It has been a pretty exhausting road so far to be honest. Selling our home and everything we own to live in a very inexpensive travel trailer with our 2 young kids. And now we shop for our perfect home afloat to sail the world.
“Are we doing the right thing?”
“Do you think the kids are ok?”
“Are we crazy?”
I decided to write a pretty informal blog to catch everyone up on our journey so far.
The house sold but it did not go smoothly. We accepted a full price cash offer right away with a closing date of 2 weeks. We scrambled to finish the last of our yard sales, and deliver furniture to friends and family who wanted to purchase our favorite pieces. We took truckloads of items to donation. We rented a storage unit for all of the items that will fit on a boat, but not in a trailer. And then we spent days bickering with each other while we loaded up the trailer and finished clearing out the house.
On March 20th, we moved into our travel trailer at Dash Point State Park. It is a nice park, but I will say that the vibe in a campground in March, as opposed to camping in the summer months, is very different. A little sketchy even. Trailers, campers, and… a school bus with grow lights and questionable plants inside would move from space to space to extend their stay. It mostly rained (we live in the Pacific NW after all) and people would stay in their tin boxes with the shades drawn.
The day the house was due to close, we were anxiously waiting for funds to deposit. After many excuses and extensions, the buyer never even deposited his earnest money. No funds on closing day. The deal expired. We still owned our house. The entire offer was a huge scam. I’m not completely sure what this guy’s story is. Not sure if he was mentally ill and thought he truly had money, or if he thought he could hack into someone else’s account. All I know is that we were devastated. Here we were living in a sketchy campground, having to re-list our empty home (it was beautifully, professionally staged before). And we gave away so many valuable items in our home because we were in a rush. And now we had a mortgage payment and campground fees at the same time.
Luckily, we have some amazing friends who offered to let us park our trailer in their driveway while we re-listed the house. I can’t express our gratitude to them enough. They were there for us at a time when we all truly needed to be with friends. Along with their neighbors, we joked that we were a commune. 6 adults and 7 kids. We received another offer on our home almost 2 weeks later. A young couple with 3 kids. There was a little bit of annoyance with little repairs they wanted done, but everything else went smoothly. The house finally closed on May 1st, a little over 9 weeks since we put it on the market. We were strangely unemotional that day, but we bought margaritas and BBQ food to celebrate.
About a week and a half after our house closed, we decided to leave the “commune” and take the trailer to Lake Sawyer Resort only 20 minutes away. This way we can come over to visit our friends everyday, but we don’t actually live there anymore. We thought that would be a better transition for the kids. (And us adults too really!) We will miss them so much when we sail away.
Now we spend every waking moment boat shopping. Looking for our perfect home afloat. The nice thing about boat shopping now that we live in such a small space is that boats feel so big! When we were living in our home and looking at boats, they felt tiny. The world will feel like that when we leave. … From Seattle to the whole world.
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