Doing Minor RV Repairs and We Love our Awning Shade Attachment…

We have slowly settled into our site here in Bonita Springs Florida for the winter. It is always fun to set up all of our more “permanent stuff” when we have these extended stays. One of our favorite long term stay items is our extended awning shade screen we bought several winters ago. It creates a sense of privacy and of course a sunscreen from the glaring sun when facing the west which we are this season. I simply attach it to our awning with little “S-hooks” which are also used to hang our Christmas lights on. It is surprising how much cooler it keeps not only the outdoor area but inside as well…

For wind protection I attach our screen to the ground two ways. First I use a good quality rock climbing rope to tie off the corners. I use this type of rope since it has a lot of give and spring to it letting the awning flex in higher wind gusts. I attach the rope by looping it over the awning bars and then I use a corkscrew type anchor to tie it off on. After both corners are secured I use tent stakes a few more cork screw anchors to tie of the bottom  so it will flare outwards and help secure the awning screen. I love, love , love the little room this set up creates.

We have been spending mornings after breakfast walking around our large park. We also have been ticking off repair items piled up over the course of this year's travels since last winter. Obviously we fix major items as needed but smaller items and items that can be put off  just get put on a list until we get somewhere for an extended stay. This way we can order items and have them delivered so we slowly accomplish every task on our repair list.

A few items i needed to order were a new drain “pop-up center” for our bathroom sink and a new drain screw for the bathroom shower. Our RV is almost 10 years old so these items had rusted completely through. A long screw holds the shower drain in place and it had actually rusted in half leaving part of it in the baseplate it screwed into. I had to drill out the baseplate and rethread it so I could plug in a new screw down drain. Thankfully the drain/stopper in the bathroom was much easier to replace.

I would suggest that if you haven’t done so is to check and see if your screw holding your drain in the shower can turn without disintegrating. If you can get the screw out take it to your nearest Lowes or Ace Hardware to buy a stainless steel screw. as stainless steel will never rust and then you will never have to replace your drain like we did.

I also had to replace the small LED bulb which burnt out in our water pump indicator switch. I hate it when these burn out since it makes it so you never know if your water pump is on or off. These are very easy to fix and for less than a buck you can get two replacement bulbs. It is a bit tricky getting the old light bulb out and I chose to solder it back in place but others choose to wrap the wire leads around to the posts on the other side of the switch. If you don't understand what I am talking about  this link will explain in detail how to replace the LED bulb.

It sure is nice having a mailing address so we can easily get needed items for our repairs. I have many more things to repair but at least we have gotten off to a good start. After repairs, we will go through every drawer and cabinet to purge and organize. Such is life during extended stays on our Road of Retirement.

NOTE: We are now in our winter home for the next several months in Bonita Springs Florida at Imperial Bonita Estates RV park and Coop.

Craigslist–getting rid of the final stuff…

Merikay was recently lamenting about selling her stuff on the likes of EBay and Craigslist so I thought I would share some of our experiences.  We sold a few items on EBay but they were specialty items such as vintage camera bodies and lenses.  As Merikay said, once we researched the prices and bids on EBay for items similar to what we had we decided we would try craigslist for selling the rest of the stuff.

Craigslist is the best place to sell items that you want to get a fair price for.  Now the way we started using Craigslist was to place only the items we wanted to get rid of early on the web at a fair and reasonable price. We started doing this nearly a year in advance of our planned departure.  We would then repost the item frequently to generate interest. Reposting brings the item to the top of the list making it more likely to be seen.

As the time started getting closer to our departure (Yikes only 10 more days!) we had sold most of the items we really didn’t need but had (why we had these items we don’t know?). And in the last few months the remaining furniture and larger everyday items were listed. Again these items were posted at a fair and reasonable value and many of them sold leaving us with only a few less desirable or wanted items.

The strategy we used to get rid of the lesser desirable items has been to decrease our asking price bit by bit on each reposting and we have been able to sell nearly all the larger items we have listed.  Only a few remaining items are left and if they don’t sell this week they will be added to our one last garage sale next weekend.

