Getting to work

Tuesday I went back to work. Not the old "go to the office and grind out software" kind of work, but work toward my goal of independence: I began to seriously tackle the big job of packing up my belongings. Whatever I can't sell or give away (or throw away!) will have to be packed and stored in a tiny 5' x 10' room that I'm renting for $65 a month at a U-Haul facility a mile up the road.

My short-term objective is to "de-clutter" this condo so that when I put it on the market in a couple of weeks, it will look "lived in but spacious" Following the advice of books like Ilyce Glink's "50 Simple Steps You Can Take to Sell Your Home," I plan to remove roughly half of everything I own, leaving just enough that the place doesn't look empty. After I have a buyer, of course, I'll move out the other half. For example, here are my toy shelves "before and after":

I had already done a pretty good job on the kitchen in the months before retirement. Not that it was shabby...but the appliances were a shade of "Harvest Gold" that screamed "Seventies!" So I replaced the stove, stove hood and dishwasher with new white ones from Sears. I carefully picked the least expensive models that had key eye-catching features: membrane switches instead of pushbuttons, a black glass stove top instead of spiral heating elements, and a digital display. Understand, the units I bought weren't cheesy by any means—I researched them in Consumer Reports to make sure they were well designed and had good repair histories—but they were the least costly ones that looked modern and trendy.

Once the new appliances were in place, I removed most of the cooking tools that I normally keep hanging on the wall (I hate rooting through drawers full of junk!) and also removed appliances like the bread machine, toaster oven and blender. All that remained was the microwave oven, and I moved it to a corner so that there'd be great swaths of counter left—a very open look. Judge for yourself—here are the before and after pictures:

With all-new, all white appliances and most of the visual clutter gone, the place looks much more spacious—which is exactly what Ilyce Glink recommended. Of course it's much less practical for me, since all my utensils are now jammed in a drawer...but I can deal with that for a couple of months!

Also on the agenda was moving cartons to the storage room I'd rented. I was grateful to have help from my friends George and Karen Zins, who own "Ladybug," a Lazy Daze very similar to Gertie but with scarlet trim in place of Gertie's blue. George and Karen worked tirelessly to help me pack and transport cartons. We ended up with a large stack of boxes in the storage room and none in the living room—a good day's work. It's good to have muscular friends!

George and Karen came back the following week to help out again, and we moved still more boxes into storage—about 60 so far. I'm so grateful for their help! Frankly, the task facing me seems overwhelming: I have a lifetime's worth of accumulated possessions, and only about 2% of them can go in Gertie. The rest must be sold, given away, thrown away...or packed and stored.

Some of my non-RVing friends have trouble understanding this. They'll gaze around my condo and shake their heads, as if thinking that I'm hopelessly naive to imagine even a fraction of this will fit in Gertie. The fact is, almost none of it needs to, because Gertie is already fully loaded and ready to live in. I was mentored by RVing fulltimers, and my natural inclination is to think like one, so from the very first I made sure that Gertie had everything from spare belts and hoses to muffin tins and baking soda stashed in her many and spacious cabinets. (See "Bringing Gertie Home.") There's clothing for every season, tools...everything I might need. I don't need to move any of those things from the apartment to the motorhome.

So what is going from my condo into Gertie? Well, my sewing machine, my computer, a few extra tools...and I'll swap the older clothes I carry in Gertie for newer ones from my closets here in the condo. About three dozen books, carefully selected from the thousands here at home...some DVDs for rainy-day movie watching...a slightly larger collection of cooking spices...things like that. But all the essentials are there already.

Oh, and the Dustyfoot broadband satellite internet outfit goes in Gertie. It arrived this week in a box the size of a large washing machine—even my UPS driver, who's seen everything, was nonplussed. So was I, at first. Although the equipment inside, cradled in thick layers of bubble wrap, wasn't quite as bulky as the box had made it appear, it's still a big 23" x 39" dish, a massively built tripod and a whole bunch of accessories—77 pounds worth in all.

George and Karen, who have traveled for as much as 7 months at a stretch in their 22' "Ladybug," helped me figure out how to store it all away neatly. They gave me great tips based on their experience. With their help, I rearranged Gertie's storage bins and evicted a few things like my extra chairs and table that I know will not be required in my solo travels.

Truth is, I'd much rather be working on Gertie than on my condo! Getting her ready for the Big Adventure is fun...packing books is not. But I can't take off until I sell this place, so the packing and decluttering have to take priority.