Chile Chews Up the Road: Moving In to the RV

Before I tell you about the moving in process, I must warn you that I will not be providing a falsely cheery version of the facts. What you get is the real, and sometimes bitter, situation without any sugarcoating to make it easier to swallow. Some may call me negative but I prefer to think of myself as a realist.

It seems like we have been moving in to the RV for weeks but we'd really just been taking a few things out here and there to see how they fit and to start to clear out the house. The moving in process began in earnest this week, right in the middle of another heat wave. Temperatures in the Tucson area this month are the highest they have been in 20 years. Moving from a house, albeit a manufactured house, into an uninsulated RV has had me seriously questioning my sanity!

To avoid spending too much time outside during the hot part of the day - and for good reason considering that several people died from the heat here this week - we transferred our stuff from the house to the RV during the cooler morning hours. During the day, I worked on figuring out where to put it in the RV while my husband worked on the house getting it ready to sell. At the end of the day, we went through the house, gathering and sorting whatever would get moved the following day.

While I already understood that space was at a premium in the RV, I quickly discovered exactly what that means. It means that I don't get to keep everything I want to keep. As I sorted through load after load, many items got tossed into the donate pile. I've been by the local charity shop every day this week with donations.

Here is what the RV looked like last night. After taking the photos, I worked for several hours to clean up the mess but I want you to see what the real moving in process looks like.