I get asked all the time how we moved from a house into an RV. The process definitely involves getting rid of A LOT of stuff. I’m so excited to be sharing our exact steps on how we got rid of stuff to move from our house into our RV, and how we stay organized living in less than 300 square feet!
1. Evaluate your specific situation.
First of all, you need to think about your personal situation and evaluate what you and your specific family will need.
An example for me is that I love calligraphy and I have a calligraphy business. So when we moved into the RV, I really wanted to keep my desk and calligraphy supplies. We ended up getting rid of the couch in the RV, and managed to create a desk space for me!
I love talking about making your space work for you, and it’s something that I talk about a lot on here. Just because you start out with a couch, doesn’t mean that’s what the space always needs to be used for. You can literally make your space into whatever you want it to be and whatever you need!
Also, you don’t have to give up everything you’ve ever owned and forget about having a hobby. That’s honestly the thing I love most about minimalism. Instead, you just need to get rid of all the clutter and things that complicate your life and don’t ‘spark joy’ as Marie Kondo says! So that’s definitely something to keep in mind when you’re going through your stuff.
2. DO remember that you only have a limited amount of space.
The thing with living in an RV though, is that you only have a limited amount of space for so many hobbies. So you can’t have a desk, a couch, a book cabinet, and a knitting obsession and live comfortably in an RV (unless you buy a huge one, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of living tiny in my opinion). Make a list of the things you’d really like to keep, and pick your top 2 or 3 things that you just couldn’t live without.
I’m going to use the example of having a knitting hobby. So if you like knitting, maybe you don’t keep all 50 balls of yarn that you have, maybe you keep the ones you’ve actually used in the last 6 months or have a specific project in mind for. From then on, you only buy the yarn that you need for a specific project. No buying a ton of yarn just because it’s on sale, as hard as that is!
So in our situation, I couldn’t live without a desk and calligraphy supplies. If you’re a fashion blogger or just love clothes, you probably need to prioritize storage space for your clothes over other things. If you love cooking or baking, you may need to have less clothes to make room for all of your cookbooks and baking supplies. So basically you may have to give in some areas that you don’t care as much about, to make room for the things that you do care about.
3. Evaluate what you need vs what you want.
Once you’ve thought through what you personally need, then make a list of things that you’d like to have, but maybe don’t absolutely need to function or be happy. Then you can move the things that you absolutely need into the RV first, and the things that you want but don’t need can be moved in if you have more space.
So in our situation, of course I would’ve liked a full set of dishes, but did we really NEED a full set of dishes? No. So we only took what we needed, and we were thankful that my parents let us put the rest of our dishes in their attic.
4. Take it Room by Room.
For the initial moving out of your house, try to tackle getting rid of stuff room by room. That way if it takes longer than you’d planned to go through everything, your whole house isn’t a mess. Also, it makes getting rid of a lot of stuff seem more manageable because you’re taking it just a little bit at a time.
When you’re thinking about something that you might want to get rid of, a trick I like to use is “Have I used this in the last 6 months?” If the answer is no, it either gets sold, thrown out, or put into storage if it’s something that I would truly use later.
Just a word of encouragement to those of you that are planning to move from a house into an RV: I promise it’s worth it! It’s worth the hours of going through all of your junk to have the freedom that RV-ing brings!
5. Trust me, the less stuff you start out with the better.
We made the mistake of stuffing everything we could possibly fit into the RV when we first moved in. Pretty soon after, we realized what a big mistake that was. Just because you have the room to fit it, doesn’t mean that you should take it with you. It’s taken us 2 years to finally get everything that we really didn’t need out of the RV and get it organized.
The more things you can part with or put in storage from the very beginning, the better. Trust me on this one.
Here’s a list of the things we got rid of or put in storage:
Clothes– we got rid of buckets and buckets of clothes we never wore, and just extra things we didn’t need. We actually have a fairly big closet, so I was able to keep a lot of my favorite pieces.
Dishes– we only have 4 plates and bowls for the two of us. Same with utensils! We honestly couldn’t fit any more if we tried! We also have to wash all of our dishes by hand, so having less dishes overall keeps us from leaving too many dishes in the sink. We were able to take most of our pots and pans and bakeware, we just have to work to keep it organized.
