A life on the road really does mean simplicity at its broadest level. From what you pack, wear, cook and play with. Yet despite being nomads, we still have a need for storage. Sometimes there are things you want or need to keep that exceed the generosity of family and friend’s lofts. In this blog I share how we tackle our final cleansing with our storage unit after 9 years on the road. There’s a story to tell.

It’s Friday night and as the light fades we sit reflectively after our highly productive day. 

Thanks to mum’s generosity of offering us her car whilst we’re in Ross, we begin a period of cleansing and grooming; almost quite literally. Being nomads we need to give regular attention to Scoobie’s health and well-being and our own. And so we embrace this time of stillness to make our adjustments before we head off to Europe again.

As we’ve often said, an investment in our home mechanically and aesthetically is an investment in our travel lifestyle. So we have a list of things to get done whilst we have our luxurious standing still time, and mum’s car. First on the list is to finally tackle our storage unit.

9 years ago before hitting the road for our gap year 😆, we downsized our stuff significantly. The decluttering was cathartic; keeping only the bare essentials, personals and our high quality furniture. Of course the plan was to return within 12 months and settle down for the Good Life. So keeping our large items of furniture made sense. 

Roll forward to Covid some four years later, and that storage, which we definitely felt was a cost of convenience, was hitting the budget. So when we rented our Covid house and during a lock down release, some of our bare essentials came out of hiding. Then a few months later, with Covid being a determined little virus, we invested in a renovation project to keep us safe, occupied and close to mum for support. It was a time for further downsizing, selling loads of stuff on Marketplace. 

We found a cheaper storage unit in Ross and when we were free to once again travel, we piled further streamlined boxes into our container. Our reasoning to still holding onto stuff? Well the rough plan was to buy another renovation to navigate us through our Schengen Sentence period. However house prices went through the roof, so as of today those same bits, plus a few more ‘get them out of Scoobie’ additions are still stored, waiting for their release. We don’t see a renovation in the plan for a good few years yet.

We finally made the call that £110pm is not a good investment and it is time to clear out our storage completely. Every week that goes by, the value of our furniture is decreasing. So with the resolve of a hunting wolf, we have begun tackling what little stuff we have remaining. As you can see from the picture, that is all we have. It’s bare bones. A sofa, a mattress, Myles’ tools and a few pieces of oak furniture.

Our task today was to ruthlessly release clothing and kitchen utensils to Charity and discard things that really need to be recycled. And boy how cathartic it is. This is hopefully the final time we will do this exercise and going through drawers that I had stuffed with glass jars and pots was a right good feeling. I even found a jar of icing sugar, dishwasher tablets and olive oil!!! Then I stumbled on a half opened packet of cereal. Really!!! I can’t believe what we stored.

With a few runs to the Refuse Centre and the Charity store, we will be down to Myles precious tools, which he still wants to hold onto, our personal non negotiable must-keeps and the big furniture.

Our plan is to then get an Auction House in Hereford to come down to assess what we have left and give us an idea of whether he can sell them and for what price. They take just 2% for commission, the rest is ours, whatever that might be. They will even come to collect it, so that is an absolute bargain. So by the end of the week we should be in a position to put that in motion and see what he thinks. We could of course sell through Marketplace, although with my FB block, I can’t manage that process easily and it would mean travelling to the lock up each time someone wanted to look at our items. So there’s far too much noise in that strategy.

We are cleansing and it feels good. We are clearing and it is releasing. We are finding things that we hadn’t realised we’d lost and letting even more go than we did 9 years ago. Wow I feel lighter already. The process is early days, although for now, it feels liberating and it will put a bit more cash into the holiday fund or Stock Market. Happy days.

Even nomads need storage, until they don’t.

Kx