The longer Gary and I live in our RV, the more we realize that we do not need all of the ‘stuff’ we have in our home in West Des Moines. We are able to live quite simply and completely in our RV with the possessions we’ve brought along with us and store in our 35’ RV.
One of the best lessons I learned and I learned it quite early on was from my second roommate out of college. I went to college at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa and, when I graduated I moved to Rhode Island to teach. My first roommate was a friend of mine, Sue, from my history classes at Ames who was also moving to RI. (What are the chances of that? Well, pretty good since another friend from history class was also moving to RI.) Sue got married after that first year and another teacher from the school where I taught and I rented a home in Warwick, RI and drove into school together. We got paid on Friday and on one Friday we stopped at the bank on our way home and deposited our checks in to our checking accounts. The next Friday we stopped and put our checks into our savings accounts. ‘Save every other check’ was her lesson to me.
Luckily, I was pretty frugal (I usually call myself ‘cheap’) anyway and saving half my earnings fit into my lifestyle. Now, here’s the disclosure - I haven’t always lived up to this ideal. In fact, I doubt that she did throughout her life either. But, it was an ideal and ideals are to strive for not always to reach. I suppose I wasn’t introspective enough to see that I was making choices about my lifestyle at the time. I was just living my life as I wanted to and being frugal suited me and became my lifestyle. Besides, I wasn’t lacking anything: I had everything I needed and wanted. I was living the good life.
Then, in 1969, I met Gary and it got even better. Well, I didn’t actually ‘meet’ him since we had known each other since 7th grade in Fort Dodge, Iowa. But, we didn’t start dating until after the Navy had stationed him in Newport, RI and I had moved there after college to teach. Who ever would have predicted in high school that Gary and I would ever meet in RI, date and get married? No one. But we did and have been married almost 39 years now. And, probably one of the reasons was that our lifestyles were similar. We were both frugal and thought we had everything we needed.
Does that mean that we didn’t stray and buy into the notion that we ‘needed’ to have more? Heavens, no. We have more furniture than we need, we have more clothes than we need, In fact, we have a whole home in West Des Moines which is filled with ‘stuff’ that we thought we wanted but that is way more than we need. Which gets back to my first statement that we have just about everything we need here in the RV. (We did decide that we should not have left the hair clippers in West Des Moines but it is what is it.)
What are we going to do with the ‘stuff’ in West Des Moines?
That’s the decision for the summer coming up. Meanwhile, if you know anyone who would like to buy a nice town home in West Des Moines, please keep us in mind.
In the interim, we will continue to roll on down the road, contented, happy and loving every minute in our 35’ tin box.
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