The Move is Closer
We have hit several significant milestones.
First, last week we were issued an electrical permit for our solar system. I’ll make a very long painful story very short. The electrician that installed our solar system 5 years ago did not get it permitted, and to make things worse, the installation was sloppy. A good friend, who is also a highly talented solar engineer, saved our bacon by doing all the drawings and technical stuff to bring our system up to code, so we can complete the sale of our home. It’s going to be close, but it will be up to code before we leave.
Today, Royal Hawaiian Movers came and picked up our household goods, putting them into two 4x7x7 shipping crates. in 2012 we downsized a 15-acre farm to one 20 ft shipping container (1,250 sf). Today, we downsized to basically an 8x7x7 box (390 sf). That is some serious downsizing! Some will go into storage, to await the day we move off the road. The rest will go into the Taj for our new RV life.
Deciding what to sell, what to give away, what to donate, and what to just send to recycle, was a long hard process for us. I sold a lot of my tools (crying!). Jan sold or donated a lot of her material (very painful!). We donated all of our church books to the Hilo Stake Presidency library, so we know they will be used and referenced a lot in the coming years. Let’s just say, it was quite a collection. We will be using an online book access through Deseret Books, so we will continue to have access to our books, just not the physical copy. In fact, for $7/mo, we will now have access to hundreds of books, audio books, and videos, so I think that’s a pretty good deal, overall.
Both of us downsized our clothes. Living full-time in a fiver does not allow for a large clothing collection. We’ll keep extras in storage, but the bulk will be with us. It’s amazing how little you can actually get by with!
We were very generous with keeping kitchen items. we both love to cook, so this was a critical decision process. I think we will have all the appropriate pots, pans, and kitchen tools with us. And for those wondering, yes, we will have my ice cream maker with us – some things are absolutely essential! We will still be able to cook, bake, and grill all of our favorite foods. In fact, we are adding a solar cooker and a Blackstone grill (the ones we have are corroded from the eruption). Why cook inside when we can do the majority of it outdoors? After a couple months, I may build an outdoor portable oven. The RV oven, to be generous, is quite small. We’ll see if that is needed or not. Jan made her last batch of lilikoi butter, so we packed that. We also packed 18 qts of our honey. Just couldn’t leave that behind.
The car is sold, and the pickup goes up for sale next week. We have our plane tickets, and yesterday Jan reserved our AirBnB. We are just about ready to embark on the new journey! We can’t wait!