We’ve been living full time in our RV for a little over a year now. We certainly do like the lifestyle. We don’t miss having a bigger house to have to keep up and clean. When the RV gets cluttered, with just minutes of effort, everything is back in place. Every time we get ready to travel, we are motivated to organize and clean before we hit the road. It has been liberating for us to scale back and get rid of so much stuff. Don’t get me wrong, we can still scale back, but it is a daunting thought for us to move back into a house and have to collect all the furniture and house wares just to fill it up and look livable.
We have been so fortunate that our jobs had given us the freedom to begin our RV journey and we have been so grateful. Most think that living in an RV means that you are on permanent vacation. That’s not the case at all, we have to work to keep up this lifestyle. Granted, we have to say our mindset has changed. We have learned to be more flexible and know that things seem to always work out one way or another. This doesn’t mean that we don’t budget and plan to either travel or stay in one spot for awhile.
We knew our job positions were going to change this coming year, so this fall, we decided to take the opportunity to take the long way from Florida to Missouri and travel up the east coast to Vermont, over to Chicago, then south to our hometown of Springfield, MO. We have no regrets in doing that, because we plan to spend the next several months in our old stomping ground to build relationships and work on our business. Living in an RV doesn’t always mean always being on the go.
It seems that whether you have a home-based business on wheels or in an actual stick and mortar home, people forget we do have to work. We are grateful to have a flexible schedule. Sticking to a schedule had been a challenge, but we have gotten so much better at it over the last year. Certainly working at home is different than going into an office. It isn’t for everyone. I know being a manager for many years, I’ve had employees that certainly couldn’t be disciplined enough to be productive outside the office setting, while others thrive in that environment. Since I’ve been in an office setting for 20 years, it has been a mental transition to be as productive as I feel I should be. The major thing I’ve learned about myself is that I tend to be productive and get a ton of things done between 6:30 a.m. and noon, so I’ve learned to schedule paperwork during that time frame. I do other work and am available to clients to finish out the workday. I’ve also learned to take advantage of when I’m in the “mood” to work, whether it’s on the weekend or in the middle of the night and just do what I can. Sometimes it feels like I’m working all the time, but really the flexibility is wonderful to balance out personal and professional projects.
One project that we are about to embark on is house repairs on the rental property we own here in Springfield. Our tenant will be moving out and there we’ve got quite the list of chores to do in order to get it ready to rent out again. We hope that it won’t take too long to get the house ready or too long to get it rented out again. We have been asked if we are moving back into the house, and we have to animatedly say “NO”. Just because we are staying in one spot for awhile doesn’t mean we are ready to leave our RV lifestyle and move back into a house. Just the thought of having to purchase all the stuff to set up house again turns our stomachs.
We are enjoying our time back in Missouri near friends and family, getting recharged for our next travel adventures. Although we may get stir crazy because we’ll want to travel, the best thing for us right now is to focus on career and building our client base.
