This is the part that drives me crazy! We aren’t moving out until the month of April, so we cannot really pack until later this month, but we are both starting to get really excited. And time is ticking, so we feel anxious and the desire to make progress toward the goal every day almost becomes an obsession. The last thing we want to do is have a BUNCH of stuff to do at the last minute. So we pacify ourselves by doing one thing towards our goal each day.

The last 2 big events on our social schedule were my stepson’s wedding and a visit to my parents in Virginia. The wedding was a ton of fun! All the groom’s cousins and aunts and uncles came, so it was like a huge family reunion. The last 2 family meetings have been for funerals, so this was a nice change – a celebration of a happy event instead of the passing of a family member.

We drove down to see my parents and took the only mattress we have (a double) off our bed and put it in the back of the van. We slept at a truck stop to save money and made it down early Thursday. We had a nice visit and then headed home on Saturday to pick up the dog and now we have nothing between us and move out day except prep.

At this point our house is pretty empty. We have a basement full of food and tools, most of which we will take up to the boat. 3 of the 4 bedrooms are empty, so we are left with a double mattress, a dresser, a chest of drawers, 2 dining room sets, a glass table, some folding chairs and the stuff in the garage. We have given the kids all their stuff – pictures, memorabelia etc, and now we need to start moving the things we are keeping into storage for when we return.

Once we have that accomplished, we will have a garage sale and the rest of the unsold stuff will go to charity. It has been very liberating to slough off the trappings of a land based life. You realize when you go through the process how much junk and useless stuff you accumulate. We actually need very little, and our purchasing decisions from now on will be based on needs and not wants.

Some have asked us why we are keeping anything. We are not sure what we will do when we return. We don’t know if we will enjoy the nautical life too much and not want to return to land. We may go to California, and explore the West coast of our country, as well as Vancouver and Alaska – we just don’t know. So we are keeping the bare minimum; bed, place to eat, cookware, some clothing and tools.

I spent a fair amount of time resolving technical issues to ensure that I can work properly while on the trip. Part of that meant upgrading to newer phones that could handle the GSM signals – our old phones did not. Our nearshore internet issues were resolved when Verizon added an unlimited plan for $100/month – I was paying the same amount for 20-24GB, so that will help us when we are in cell range, and our satellite phone will only need to do voice.

Our next step coming up will be to virtualize our mailing address; we will be “moving” to Florida even though our physical location will be at home or in the marina until we leave. We are doing this early to ensure that everything is properly in place and all the kinks ironed out before they actually need to be.

We are also in the process of aquiring a storage unit and will start moving the stuff we know we are going to keep into the unit so we can fully ascertain what we will need to get rid of at the garage sale. Fun times ahead!

We are both getting antsy and the excitement is building. Poor puppy knows something is up because stuff keeps disappearing. We can only reassure him that he is coming along, beyond that I don’t know what he is thinking…