Why we didn’t sell everything

When you start to follow and read other stories of people who set out to live on the road, you read how they sold everything. Stories of how they got rid of all their possessions.

That’s absolutely what we set out to do. It felt like it would be a cathartic exercise, especially for me who is a bit of a collector. We would save money on storing all our possessions, some that we might never want again. But we have chosen not to sell everything, and here’s why.

How long will our journey take?

We have no idea how long this ‘journey’ of ours will be. We don’t know what it’s going to look like. And we don’t have a plan. We have always said that we don’t know if it’ll be 6 months or 2 years, and if this adventure makes us want to come back to pick up our previous life, then that’s fine.

It’s this part that’s made us reconsider selling everything. Whilst there’s not a huge amount of value in the items we possess – beds, sofas, dining table, etc – it would cost us quite a bit to buy everything again if 6 months down the line we decide to return ‘home’. There’s also sentimental items and keepsakes, things I treasure and want to keep, that I couldn’t part with.

What we’ll be doing with our ‘stuff’

How romantic does it sound to say “we sold everything and went on the road”? Undoubtedly I’d love to say we did this, that we truly freed ourselves from all this stuff we’ve collected. But it’s not for us, at least not right now. Perhaps if our time on the road takes us down a different path, we will return and sell anything we no longer want. I’m absolutely hoping living in a tiny home will change how much we feel we need to live with.

So for now, we are not selling everything. We will be getting some kind of storage to keep selected items in whilst we travel. What we have been doing for about a year now, is de-cluttering. It’s a process I find tricky and emotional, and I’m not ashamed to admit crying many times. Very slowly (as these things become when you have children and babies) we’ve been getting rid of stuff that doesn’t have a practical purpose, an important sentimental value, or we can see using in the future.