The big haul

After a productive 5 weeks tackling a hefty to-do list in New England, we finally set our compass south and planned our return to our new cottage in SC. We didn't complete every task on our list, but we quickly determined which were most essential. On both logistical and psychological levels, the top priority needed to be consolidating our belongings into a more organized and understandable configuration.

What we mean by this is, we felt very split among many life chapters and many states. This summer, we expected to be constructing a mountain cabin on our land in NH, but all that got delayed during several life upheavals over the past year. Instead, we attempted another year on the road, but after one too many equipment breakdowns, we put our foot down...literally. In Myrtle Beach. We decided that we weren't tied to New England at this moment, though that's where we came from and where we plan on ending up. Why not instead bloom somewhere new? Myrtle Beach was the perfect "Mr. Right Now."

We mostly furnished our cottage with new items, but we had some stuff we wanted to bring down from New England. We left in March, during a brief RVable period in a very wintry winter...so brief, in fact, that we couldn't even get some of our camping gear out of storage. This became another goal for our return to New England. Then, if we were getting so much out of storage anyway, we might as well go through everything and see what we want to keep, what we want to take, and what no longer serves us at this point in our lives.

First up was the storage unit in NH. Our memories played tricks on us because we thought we had way more in this unit than we actually did. This was partly because some of what we had was large – Anthony's desk and office chair, appliances, ebikes, and camping gear – but also partly because we weren't in the best frame of mind the last time we were there. Last winter, we rented a house nearby, hoping we could take a break from the road and prepare for our cabin build. We ended up breaking the lease on the rental, but we kept the storage unit thinking it would serve as a space to collect items during the build. Only, the build hasn't happened yet, and we don't need space to store items we don't yet have. After leaving the NH rental and moving back into the RV, we stored everything we wouldn't need. We didn't have room for Anthony's office furniture, so it stayed. We couldn't use all our kitchen appliances in the RV, so those stayed. We didn't need our outdoor recreational gear in winter, so we left those behind, too.

Once we realized we weren't building the cabin this year, we knew we wanted to get rid of the storage unit. As is typical, they kept jacking up the prices, and it was already too large a unit to begin with, and climate controlled, which we didn't really need. We discussed various options, including putting a shed on our land, but when we rented the SC cottage, we now had space for our kitchen appliances and office furniture. The camping gear could go back into the RV, and everything else could be consolidated into storage at my parents' house. Only, there wasn't anything else. Everything we took out of the storage unit had a determinate place to go.

The process was fairly simple. We emptied the truck bed of all our RV-related gear and left it at the campsite before heading to the storage facility, which was less than 15 minutes away. Then we piled everything into the truck, hauled it back to the campsite, and organized. The only items that couldn't stay in the back of the truck were Anthony's desk and chair, so we cleared space for them in the trailer. We expected to just store them, but they fit so well that we decided to create an office nook to use on the trip. It was really nice and made us want one permanently! The worst part was actually getting the desk in the trailer because it wouldn't fit through our door. We ended up lowering our ramp door and bringing it in the back – a major advantage to having a toyhauler. You might recall that we haven't had a patio screen for a year, so we don't get to open the back often these days. It was nice to see it open for those few minutes and definitely made us miss patio time.

We hoped everything else would fit in the truck bed, but we ran out of space. A couple of bins and our camping chairs needed to be put in the trailer, but only on drive days. Otherwise they just lived under our trailer to be out of our way.

Clearing things out of storage is never just about the physical labor. Ask anyone who's downsized and moved into an RV! Emotionally, we had so many hopes wrapped up in that unit – first for our winter rental providing us the comfort and stability we needed, and then for the cabin that we could build exactly the way we want, to give us a true feeling of rootedness between travels. Closing the unit felt like closing a chapter that never came to fruition. It was healing, in a way. Now we could focus on our time in SC and re-create our dreams for the land and the homes we'll build on it.

