. I loved my life just the way it was. I snuggled my chickens, and soaked in every sunset, and tended to my gardens with a little extra love and care. This was going to be hard.
September 2021:
It was full steam ahead on the decluttering and downsizing. We wanted the house to be extremely clean and tidy for listing it, so we wanted to purge 90% of our things BEFORE it hit the market. We used this book as guide for downsizing, as well as breaking down all the considerations for full time travel with kids.
Our beautiful home in Palmer Lake.
We started considering our RV options, and created a budget worksheet for the amount of money we’d make on the sale of our home, our debt, and how much cash we needed to hang onto for travel and the eventual purchase of our land. John decided to start his own accounting business, and would focus on growing that after we moved (it was a full time job moving into an RV and changing up our entire lifestyle the way that we did and as quickly as we did).
October 2021:
We listed our home. We went and looked at RV models, and decided to purchase new. We also carried on with life as usual, and quite honestly prayed that God would align things as He saw fit. Maybe this was another dead end for us (we tried to sell our house the year before). We did our best to surrender to whatever His plans for us were.
Sleeping on the living room floor the night before we officially moved out.
Then on October 15th we got an offer (above asking) on our home.
It was really happening, and it was go time.
We didn’t have an RV, we didn’t have a truck… oh, and we really needed to secure that spot at the RV park our friends told us about!
November 2021:
The whirlwind ensued. We placed a deposit on an RV in Texas (we decided on a model we liked, but it was hard finding one and Texas was the closest option at the right price). THEN we finally found a truck just one week before closing on our house.
I’m not sure we got much sleep between the packing, the moving things into our storage unit, the selling of our things and giving away our chickens… you name it. We had some help, and for that we’re so appreciative! Like my parents opening up their garage to us to store all of our RV moving boxes in, or when my mom stayed with our kids until 11 pm while John and I negotiated a deal on our truck up in Denver… it was all hands on deck, and we were grateful, especially since most of our family and friends thought we were nuts.
November 15, 2021 we closed on our home, stayed for one night at an Airbnb while our truck got some last minute work done, then we headed straight to Texas to go pick up our new home.
Picking up our new (to us) truck: RAM 3500 Heavy Duty with a long bed.
Our final, “full” 10 x 10 storage unit of everything we kept from our house.
Here’s the deal…
This was a stepping stone for what we desired in life. We wanted to travel, but know traveling won’t last forever.
What WILL last forever is the fact that we’re present every single day in our children’s lives. That we not only spend precious, precious time with them — but that we’re giving them experiences that we couldn’t give otherwise. And it freed us up financially to be on the move and go find where God was calling us to be in order to create a sustainable and exciting future for our family.
RVing for us is a catalyst for everything that’s to come. We’re enjoying the road that’s getting us there by way of National Parks, incredible history of our nation, and warm winter days in Florida. But the destination remains the same.
A very personal note.
Some people ask why we did it all so quickly.
Why DIDN’T we just wait until spring when our house would have sold for more, we wouldn’t have had to deal with winter conditions and living in a thin walled RV, and had John just wait to quit his job or find another high paying one to restock the savings account?
I have many answers for this… but there’s one reason that stands out the most to me.
My mom.
My mom was always our biggest cheerleader. She would geek out over everything me and my husband would do in life. She took so much joy in our family and our journey. And I wanted her in on the adventure.
She had metastatic breast cancer, and by the end of the summer of 2021 was moved off of the chemo pill and onto full blown chemo. While hopeful for many more days, months, and years with her… the decline was very real. And selfishly, I wanted her still around for our big adventure.
When her and my dad walked into the Montana High Country floor plan she said “Ohhhhh, this is IT, Melody!” and knew it’d be our future home even before we did. She walked this exciting journey with us before passing in February, and I am SO grateful that she got to be by our side through all of it. Now I just wish I could call her and tell her about all of the amazing places we’ve been.
So how did we become a full time RV family? We put one foot in front of the other, trusting the process, and trusting God’s will and timing for our lives. We seized the opportunity given the life stage we were in, and made it happen. Did we make mistakes? Yes. Did we blow through way too much money? Yep. Are we so thankful we took this crazy leap? YES. We love being a full time RV family.
