Inventorying

I finally began my RV inventory list.

I knew that this would be an excruciatingly anal process because absolutely everything needs to be accounted for, from me to the lowliest paper clip, because I'll have no carrying capacity to play with.

In order to do so, I turned to my favourite electronic tool, Excel. I made tabs for all the areas in the RV.

Living room is the the room where I'll live; surfing the web, watching a DVD, or reading a book. Dining room is where the dinette is located and refers to the overhead storage in that area. Basement is the bays under the RV. No matter what RV I get, these areas will exist in it, albeit in different forms and locations.

The 'total' worksheet is a grand total of the totals from all the other sheets.

The 'extra' worksheet is for the stuff I feel guilty about not taking or that have sentimental value but no practical value or that I'd miss terribly. In this, I'm putting a lot of the recent kitchen stuff my mothers gave me as well, toys handcrafted just for me by my late uncle, and just about the entirety of my kitchen. It's the worksheet for all the things I'd like to bring should I end up having extra carrying capacity (ha ha ha).

Finally, the 'give' worksheet is for keeping track of what I need to get rid of and who has dibs on these items.

This is proving to be extremely illuminating... and terrifying. The only amounts I have so far are for a few items in the living room and basement... and I'm already at 269lbs. That's more than a third of the lowest number I calculated for the class C I'm eying and doesn't include additional batteries, solar panels, or a satellite dish. It does, however, include at least part of a trailer hitch as well as a generator.

What amazes me as I go through my house is just how much stuff I have that doesn't really have a purpose; how much is there 'in case I ever need it.' Sometimes, I have wound up needing it, but, in a lot of cases, I've just been dragging it around for a decade. This RV plan is going to force me to really identify what's important and needs to come, eliminating a lot of what I call the 'flotsam and jetsam' of a life. That said, I've budgeted for one crate of 'miscellaneous junk.' :-)

What I've envisioned doing at the end of the summer is to hold a giant sale during which I would invite people to just walk through my home and offer me whatever they thing is fair for anything that strikes their fancy. I would have, by this point, transfered the stuff I definitely want to bring into the RV and given away furniture and sundries to family and friends. I'd hold that over a day and the following week hold a 'just come and take it' event for anything left over. After that, I'm pretty sure that anything left would be trash. It's unbelievably difficult to get rid of things that aren't trash, don't have monetary value, and aren't of interest to charity shops.

I continue to be amazed and astounding that this is where my Path has taken me. So much of the past few years make sense to me now.