We may have overestimated the amount of stuff in the NH storage unit, but that wasn't the case for MA. We had accumulated items since 2021 when we sold our house, and we wanted to go through everything. We also had my desk, which we had set up in my old bedroom as a temporary office space during our winter stationary time. And...harps. I have 4 total and used to travel with 3 of them, then 2, and most recently, just 1. That harp was already in its new home in SC. How many more did I want to take back with me? That needed to be determined once we saw how much room we had.

I packed some office supplies, but we waited on the desk because we knew it'd take up a large space in the RV. Then we tackled the basement. We've mentioned it before, but it's amazing how much stuff goes from a "must keep" pile to a "just donate it" pile over the course of several years, especially when those years are filled with so many palpable moments. In the past when we returned to our home-base, most of our decluttering focused on the RV. The space is so small, it needs constant tending to. This time, we went through bins of stuff we hadn't looked at in 5 years. We always knew we'd someday build a home in NH, but the hypothetical vision is a lot different than when the plans become more tangible. Some of the stuff we kept just won't work with the style of home we're planning. Same goes for the SC cottage. We decorated it to be coastal chic and cozy, so items that are sleek and high contrast don't match. There was one coastal item I couldn't wait to take with, though. It won the vibe check with flying colors.

We wish we could say every decision was this easy, but we hit a few sticking points. The stickiest was Christmas decorations.

Let's talk about Christmas. As you probably know, we return to MA every year and spend Thanksgiving through Christmas with family. We found ways to brave winter weather in the RV, and honestly, it was enjoyable when the cold weather wasn't causing our mechanics and plumbing to malfunction. Things were different now. We weren't living in the RV full-time anymore, and we hadn't thought ahead to the end of the year. Would we choose to celebrate Christmas in the RV again? If so, would we decorate it? What about the SC cottage? Would we want to decorate it, even though we probably wouldn't be there for Christmas? How would we even want to decorate a cottage in a place that doesn't have the winters we're used to? Would our current decorations even match the vibe, or would we prefer a "Mele Kalikimaka" aesthetic?

These were questions we simply couldn't answer. All we knew was that, the RV Christmas decor should stay in MA, because if we were to take the RV out for Christmas, we'd be going there anyway. The older decor, leftover from our house, also should stay. If we didn't know for sure that we'd use it in SC, it wasn't worth carting it 1000 miles. But we know a lot of the decorations would match the style of our mountain cabin, so we didn't want to get rid of them just yet. As for the potential of decorating our SC cottage, that's a wait-and-see.

With that tough decision out of the way, we focused on dividing our items into 4 categories:

1. Keep in storage
2. Take for the RV
3. Take for the cottage
4. Donate

The consolidation was successful, and in the end, we had whittled our basement bins down to only a handful. We took the more manageable items out to the RV right away, attempting to pack even more stuff into the truck, while the rest we added to the RV, trying to keep as much out of our way as possible.

On our last day in MA, we brought my desk out to the trailer, carried it in through the open ramp door, and nestled it with Anthony's desk. We both have adjustable-height desks, which meant I could purposely raise my height slightly higher than Anthony's, so the desktops would fit one on top of the other. They took up a lot less room than we feared. We actually still had space in the back of the trailer for more bins!

Then came time to secure everything for travel. There's a happy medium RVers want to achieve with their amount of belongings. If we have too little, things will move and jostle more because there's too much space around them. If we have too much, everything becomes cluttered and overwhelming. But, if we have just enough stuff that we can pack everything in tightly, items work to secure each other. That was our goal for our journey back to SC.

I put my walking pad behind Anthony's desk, upright long-ways against the wall. I pushed Anthony's desk up against it to keep it more secure, and then nestled my desk on top of Anthony's. Underneath, our ottoman fit perfectly between the legs of Anthony's desk. In front of it, I laid one of Tanner's mats down that I usually borrow for travel. This is where I put smaller items that need more cushion underneath them.

