What You Do and Don’t Want

In the early stages of redesigning our life, one thing we talked about often was full-time RV life.

We were just beginning to open our eyes to other ways people were living, raising their families, and earning income. We were in awe of people living on the open road, seeing different parts of the country, and meeting others who were doing the same. For a time, we let ourselves daydream about what it would be like to sell everything we own and to just travel and spend all our time with our family.

But there were other things at play.

For one, our kids. Imagine as a teenager you have your own bedroom, your own bathroom, and a pool in the backyard. Imagine having a family of seven. Imagine you know what it’s like to travel by car with your family of seven. Now imagine your parents say, “We know we’ve never camped a day in our lives, but let’s go, we’re going to live in an RV—all seven of us!” Turns out, they were not on board and they were not amused.

Secondly, Brandon and I honed in on the life we’ve always dreamed of, and never did it involve full-time travel. We thrive on being a part of a community. We love decorating our home for the holidays. And we knew that we have always wanted to live in a historic home on a street in a town.

We realized the full-time RV life was not for us, but we were still drawn to many parts of the stories we were following on social media. We were able to pick out what those full-time RV families were doing that we wanted to do, too.

We wanted to unload the enormous expense of the house. We wanted to reclaim how we spent our time, both how we work and how we play. We wanted to travel and see more places. We wanted to structure our days so that we had as much time as possible with our kids and each other. And like the full-time RV families we followed, we also wanted to share our story so that others could find the parts that resonate with them, too.

When it comes to determining what you want, it’s helpful to know what you don’t want. We have enjoyed following the stories of others and finding the pieces that speak to us. We are grateful for all the many parts of the journey that have led us to creating our Unbinded Life.