5 tips for hitting the road after being stationary
When we're on the road, we tend to stay in one location for no more than 3 weeks to a month. The exception last year was when we returned home for the holidays. We ended up camping out on our home-base for 6 weeks. Drive days are important for the upkeep of our cleaning and organization. We don't travel unless everything is put away, and once everything is put away, it's easier to wipe surfaces, clean, and vacuum. So what happens when we stay put in once place for a while? Naturally, the RV becomes more lived in. We anticipated leaving for our 2nd season of travel, knowing that our packing would likely take us more time than on a typical travel day. Not only did items get less organized, but we received Christmas gifts that didn't have spots yet, plus we had decorations to take down. Before we launched back on the road on December 30, we gave ourselves that whole week to prepare for our first drive in a month and a half.
Many RVers stay in one place for an extended period of time - sometimes for several months to a year. It's natural to become complacent when you don't need to worry about travel days, and there's a very real fear of being rusty when it comes time to pack everything back up and drive the big rig again. So we compiled a list of steps that we took to ensure that our first time back out on the road was as smooth as possible. Keep in mind that these are steps for when you've been stationary but continue living in your rig; RVers who actually move out and store their rig will need to give themselves even more time because they will have extra steps that we don't.
1. Start organizing and packing days ahead of time. Give yourself more time than you need. We really learned this lesson when we falsely thought we'd be able to pack everything into our rig for the first time ever and then leave the next day. Looking back, we have to wonder what we were thinking about that one. Nevertheless, packing up after 6 weeks was a very different experience, but we still gave ourselves extra time to get everything in its place. We took the time to go through every drawer and cabinet, getting rid of items we hadn't used. We also rearranged a few spaces to make them more functional and to fit our new Christmas gifts. We spent the better part of that week taking down decorations/switching back to our normal décor, reorganizing, and putting things away. We also did some deep cleaning of the RV during this time.
2. Have some fun by switching up your décor. Because we were already taking down Christmas decorations and resuming our usual décor, we decided to make a few small changes to keep things fresh in our rig. The biggest change was buying new bedding to make our bedroom extra cozy. During our organizing we also found some twinkle lights buried in our ottoman, and so we decided to add those to our bedroom too. This small, inexpensive change made us even more excited to hit the road, as we imagined all the fun campgrounds we'd be sleeping in in our new extra cozy bed. The great thing about small decorative changes is that they don't need to be expensive or daunting. Just something to freshen up the aesthetic can make a big difference.
3. Take breaks to enjoy your last few days before you leave. One of the reasons to start packing ahead of time is so that you don't feel stressed by a major time crunch. We ended up finishing most of our packing with enough time to head out and enjoy a nice sunset walk on our last evening in Massachusetts. It was so peaceful, getting to soak in the beauty before we moved onto our next location.
4. Be extra diligent with your checklists for packing and hitching up. We highly recommend having checklists for both breaking down and setting up your rig, no matter how often you RV. We've had many, many occasions where we're a little out-of-sorts and end up forgetting to do something. Sometimes it's been detrimental to our travel. A solid checklist means you'll always have a reference for the steps you need to pack up and hit the road, no matter how long its been since your last travel day. We're happy to report that a lot of our packing and hitching was muscle memory and came right back to us when we started doing it. But you can never be too careful. We made sure to consult every single item on our checklist, double checking each and every task. Once we were packed, we made extra run-throughs to check that each cabinet was latched and there was nothing loose that could fall and break. Same with hitching up. We checked our hitch and did extra walk-arounds to make sure we weren't missing anything.
5. Even though lots of these steps seem time-intensive and overwhelming, the last important step is to not stress! Traveling will become routine again before you know it. Instead of focusing on how rusty you might feel, focus on your excitement for all the new places you'll get to see. As long as you take things step-by-step, you'll be back to feeling one with the road again in no time.