The Purge:

Or how two people downsized their lives from 2000+ sq ft to 200 sq ft in 8 months time while working full time

“Why do we have so much stuff?!” These words were wailed at each other multiple times as we began the first steps of our journey towards becoming full time RVers. It continued to shock us over and over as we went room by room through our 3 bedroom tri-level rental home and discovered more and more items that we hadn’t touched since we’d moved in nearly three years earlier.

An attachment to stuff is a very culturally American thing, we know we’re not alone in asking ourselves “why?” when it comes to our things. Americans spend almost $40 billion dollars per year on mini-storage. That comes out to 1.7 billion square feet of storage and costs those families an average of $88 dollars a month! Maybe, like us, you’ve looked around your house, garage, or attic, and wondered just what you are storing in that closet/box/Rubbermaid tote. Maybe you’ve checked out Marie Kondo’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up from the local library and imagined how amazing your closets and drawers would look if you could just let go of those jeans you’re waiting to fit back into and master her clothes folding technique.

For us, making the decision to transition to full time RVers made downsizing a necessity. Here is the method we used. Trust us, even if you aren’t moving into an RV full time, purging stuff you no longer need or use feels great!

Methods for Getting Rid of Things

We used a couple of different methods for getting rid of what we decided not to keep. Some of these methods made us some money, and some were donations to others in need. We tried to keep the literal throwing things away to a minimum.

• Ridwell: We loved our Ridwell subscription, in addition to the four core recycling categories (plastic film, batteries, light bulb, threads) we were able to recycle tons of unwanted things in the rotating categories. In the months leading up to our move, we recycled art supplies, cords, small appliances, sports equipment, holiday lights and more. Check out https://www.ridwell.com/ to see if they offer recycling subscriptions in your neighborhood!

• Facebook Marketplace/Offer-Up: We had a lot of success using both FB Marketplace (with mixed feelings about FB) and Offer-Up. I highly recommend using a second-hand marketplace of your choice to get some money for the things you are no longer using. Consider buying second-hand next time you need something and keep more stuff from the landfills!

• Estate Sale: We advertised our estate sale on Facebook, Craig’s List and put signs around the neighborhood. We had a very successful two day sale over Memorial Day Weekend. As strange as it was to let strangers roam through our house and make offers on all our stuff, it was a very successful method for selling most of our “big ticket” items.

• Buy Nothing: For what we could not sell, we utilized Buy Nothing to give back to our local community. We also advertised a Buy Nothing walk through after our estate sale for people to take what we weren’t able to sell.

• Goodwill: What was left after the estate sale and buy nothing dates went to our local Goodwill.

• Friends keeping things “in trust” for us: We had a handful of things that we didn’t want to sell or store. We have some of our friends hanging on to these things until we either decide we don’t ever want them back or that we’ve had enough of life on the road and want to settle back into a brick and mortar home.

The Low Hanging Fruit Method of Purging

We often tackle unpleasant or challenging situations by focusing on what is the easiest thing to tackle first. We call this “the low hanging fruit” method. We start with what feels easiest and accomplish that. Then we can celebrate checking something off the to-do list, and keep the motivation rolling into something more difficult.

First we made a month by month purge list. Focusing on one category per month made downsizing feel more manageable. We went from the easiest to most challenging categories!

November: Media

This is where we are much more like Gen X than Millennials! We had so much media; CDs, DVDs, Vinyl, and Books. I’m somewhat envious of younger generations because they utilize all their media through the cloud, but we most definitely had shelves and shelves of media to sort through. Ultimately, we kept very few items in this category. We kept any media that was signed by the artist. Over time, we have accumulated a fair number of signed CDs and books. For now, we weren’t ready to get rid of those. We also decided to keep a small number of books that had inscriptions from gift givers, as well as some of the series that we have a strong emotional attachment to and read over and over again. (Harry Potter, Outlander) Take a look at your media collections. Do you really still need to hang on to your CD collection from the 90s and all the textbooks from your Master’s Degree? Purging these items can be emotionally draining, but ultimately we felt great about the small amount of items we decided to keep and what we put back out into the world for others to enjoy.

