Last Stages of Changing From One Life To Another
This has been crazy. Every day is overwhelming. Downsizing from a large 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom house with a shed, attic, and garage to a 47 foot sailboat has been difficult, to say the least. I always knew we had a lot of stuff, we have moved a lot of times, after all. This, however has been very, very different.
Some things that we own hold a lot of sentimental value and we just didn’t want to art with them. Given that the smallest sized storage area near us is 5 feet by 5 feet, that is what we rented. We filled it with the schmaltz first. Then, we started adding stuff that had a high replacement cost like Grete’s horse equipment, and our camping stuff. Lastly, on the day we moved out of the house we shoved in our kitchen items since we’d still been using them and we’ll need them once we return after we’re done sailing.
Donation and Selling
We waffled about having a garage sale (or “garage sail”) for a while and decided not to. We donated our furniture to Habitat for Humanity. They did an in-home pickup. The dude who showed up to get our furniture moved almost everything out of our house by himself and was about 5’6” and couldn’t have weighed more than 130 pounds soaking wet. It was rather impressive. Somebody else showed up and helped him with the remaining items and suddenly our house felt…vacant. We still had most of our little stuff, but without furniture it was echo-y and just generally not a home any more.
We donated nearly ten carloads of stuff to Waterfront, and Gooodwill as well. I made three trips to the dump as well as a trip up to the hazardous waste facility to drop off old paint and chemicals.
We had a handful of things that we felt should be easy to get a little bit of money for, so I sold those on Facebook Marketplace. It was generally an easy experience, with only a few people trying to scam me. Luckily, despite my hernias and hip surgery, I’m not quite that old yet. Of the random people buying things from us, we had:
- A guy who runs a sailing business in Pensacola and works out in the same group fitness class as Grete a couple times a week,
- A husband and wife who are related to a good friend of mine from my time in Stuttgart with the Navy a decade ago,
- And mine and Dublin’s barber, Max. Pensacola is indeed a very small town.
Painting and Repairs
In addition to trying to get the boat ready to move aboard, we’ve been having to get the house ready to rent. Yes, we have decided to rent, not sell our house. The fact is that I’ll not be gainfully employed for five years and might find getting a home loan on our return quite challenging. Also, our place is pretty awesome. We like the house and love the neighborhood. We have terrific neighbors, a short walk to the kids’ schools, library, beach and other park amenities. So we’re keeping it. We have a management company that will oversee it for us and are hoping we can break even for the duration of our trip.
I managed to get nearly perfect paint matches from Lowes for several of our walls and only had to completely repaint one room. Every day I’d touch up 1-2 rooms and/or trim. It wasn’t a lot of work, but it was certainly one more thing on a pile that was already crushing us.
We have finally finished downsizing
The Boat
We finally had a chance to start testing the newly installed systems on the boat and those tests didn’t go super smoothly. The water maker had a leak (simply a connection that hadn’t been tightened) and a cooling fan that was never wired up. The crew who installed it came out and wired up the fan and it has been working well ever since. The washing machine could fill with water but not drain out since the drain valve was higher than the back of the gravity drained machine. We had a sump pump installed that now pumps the drain pipe out when water is detected. Note from the future, this solution has been working great.
Lastly, we had to mark the anchor chain so that we know how much we’re paying out when we set the anchor. It’s important to know the depth of the water you are in, as well as weather conditions etc. to make sure that we stay put while anchored.
Marking Chain
Oh Yeah, and I Broke My Pinky Toe
Just walking through the living room, a stubbed my toe on a cardboard cat scratcher. It hurt, as stubbed toes always do, but then it was clicking. Then is was swelling. Then it was purple. I went to urgent care and subsequently to get an x-ray. Luckily, there isn’t anything to do, so I grabbed the nearest straw and sucked it up. For a minute though, it was looking like yet another delay on the way.
Toe Breaker
Broken Pinky Toe
Emotions
It’s been scary. We’re abandoning a life that we know and love. Leaving friends, neighbors and family for an unknown life…it’s been scary.
It’s been heartbreaking. Try as I might to not get attached to objects, it is hard getting rid of things that I associate with good times in the past. And we’ve had to get rid of virtually all of our objects.
It’s been overwhelming. Everything takes time. Every item we throw away, sell or donate is something that cost us some amount of money in the past and that money is just gone. Once we started getting rid of all of our things it was very clear that we couldn’t turn back. Not that we wanted to, but still it is somehow different once that lifeline is gone.
Thanks to all of our friends who have helped us get where we are. We love you all and hope to meet again on the other side of this trip (or if you’re insane, on this trip).
*Friends Saying Goodbye *
One Final Note
I know that people who say it do so with the best of intentions, but if you are ever talking to someone who has saved, sacrificed, and planned to make their dream come true for well over a decade, don’t refer to it as “an amazing opportunity”. Amazing as it may be, the term opportunity implies that somehow we’ve been gifted this chance. We’ve earned it and are excited to get underway for the next set of challenges.
Goodbye to our trusty Honda Accord which took us on our roadtrip in 2019, and many other adventures