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Adapters, Please

4/20/2018

As any RV full-timer will tell you, making modifications to your rig is commonplace. That doesn't mean you can't feel really good about a small success from time to time.

In our first week of being full-time, I had a dilemma to solve. Our new washing machine fits in the shower stall (and nowhere else) and we had decided to run the machine there, since there is water, power and a drain in proximity. However, the water intake uses a common garden-size hose end -- not exactly stock in an RV shower.

My solution was to add a garden hose "Y" connector coming out of the shower outlet and splitting the shower-head hose and the washing machine hose to either side of the "Y". As with most shower hoses, the end is a 1/2" fitting, but a garden hose end is 3/4". Matching those with adapters took a couple of trips to Home Depot, but I got it done. For ease of removal (we remove the washer from the stall when we want to use the shower), I placed a quick connect on its input hose. Lots of plumber's tape helped keep leaking or dripping from connections.

To my astonishment, it is working perfectly. When we want to shower, we disconnect the quick-connect hose and lift the washing machine out of the shower stall, usually into the bedroom, until we're done with the bathroom. I can foresee setting up our outdoor shower hose in a similar manner so we can leave and use the washer outside on longer stays.

Small successes are great!

The washing machine is working well. It holds just over 7 pounds of clothing and has 5 programs for different cycles. We decided the larger capacity warranted not having a washer/dryer combo or a separate dryer. We hang our clothes on a line either inside or outside the RV, depending on the weather. I'll be posting a more complete product review in a couple of weeks.

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Downsizing- More Painful than Advertised

4/10/2018

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Over the last few years, with our plans to go full-time underway, my wife and I have been reading blogs and watching YouTube videos almost ad nauseum regarding downsizing to an RV. Sell, store or give everything away, they said. It will be hard, they said. We believed them.

Now, it is upon us. We sold our 1,680 sq. ft. house and have been downsizing to move into 340 sq. ft. It IS hard, and it doesn't happen overnight. We have been doing the necessary things -- selling, storing and giving away stuff -- for months now, and we will still have to store more than we had hoped. Sunday is D-Day, as in Departure Day, and we have to be out.

While they mention the emotional pain of minimizing your possessions, what the bloggers and YouTubers don't really tell you is that some of the pain is the pure loss of value. Thousands of dollars' worth of things we bought because we needed them, or wanted them, will be left behind. We obviously don't have room for everything, so intellectually it makes sense. However, I still feel the loss of monetary value from my day-to-day life, especially when it is happening over a relatively short period of time. Even small, unsellable items can bear a cost. If we paid $30 each for a hundred of these, they would have cost us $3,000 accumulatively.

Let's say I want to buy a new TV or notebook and give away my old one, even if it works fine, or a wine rack is in the way and we decide to sell it to free up space. Those individual decisions are easy to live with. But, in the span of a month, we will have dealt away or carted to storage our living room and bedroom furniture, our guest room furniture, the dining room set, two wine racks, two big-screen TV's, most of the house's decor, half of my tools, 3/4 of our wardrobes, and even a car. Everything we had stored for a rainy day is gone.

Even a few of these items can be difficult to think about, but our belongings are literally $20,000 less valuable than they were a month ago, money we spent right out of our checkbook (we paid off all our material debt long ago, thank goodness). The cash we gained in selling furniture, etc., is a pittance compared to their original values.

Just as with anything we have to deal with in life, we will focus on the positive and look forward to many years of long-awaited travel. We'll be able to visit friends and family we haven't seen in years, or ever, and we'll finally be able to experience different parts of the country for more than a long weekend at a time.

It took over ten years for the choice of living on the road to come to fruition. I just wish I had known how divesting most of our possessions would feel.

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Adapters, Please

Downsizing- More Painful than Advertised

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