Thoughts on Storage Units and Full-timing

We've been on the road for two and half years now. In preparation for traveling full-time, we sold our house and gave away most of our furniture. But we decided to keep a few special items that were especially hard to part with. There was a beautiful oak armoire, and our new mattress that we adored. Then there were a few things that would be handy for a first-time home-owner--like Mark's full-size gas grill and a washer and dryer. But the hardest thing to leave behind was Denisa's piano. It had been a college graduation gift from her parents, and she thought it played and sounded better than any other piano.

These few items seemed to be a perfect start to furnish our youngest son's first home. He had recently graduated from college, and was finishing up a year of engineering field experience. It looked like he was ready to settle into a more permanent location and would need that furniture. So we rented a climate-controlled storage unit that was 5' x 15' and stacked it all neatly inside. We wish we had a picture of the full storage unit to include in the blog, but we were too busy at the time to remember a camera.

After paying storage rent for two and half years, our son is finding that he doesn't want to buy a house yet. So it was time to get rid of the storage unit, and all of its precious inventory. That was one of our projects during this three week trip to Oklahoma. We will always be appreciative of Denisa's sister and brother-in-law for providing the pick-up, trailer, and extra manpower on two hot summer days! Thanks to them, we got everything out of storage and delivered to its new homes.

Looking back, we should have taken this last painful step before we went on the road. We would have saved 2.5 years of storage rent, and got everything moved while we still had a pickup of our own. But it was a form of insurance to still hang on to those last things, just in case this wandering life-style wasn't as fun as we had hoped it would be.

We were pleasantly surprised to see that our storage unit was clean and everything looked as good as new these years later. But now that it's gone we feel a little freer. We won't be worried about forgetting to pay the storage bill. Denisa won't be waking up in the middle of the night, fretting about what to do with her beloved piano. Because now it has found a new home with many little fingers to keep it company.