Then I got to bungeeing. One of the cool things about ATCs is, the back of the trailer serves as a "garage" for hauling toys. There are tracks built into the trailer where people can tie and ratchet their toys down for travel. We took out our floor tracks but kept our wall ones, which we use to secure our furniture using D-rings and bungees. This is how I secured everything in the back corner. I put 2 D-rings on the tracks on either side of my walking pad and used more bungees than I can count, wrapped around the desk legs, ottoman, and all the items on Tanner's mat. We've had enough drive days to know that, for the most part, items slide forward, because braking causes the most momentum. While ideally, I'd fasten the items to keep them from moving in all directions, preventing forward slide was a top priority.

I was a little nervous because I put a lot of tension on the D-rings, and they sometimes pop out of the tracks. Luckily, it shouldn't matter much if the bungees come loose, because the whole back of the trailer was packed solid with the additional bins. The bins were heavy enough that we didn't feel the need to secure them. If they slid, they wouldn't have room to go too far, anyway.

Finally, we put the few remaining items in the middle of the RV – Anthony's office chair, which had found a nice home next to our dining chairs, and the only harp I decided to take. I figured that, with our inability to climate-control our trailer on drive days, taking 3 harps would be far too risky. This one could stay cushioned in the trailer on temperate days, or go in front of the truck's backseat on hotter days. I can get the remaining harps next time, when there's more room and less overwhelm.

Ever since we planned this trip, we were dreading seeing how full our trailer would be with all our stuff. In reality, it wasn't bad at all. We still had room to stand! Our RV-turned-moving truck was ready for the journey back to Myrtle Beach, and on July 26, we hit the road for our first leg, out of New England and down to Delaware.

The cats took one for the team and sat copilot, so we could use their mesh car seat to cart a bin of fragile glassware in the backseat. It's a little extra cozy for them to share the console seat, but they managed. Piccolo tolerates just about everything. Macky complained quite a bit at first, as he tends to do, but he adjusted eventually.

We had a choice to either take the Mass Pike to I-84 and then cut over to I-287 over the Cuomo Bridge, or take I-95 south through Providence, and then head north to I-287. We chose the former because we've always found I-84 to be a smooth drive. We don't know if I-95 would have been any better, but our route was very slow. Usually when we head south from New England, it's wintertime. Traveling these roads in summer was a whole new ballgame. In winter, we choose weekends to head out of the Northeast, because rush hour on weekdays is always terrible. In the summer, though, there's roadwork on weekends. The increase in people travelling also leads to more accidents.

The drive is about 380 miles, so we never expect it to be smooth sailing, but we spent 10 hours on the road, which after all our packing, was very tiring. The good news is, we've finally settled on our preferred routes out of the Northeast. We take the Cuomo to the Garden State Parkway, and we ride the parkway the whole way down to I-95. On our way north, our RV Life GPS kept yelling at us to turn around, and this time, our new Garmin did the same thing. This is because the parkway technically has height restrictions lower than our rig, but the restrictions list the lowest point, on the shoulders of the road. Our rig is just under 12ft tall and we fit through in the center lanes with room to spare. Once we became confident in this, our drives around NYC have been much more manageable. We just have to be okay with our GPS devices telling us we're doing it wrong.

We did have a couple bungees unhook, and one of the D-rings popped out of the track, but everything remained in place. The bungees were really for added stability, anyway. The desks stayed intact, except for their screw-on foot pads, which all started coming out. We just collected them in a baggie and decided to wait until we got to the house to safely screw them back on. All minimal issues so far, and we had gotten through the worst of the drives.

The other plus side of doing the long drive out of New England in summer? We can have the 10-hour drive day and still arrive with sunlight to spare!

I made a pact with myself that evening. We had a lot going on, but we were finally in the home stretch. With only one night at Lums, one of our favorite repeat campgrounds, I wanted to be as present as possible and soak in every moment. It was a tall order, but Lums has been the antidote for our fatigue many times before. It has a gift of welcoming us back to the camping life with open arms, after our long weeks stationary at our home-base. Could it do the same this time, or was our crazy to-do-list-filled trip too stressful? There was only one way to find out.

To be continued.