Full-Time RV’ing to Test Tiny House Living

In case you hadn’t heard, my wife and I have taken the tiny house
plunge and bought a preowned 4-season 34 foot 5th wheel RV. Our Arctic
Fox RV has thicker walls and roofing than the traditional travel trailer,
with construction that is more akin to SIPs than stick built construction.
We’ll have the same types of space as a tiny house, just no loft.

While we’re planning on full-time RV’ing as a means of testing the tiny
house waters, we’re also taking the plunge and selling our traditional
house. We’ve been “actively downsizing” for a couple of years, and may
hold an estate sale to quickly finish the cleansing process. That said,
when you’re down to one closet, scads of photo albums, and a healthy
CD/DVD collection, there’s not much left to go… but it all adds up, so
it’s time to cut the remaining clutter!

Our current plans are to remain in the Richmond area for a while, but
the option of living elsewhere has lots of allure. We’re trying to take it as
slowly as possible to increase our comfort in the transition and chances
of success and overall satisfaction. While I already work from home with
remote media, marketing, and architectural design customers, Midge
works as a personal trainer at a local club and loves her clients. Some
friends have offered us a place to live locally, so we’re taking it one wee
little step at a time.

Now some may see the RV as a cop out. While we’d love to have a full-
blown tiny house, we figure the preowned RV is the quickest most cost-
effective route to starting our “tiny life” together. We believe that
learning what works (and fails) while full-time RV’ing will give us a better
perspective of tiny house living for my design customers, and insight for
building our own cabin, cottage, or tiny house one day.

This is an incredibly busy time for us, and compressing our lives into a
travel trailer will give you front row seats for what it takes to slim down
from a 2000 square foot home into a tiny house sized travel trailer.
Feel free to post questions or comments. Here’s to taking the plunge
together.