Now another strategy I used just recently (and should have tried earlier) was to post items on Craigslist in other large cities nearby. I have been trying to sell the car for a long time with very little interest but I posted it to the Houston Craigslist (about 100 miles away) and had four inquiries on the car yesterday with a fellow driving over in the morning to look at it.  Why I didn’t think of this sooner is beyond me but I pass this on to you so you can learn from my mistakes.

You see the key here is to get rid of all your unneeded stuff but you still need to feel as if you were being fairly compensated. We all know you can sell everything in a garage sale but only for pennies on the dollar and let’s be real, garage sales are a pain in the a$*#. One final advantage of selling items on Criagslist that are sentimental to you or that you have a personal attachment to is that you get to meet the buyer and tell your story about the item. I found that for the most part the buyers of these items seemed as if they would truly care for them.  It is nice to know the antiques we sold are going to good people who will enjoy them.  I this also helps one adjust to the separation anxiety and makes it easier to be able to let go of these types of items…

Photos are some of the many items we sold on craigslist.

Sold the truck…

So in December of 1997 I was in search of a new truck and had found it in the form of a charming brand new white ford ranger pickup truck. Since then I have only put 67,000 miles on it since I mostly used if to go back and forth from work.

Today when I woke up the truck was gone! I sold it yesterday and as a result, today when I left the house to go to work, there was a bit of sadness that my old white ranger was gone… Man I loved that truck!!! So today I drove our brand new Honda CRV toad that had been hiding in our garage since we brought it home. I really enjoyed driving it but it just wasn’t the same… However, I hope that this is the beginning of brand new love affair with an inanimate object…

47 days to go… YIKES!!!!

Trash day makes me smile…

What is it about trash day that makes me happy?  It falls on a Thursday which isn’t even a special day… but every Thursday at around 8:00 am I can hear the trash truck making the bend on the road behind me and for some reason it makes me smile…  Why?

You see for the last 6-7 months trash day has been one of my favorite days. Each weekend I would troll around the house searching for items that were unworthy of donating to the goodwill, salvation army or any other charity.  Once an unworthy item was discovered it made its way to the city garbage can. This happened until the trash can was nearly full.  Then Thursday would come along so on Thursday mornings after I had my coffee I would go out front and peak inside the trashcan to see if it was full… if not I would search for items to fill it with…

So why does trash day make me happy?  Well after performing my trash ritual for the last 6-7 months we have ridded ourselves of so much trash and of many worthless items that our attic is practically empty and our garage is de-cluttered… likewise if you look in our closets and any drawer in the house they are fairly empty and organized…

So now it is almost impossible for me to fill the trash can on Thursday mornings… So why am I still happy on Thursdays?  Because it is apparent that we have now cleared out nearly all the trash in our lives that we had accrued in this home over the last 16 years… and that means we are getting very close to reaching our goal of leaving our house, retiring, and moving on to our dreams…

which makes us both happy… enjoy your day!

more purging…

Well we had our first garage sale about 3-4 weeks ago and now that we have to list the house we had another one this past weekend. Between the two of the them we netted about a grand and got rid of an awful lot of stuff. The stuff left over from this one was sorted into three piles – stuff to go to the curb for freecycle; stuff to go to the mission; and stuff to be retained for the last of our garage sales that will be held just after we have a signed and agreed upon house contract. Then we will have a final living estate sale to get rid of all the larger items in the home that we don’t give away to our kids or sell with the house.

So once again we will try to sell the house and we have decided to list it with a flat fee real estate listing firm here in Texas called the Listing Firm. For a nominal fee they will list our property on the MLS listings and we will offer a three percent “buyers finders” fee to any real estate agents who find us an appropriate buyer.  We will then turn over the paperwork to our lawyer to close the deal.  This will save us at least $4,000 in saved listing commissions that agents normally charge. So today it is clean up the garage and get the house to a “ready stage” for showing… then it is pictures taken for the web… and finally pay for the listing and we are ready for the next round in the saga of “Can we sell our home!”…  wish us luck!

wow… part 3… HOUSE SOLD!

