Considering life in an RV

We’re seriously considering making a BIG change.

I may have mentioned that when our lease ends July 31, we’re not renewing.  We’re sick to death of this apartment complex, its crap-ass maintenance, and the obnoxious neighbors.  We’re so done.  I can’t tell you how done we are.  Everytime I look at the gaping hole in my bathroom ceiling, I’m twice as done as I was before.  At any rate, we’ve considered all sorts of things — buying a house (not enough saved for a downpayment and not good enough credit to qualify for anything but a subprime mortgage), renting a house (not a bad idea, but we will end up paying significantly more rent than we do now and may still have lousy landlords and nutty neighbors), buying or renting a mobile home (the ground rent is crazy expensive here…like $500 or more a month), and now, we’re giving serious thought to buying an RV (travel trailer, most likely).

Those of you who have known me for a very long time may know that once upon a time before I was queer (or admitted to the fact), I was married to a man.  For three of the eight years we were together, we lived in an 8′x27′, 1957 Airstream travel trailer which was situated in a pretty ghetto mobile home park outside San Antonio.  We paid $1100 cash for the thing, which should give you some idea of its condition.  The roof didn’t leak, but the electric was wonky, spots in the floor were soft, and I still have nightmares about the roach infestation I finally managed to beat back.  Despite all that, it wasn’t a HORRIBLE living experience.  The worst bits included having to be constantly up close and personal with someone I didn’t always get along with very well and, for more than a year, living in a tin can in South Texas with NO AIR CONDITIONING.  I spent a lot of time at the public library that particular summer.  But we had pretty nice (if strange) neighbors, we had our dogs, we had a lovely yard, and we spent a lot of time outdoors, cooking out, hanging out, fiddling around in the garden.  I also spent six months in my parents’ travel trailer when I was 17 and going through an angry young woman phase.  So I’ve lived in travel trailers before.  It’s different, to be sure, but there’s something rather cozy about the whole thing, too.

We’re thinking life in an RV might be a reasonable compromise.  I want to live out of the city, a little closer to nature.  Lex and nature don’t really get along, and she doesn’t like old, drafty houses.  She likes things more or less hermetically sealed.  We also want to do more travelling, but it’s hard for us to do now because we have to pay ridiculous amounts of money to care for our animals when we are gone.  I miss Texas and want to visit more often but don’t have any desire to leave my job, which I LOVE.  Lex loves her family and has no desire to leave them, either.  I only work 9-10 months out of the year.  Lex works all year, but she works from home, so only needs a good internet connection and reliable phone service to get the job done.  And most importantly, I would like to find a way for us to live so that we could survive on one income if necessary.  If Lex loses her job (I, at least, know I will have a job for the next three years…extended contract coming up this summer) or if something happens to one of us rendering us unable to work, I don’t want that to mean that we lose everything.

I think the RV plan may just solve all the above issues.    RV parks in MD are generally not in the cities; they are out in the small towns and the countryside, so I could get my country on.  Country, in this case, is relative, though.  RV parks are often like little towns themselves, with lots of neighbors and traffic, stores, golf courses, you get the idea.  So we wouldn’t be SO rural that Lex would be afraid that my plan was to axe murder her and then dump her body in an empty field.  The trailers, while very small relative to living in a site-built home, are actually quite nice.  The ones we’re looking at have fireplaces, flat-screen televisions, two bedrooms, built-in surround sound, iPod docks, bay windows…many goodies that Lex particularly enjoys.  No old, drafty houses or run-down apartments.  We would be able to spend my school year in one place and my times off driving around the country, visiting family and friends, seeing new places, and we could take our animals (and everything else we own) with us and Lex could still work while we’re on the road, provided we get satellite internet or mobile broadband.  Plus, living this way is cheaper in general, and we would actually own our wee little home.  If we had to go down to one income, we could still make it without having to give up very much at all.

It’s not all daisies and rainbows, though.  RV parks tend to crowd folks together, so not only will we have neighbors, they are likely to be right up under our noses (this, of course, is also true of mobile home parks, apartments, condos, rowhouses, etc).  I will have a significant commute.  The RV park we’re thinking about at the moment is half a breath away from the MD/PA line, over an hour away from my college.  I can, and do, arrange my teaching schedule so I only work three days a week, and we’d live very close to my department secretary, so there might be carpool possibilities.  Some RV parks have restrictions on the number and size of pets, so we have to make sure wherever we go our critters are welcome. We’d have to get rid of at least one of the vehicles and replace it with a really big (like Ford F250 big) truck.  Not gas efficient by any stretch of the imagination.   Oh, and the obvious…it’s small.  Really small.  This means A) getting rid of most things we own, B) paying for storage for the things we can’t part with, and C) trying not to get on one another’s nerves too badly.  We already live in close quarters and spend more time together than most couples because of our working situation, and over the past three years, we’ve managed NOT to kill one another.  I’d say we’re doing well.  It will, however, be painful to part with certain things, but the reality is that we don’t need the stuff.  It’s just comforting to surround ourselves with it.  And, frankly, unloading some of this crap will be a relief.  I like the idea of being able to fit everything I own into under 300 square feet.

Actually doing this depends on a few variables:
1) Can we get (and afford) reliable internet and phone access?  We can probably figure out how to pay for satellite or mobile broadband, but the question is whether or not it’s reliable enough for Lex to be able to continue to work from home.  That’s a biggie. We’ll have to go out to the park and see what sort of reception can be had, I suppose.
2) We’ve got to actually find a long-term spot in an RV park.  Since we won’t be able to do this until July, peak camping season, that could prove a dicey proposition.  Again, won’t know until we get there.
3) While I’ll have enough of a downpayment for a trailer this summer, I don’t know whether or not I can secure the financing.  Banks have tightened up on lending of late given the downturn in the economy, and I don’t exactly have a perfect credit rating.  This is another case of we won’t know until we try.

One way or the other, we’ll have to tell our apt. complex by the beginning of June that we don’t plan to renew our lease (otherwise it will auto-renew), and then we’ll have to make plans of some sort to move.  Whether we move into an RV or not, we WILL be moving.  I’ll be damned if I’m staying here another year.  I know I said that last year, but this year I mean it.  I planned for a move, spent a year working my ass off for it, and saved the money we need.  Me.  I saved money.  Again, if you know me, you have a good idea of how badly I must want to get outta this apartment if I actually forced myself to save money.

I’ve already visited an RV dealership, looked at a LOT of RVs, brought home brochures, and showed them to Lex. We spent a good bit of time talking about it, and we’re both doing research about what’s called “fulltiming” in an RV.  Surprisingly, I think Lex is just about sold.  What’s sold her, I believe, is how nice the trailers can be.  I need to drag her out to the RV dealer soon so she can see the models in person, though.  In the meantime, we’re getting a  crash course in all things RV.

July is coming on us quickly, though.  If we’re going to do this, we have to make the decision pretty soon because if we’re going to get out of here by the end of the lease, we’ve got a LOT of stuff to unload:  books, kitchen stuff, furniture, yarn/fiber stash and spinning wheels (OUCH!), computers, freezer.  It’s all just stuff, though, and in the end, I think I like the idea of having the freedom to pick up and move anytime I like more than I like having my stuff.

Of course, some roadblock may yet present itself and we may end up having to go another direction.  For the time being, though, I’m really excited about this particular direction.