The Simple Life

It's been just over a year now that our family started on an adventure of a lifetime.  May 19, 2011 we moved out of our home of 12 years and into our RV to enjoy a simpler way of life.  We were tired of the "rat race" and knew that we loved to travel and go camping as a family. We were tired of looking at our RV and wishing we could be in it.  We were tired of always working and very rarely getting to play. We were already a homeschool family so it didn't matter where we chose to live.
I had been struggling for years over wanting to be more of a "stay at home" mom but it was hard to give up a good paying, stable job as a nurse so I started praying about it.  My husband had wanted to move into the RV for a few years but I wasn't ready to let my house full of "stuff" go.  I was worried about so many silly things like: what if I don't like living in the RV, what if the kids don't like sharing a room, what if something happens to one of us, what if...  I spent so much time worrying about the "what if's" that it took me a while to see the answer to what I had been praying about.  The day it hit me, I was at church listening to our minister talk about materialism and worldly things that we can't take with us in the end. He made the comment, "it's all going to burn some day."  That was it for me...I knew at that point that I was ready to let it all go. 
We had already been talking with my parents about the RV lifestyle because they have been "full timers" for years and kept telling us how wonderful it was to not be tied down to a house and all the responsibility that goes with it.  So we sat down and discussed all of our options. At first we attempted to buy some land and we planned to live in the RV on the land until we could convert a metal workshop into a much smaller home, but that didn't work out because the land sold before we could sell our house. So the next option was to move to a local RV park and try this lifestyle.  I went to the park and talked to the owner about our plans, told him about our family, and asked if he needed workers. He was excited about our adventure and was willing to let us work for our rent. That was the answer we needed to make this plan work! So my prayers continued to help us find the perfect person to rent our home and God answered quickly. The second person who came to look at it was the perfect fit.  She had almost given up on finding a home to rent and had been in tears over it. When we met and talked, we both knew that we had found what we were both looking for. It was an anwer to our prayers. 
 The next 2 weeks were intense as we packed what was necessary to store, moved what we needed into the RV, donated probably 80% or more of what we owned,  took several loads of things to the dump, and did job training at the park.  There was no time for a garage sale and at that point I didn't even care. We were ready to start our adventure!
So many blessing have come out of this journey and God has been so good to us through it all. So let me tell you what this journey has done for us as a family: We have learned to live with less, we have learned to live in a  much smaller space with one bathroom instead of two, I have learned to shop and cook differently, our children have learned to share a room and willingly got rid of "stuff" to do so, we get to work at the park as a family including our kids who have learned so much, we spend more time together as a family, our kids play outside more and meet kids from all over the world, we get to travel more and take the whole house with us, I got to quit my job at a local hospital, we have met so many neat people, we have made some great friendships including 2 new homeschool families who live here next to us and are doing the same thing, we have worked on paying off some bills and hope to be debt free sooner than we could have before, but most importantly we have learned that "stuff" is not important!
 While we are still here on this earth what really matters it putting God first, and spending quality time with our family.  Life is too short to spend all of our time working to pay for the "stuff" we already have and the "stuff" we want to buy, and life is too short to spend our extra time to maintain all of that "stuff".  Instead of spending hours a week cleaning a house, doing yard work, doing laundry, washing and putting up dishes, etc... We spend 30 minutes a week cleaning the RV, do no yard work, wash 4 loads of laundry at once, and have very few dishes that we hand wash and put away. This allows for much more time to sit on the porch and drink coffee, listen to the birds sing, watch the kids play, soak up the sunshine, visit with friends, meet new people, see interesting RV's, talk about our next travel plans, and spend quality time with our kids.  I have enjoyed this journey so much more than I could have imagined and I wouldn't trade it for anything. This truely is the life!