December: Holiday

Oh my goodness, do I love Christmas! Early on in our marriage, we started the tradition of buying a Christmas ornament as a souvenir from every trip/vacation we took. Now when we decorate our Christmas tree every year, we reminisce about each ornament’s story and the trip it represents. I also have a lot of Christmas decorations from my childhood that are very important to me that I wanted to keep. What we did purge, was all the random strings of lights and garland and whatnot that were purchased to fill specific homes over the years. Goodbye Christmas lights! See ya stocking holders and mantle decorations! Are the holiday decorations you’re storing in your garage/attic/closet truly bringing you joy or would it feel better to let some of them go?

January: Infrequently Used Furniture

When you are two people living in a three bedroom house, you definitely have furniture you don’t use very often! January was the perfect time to get rid of things like the treadmill (best intentions, oops), curio cabinet, art, etc. Once these things were gone, we really didn’t miss them. It’s amazing how you buy stuff to fill up the space you have. What is in your home that you could let go off?

February: Garage/Outdoors/Tools

This was primarily Steve’s domain, and frankly, the garage stressed me out when I walked in! Steve focused on separating out what he was certain we would need for Airstream life, and what we were unlikely to need. It turns out that most of the things in this category could go into the “sell” pile. It’s amazing what you don’t need when you walk away from the single family home!

March: Clothes

This was a fraught process for us for sure! Like most of the country, we had put on a fair amount of pandemic weight and we are still in the process of losing it. We still had boxes of clothes that we planned to fit into once we hit the road. We went through those clothes and asked ourselves, “Will we want to wear this when we are this size again?” If the answer to that question was yes, we set it aside to try on once we got back to that size/weight. We decided to purge all of our former “teacher attire” and I kept a small amount of business casual clothes to get me through the end of the school year. It was truly amazing how many items of clothing we had hung on to, that we had no intention of ever wearing again. Look at your closet with a critical eye. When was the last time you wore that? Are you hanging on to it in hopes that you will one day fit into it again? Letting go of clothes that no longer fit or suited our new lifestyle was incredibly therapeutic. We encourage you to purge those old clothes and notice how great it feels!

April: Memorabilia

Oh the memories! The photos, the yearbooks, the angst filled teenage diaries, the birthday cards. We instituted a policy that each of us needed to limit what we kept in this category to the contents of a cedar chest. Having that boundary certainly helped us pare down what was actually worth saving. The fact that we don’t have kids means that there isn’t anyone that we are saving family photos for. And believe us when we say, as much fun as it was to look back at photos of parents, grandparents, family members, and mini Steve and Michelle, we absolutely did not need BOXES AND BOXES of photos. Especially the double prints that my family got with every single roll of film that was developed in the 90s! We had a few nostalgic evenings going through all the photos, pulling out a handful that we wanted to save, mailing out care packages of a few chosen photos to friends and family (not to mention sending pics of hilarious photos via text to friends) and then getting rid of the rest. This was by far the largest category of what was thrown in the garbage since photos are not recyclable. We’re sorry Mother Nature, but we needed to let most of these memories go. This is another example of us being much more like Gen Ex than Millennials. Honestly, having all of your memories online is a double edged sword, but we’re just a little bit jealous of the younger generations not having to go through five boxes of photo prints. Have you considered scanning your old photos, or limiting your memorabilia to a smaller space? The odds are, your kids aren’t going to be as excited about hanging on to those old photos as you think they are!

May: Kitchen

Steve is the chef, I am the baker. We love food, we love cooking together, and we had the kitchen to prove it! Many of the items in our kitchen were essentially single use items; the roasting pan for the holiday turkey, the cookie cutters and cake decorating tools. We used these things, but we knew we would neither want them in our small RV kitchen, nor want to store them. We saved the kitchen items for the end because we knew that would be one of the more challenging categories to purge. We look at what we currently have for our kitchen items as we are living here with Steve’s dad and we know we have too much! Stay tuned for more kitchen purging as we learn how to make do with fewer items! What is lurking in the back of your kitchen cupboards that you never use? Is it time to get rid of the things you’ve been “meaning to use” but never do?

We haven’t yet moved into our Airstream and we know without a shadow of a doubt that we still have waaayyyy too much stuff. We know we will continue to learn what we can live without and what are essentials for life on the road. Experiences > stuff

Have you considered downsizing or “tiny living?” Are you looking around your huge house and thinking about what you’d like to get rid of? What do you already know you can’t live without? You might be surprised by what you can let go of! Do you have a foolproof method for purging? Tell us below!