I love moving days! The excitement of someplace new, along with truly enjoying our mobile lifestyle makes the work all worthwhile! Having our first 4,500 miles under our belts, we’ve got it pretty much down pat!
Todd and I split the interior and exterior jobs. This post will be all about my interior processes – we will write another post from Todd’s perspective of the exterior pack-up at a later date.
Since we tend to keep things pretty picked up and things put away on a regular basis, the process goes pretty quickly and I can finish within 20 minutes or so.
As soon as we wake up on a move day, we make sure we dress in what we want to wear right away and get our teeth brushed, wash upped, etc as soon as possible. Showers are usually done the night before. At that point, I lock the shower doors so they don’t slide while in motion and move all bottles from the ledges down onto the floor of the shower to prevent breakage/spillage.
All other items in the bathroom (sink soap dispenser, decor) are stuck down with Alien Tape – no need to pack them, and they never move. A quick check to make sure the vent is closed and snapping the sliding door to the bedroom open and the bathroom is all set.
I then make the bed, making sure nothing is in the way of the slide path and lock the closet doors in place. Everything on the dresser stays put with Alien Tape, and the things hanging on the walls never even shift, so nothing needs to be done to them.
Time to bring in the bedroom slide. As you can see, we lose all our “walking space” between the bed and dresser, but can still access the bed and bathroom if we do a quick overnight somewhere and don’t want to put the slides out:
After making sure to close the bedroom and bathroom doors the “upstairs” is done – less than 10 minutes.
Time to move on to my desk/work area. Thanks to Alien Tape again – everything on the desktop stays put and doesn’t have to be packed up. I lock the file cabinet, throw a couple bungee cords around the printer and printer rack – and one to keep the chair in place. A few throw pillows help keep everything tight. Monitor gets laid face down on a towel and tucked against the chair back – none of it ever moves. Wait – that’s a lie, the reams of printing paper always slide out of there, but that’s no biggie! All takes less than 5 minutes.
All the while I’m packing up, everything we want to have in the car gets put on the couch that will be closest to the door once the slides are in. That way we’re not running around looking for anything and we’re out the door quickly!
A quick spin through the kitchen to:
Switch fridge to propane so it stays cold while driving:
Check the fridge to make sure no glass jars are sitting on the shelves to fall upon arrival:
Put a towel in the bottom of the sink and place a few breakables in it. All remaining items stay on the counter with no issues:
A quick peek at the motorcycles in the garage (Todd does a more thorough inspection of those!), and the kitchen is done. Five minutes.
At this point, I take the dog for a walk, start the truck and get her settled in there because she doesn’t like when the slides come in in the main area! Below you’ll see why!
A quick peek at the control panel to make sure everything is turned off:
One trip to the car with all the things we decided we need and were ready on the couch, then the steps go up and the door gets locked:
INSIDE IS DONE!
Todd is usually finishing up the outside at about the same time, so I jump in the driver’s seat of the truck and keep the dog company until he’s ready for me to back the truck up to the RV for hitching up.
As he’s hooking up the wires and putting a few final things away, I do a quick walk around to make sure nothing is forgotten. After a quick brake and turn signal check, I jump to the passenger seat and plug in our route – and we’re ready to go!