Washer and Dryer– This one’s pretty obvious, but we didn’t have any space for a full washer and dryer. This is the one thing I wish we could have in the RV. Some of them do have small ones, and I’ve even seen rigs with full size ones, but we just didn’t have anywhere to put them so we sold them on Facebook Marketplace.
Our Couch– Most RV’s will come with a built in couch and most traditional couches won’t fit through the RV door, much less in the space! When we got rid of my desk and put in a couch after about a year of RV life, we ended up having to get a love seat because nothing else fit in the space. Definitely try to make your current couch work in the RV if you can (I know plenty of RV-ers who have full size couches, it just depends on your rig!), but more than likely you’ll have to get rid of yours like we did.
Lamps and side tables– We got rid of a lot of light fixtures because the RV has most of them built in. And we honestly didn’t have any floor space for them. I also gave my Mom a side table that I had painted that she keeps in her guest room for us, and then we sold our other coffee tables we had.
Dining room table– Unless you have a super small dining room table, it probably won’t fit in your RV. We actually ended up giving our Dining room table set to a friend to keep for us. She needed a table, and we didn’t want to give it up so that worked out perfectly.
Our bed frame and box spring– this is kind of a random one, but we didn’t need a bed frame or box spring when we moved into the RV. We ended up selling those on Facebook Marketplace.
Other things we put into storage– Wedding gifts, extra dishes (we didn’t get rid of any dishes, that way we we’ll have a full set when we move into a house), decor that we had no wall space or counter space for, childhood keepsakes, things that we had 2 of, books and movies that we don’t need right now, other trinkets that we had no immediate use for.
You could probably get rid of a lot of the things that we put in storage, but we’re cheap and our family was willing to store it all for us so we just did that! Don’t be afraid to ask friends and family if they want to use anything you don’t need. We had people agree to keep things for us in exchange for us letting them use it, which was a win win for both of us!
A Note about Storage Units:
I definitely wouldn’t recommend getting a storage unit unless you have to. I would suggest condensing everything down to the smallest amount you can, and then figuring out if you can store just a few boxes of things that you just can’t part with (like childhood keepsakes), but you also can’t take with you, at a family member’s or friends house. But definitely try to stay away from storage units if you can. The whole point of downsizing into an RV is getting rid of stuff that you don’t need, and most of the time when we sold our stuff we actually ended up making back the money we spend to buy it in the first place!
6. Think about where you’re going to park your RV.
Another thing that I get asked all the time is “Where did you park your RV when you were waiting to move in?”. And I laugh every time I answer that question because we actually parked it in the front lawn of our rental house! Our neighbors probably hated us! We were living in one of those neighborhoods where the houses are all right next to each other, and so we had to park diagonally on the tiny front lawn and we just barely fit. Thankfully, we only had it there for about a week while we were selling things and moving out.
To renovate it, we actually took it to my in laws house and parked it there for the month while we demoed the whole thing and remodeled it.
Something to keep in mind if you’re looking to renovate your RV is that a lot of RV parks don’t allow you to do construction while staying there (which makes total sense!). So make sure before you buy an RV, that you actually have somewhere to store it and work on it while you’re remodeling or waiting to move in.
7. Re-evaluate everything you have every six months.
Once you’ve actually gone through the whole process of moving from a house into an RV, you can still accumulate too much stuff. I would recommend going through everything you have with you every six months, and think about whether or not you’ve used it in that time.
It’s funny how when we moved into the RV, there were so many things that we thought we needed that we really didn’t. Re-evaluating everything that you have helps you to stay organized, and make your Full Time RV-ing experience much more pleasant!
8. Give yourself grace.
My last tip is just to give yourself grace. The transition from house to RV can be somewhat awkward, and don’t expect everything to go perfectly, because there will absolutely be some hiccups along the way.
Make sure to have grace with yourself during the transition and as you try to figure out how everything works on your RV. The transition from house to RV can be stressful, but it doesn’t have to be! Take it one day at a time, one room at a time, as you go through all of your stuff. Trust me, as someone who is on the other side of it, it’s totally worth it!
I hope this blog post was helpful to those of you looking to move from a house into an RV! If you want to read more tips about RV life, click here to read “5 things I wish I had known before living in an RV”.
Thanks so much for reading!
Megan
Pin this post to save it for later:
