Many people are curious (rightfully so) and ask us why we live in an R.V.
I remember one girl I met asked, ".... but didn't you think it was going to be hard? or annoying?" to which I replied, "Of course, that's part of the reason I did it! I wanted to see how I handled it and how I could grow." Then she said, "So everything has been good so far?" This is where is laughed out loud and answered, "Of course not! Part of it has been hard, reeeeeally hard, AND annoying, but I knew that coming into it, and again was looking for a change and ready for the ups and downs."
I think it kind of astonishes people (especially family haha) that Steven and I would choose a life that's slightly more challenging/unconventional. However, what I think people forget is that part of the reason we choose to do this is so that life will be a little easier later in life, particularly when buying a house.
This point leads me to the number one reason the idea of living in an R.V. popped into our heads:
1. One day, we want to own a house--- close to the ocean, on A LOT of property (open land). We want land so that we can do all of our own gardening and have chickens, etc. while living an environmentally-friendly, sustainable, all-natural lifestyle. Besides the fact that big property close to the beach is very scarce, this only aids in the fact that it is $$$$EXPENSIVE$$$$. We would often ponder, "How are we going to afford this on an environmental scientist's and teacher's budget?" We decided that if we could save the money we would normally pay to rent (+some) then in a few-five years, we could afford a down payment on a small cottage and upgrade from there. In sum, our number one reason for doing this is to save money.
Why else did we want to live in an R.V.?
2. To prove to ourselves that we could. We also wanted to follow through on our dream, instead of having it be a fantasy in our past. We liked the anticipated challenge and want to be able to look back one day and say, "Can you believe we did that? Yeah, we totally did that!" And as much as I don't like saying this, there is a little ego/pride/twinkle in my eye involved when we tell people where we live. I think I like the shock factor :)
3. For personal growth. Personally, I hadn't encountered a huge shift in four years. I was comfortable with school, living in an awesome house with awesome roommates (Delaware House--- a post for another day), having a couple pizza shop/after-school program jobs. I felt that my growing was being hindered by lack of big change. I wanted to get out of my comfort zone to see how I would react and how I handled it in the long run.
4. To live more simply/have less "things." This is one area where I still need to improve. Full disclosure: we have a storage area in Steven's brother's garage. It mostly has my books/teaching stuff, craft stuff, camping/snowboard gear, and professional clothing, BUT it is still too much. I don't even go in there more than once every two weeks to a month, meaning that I don't use or need much of it. Part of tho has been lack of time and motivation to clean it out. However, I still have a lot of growing to do where materialism is involved.
5. To have a good story when we're older. This was kind of talked about above, but we look forward to telling our kids/grandkids about our adventure, with pictures to prove it! (I'm working on the taking pictures thing! In fact, I should take lessons from Steven's mom; she is always SO good about it and remembers every time!)
6. To move in together. We wanted to move in together, but I had student teaching coming up and couldn't afford more rent than I was paying at the Delaware House. We didn't want to live with other roommates, which left us with studios and one bedrooms as options. They were all pricey and in the long term we would be paying a lot of money while not being able to save much. Plus, we didn't want to get stuck in a lease contract as we didn't know if we would find jobs elsewhere within the next 5-? months.
So, these are the major reasons that we choose to do what we do. Have you ever wanted to do something big and/or scary? Did you do it? How did you handle it?
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