Well what a whirlwind week and half we have had… after listing our house on zillow.com and having a lady call for a showing that resulted in three grueling days of cleaning the house we had gotten an offer on the house! This was during the same week we scheduled our first garage sale… so we had a showing while the garage was stuffed to brim with “stuff” lots of “stuff”… Oh well…

So we go back and forth with the lady (offer, counter offer, offer counter offer etc.) and we finally come to an agreement on everything so unofficially the house is sold!  Pending a good inspection there should be no reason for it not to close on July 16, 2010.  We will take the signed contract over to their realtor later today. This has turned out to be a real interesting deal since it will be an all cash purchase so there will be no appraisal to worry about, no financing to worry about, only the inspection of which I am not really worried about. So what am I worried about?

Where the heck are we going to live until we hit the road? We have no RV and now after July 16th we will be homeless as well… We have slightly less than five and one half weeks to sell all the rest of our stuff we don’t want… find a place to live… move into the place to live and still shop for the elusive RV…

Wow… now back to the garage sale… we did get rid of a lot of stuff that people actually paid us for… even better there was a fellow who asked about a grill and a smoker to which I replied that we were going to eventually sell everything so I took him out back to look at the smoker and grill and he said he wants them and will call back in 3 weeks to come get them (since I still need them for a while yet).  He also put dibs on my chest freezer.  Another young lady heard our story and has dibs on our bedroom suite, our couch and loveseat and a side board. This turned out to be a good garage sale…

Now if only we had an RV before we have to move out on the 16th…

Burning the LP's into digital land...

Well I am now using my brand new turn table that comes complete with a USB cable that plugs directly into my computer.  Comes complete with software that can be used to catalog the music by using the dead space between songs that effectively breaks out each song separately.  This way I am able to play an album, cut each song out, name them with their singer, album name, and title and save them into my itunes folders.

Being able to convert my records into digital music means I can rid myself of the 2-300 lbs of LP's I own and put them all on a very compact external hard drive.  The down sizing continues.... and the side benefit is going through all the nostalgia and memories that each record reveals through each song recorded.  Now where was I when The Beatles sang Let it Be?   Hmmmmmm........

Man we have a LOTS OF STUFF!!!! So not too long ago I asked my wife to walk through the house with me and look at each room in detail.  Our task was to answer some questions:

1. look in this room and what in here can you just not part with - Absolutely Must Haves!
2. of the remaining stuff what would you like to store or give to family for safe keeping - Could Keep!
3. of the remaining stuff what should we sell - Sell it!
4. any stuff remaining should be thrown away or given away to someone who could use our old stuff. Toss it!

Well we went to the dining room first and it went something like this:

"I really like our antiques but we could give them to one of our kids"  ... I agree.
"Then there is the china and silverware we have ... I guess we could give that to the kids too..."  ... I agree.
"Well I guess there really isn't anything in here I MUST have" ... I agree.

On to the living room.... we could sell the piano and all the furniture and our books and TV, sound system etc... "Well I guess there really isn't anything in here I MUST have" ... I agree.

Amazingly we go through each of our rooms and we surprised ourselves by coming to the overall conclusion that there really wasn't hardly anything we had in our house that we just couldn't part with.  Then it struck us -Why do we have all this stuff if it isn't really of importance to us?  The only obvious answer we came up with was because we had a "stick" house.

I think it is going to relatively easy for us to part with our stuff and move into an RV.  It wasn't until we went through this exercise until we fully realized that traveling in an RV is not only a dream but could become a reality.

To stuff a class B or an A... that is the question????

So there is little doubt that if we were to purchase a used Class A it would be larger and provide us more living space.  It would also provide us more storage and more capability for hauling a greater amount of stuff.  There in itself lies the problem for us.... we have a LOTS OF STUFF!!!!

I have been contemplating retirement for some time and had already challenged my bride to help in getting rid of stuff we no longer needed or wanted.  So for the last two years we have been tossing stuff into the trash can on our trash day.  So every Wednesday I would look into our trash can and see how much space it had left for unwanted stuff.  Every week for the past two years we have been filling up the left over space.  Now I want to tell you we have gotten rid of a lot of stuff!

So why do we still have too much stuff?  It appears we have finally gotten to the point that the stuff we have left has some value ... either perceived or real.  So now our dilemma is what stuff do we have left that we won't need in an RV?  And that too is a lot of stuff... but that is another story....