Anticipated Challenges
What’s that they say? There’s what we know. There’s what we know we don’t know. Then there’s what we don’t know we don’t know. Even thinking about this trip for months, we must admit there is a lot we’re missing. Most importantly, we’ve realized this country is not made for being houseless.
Shipping
Everything today is shipped, and overnight shipping is rare. Fortunately, we’re only looking at a year, and we have adult children living on their own. We can forward mail to our kids’ address and they can open and read it to us.
We plan to stay in each location for three days to a week, so it may be possible to use Amazon, and have meds shipped to us. But anything that takes more than a couple of days to ship is out the window.
We have monthly auto-ship subscriptions we haven’t figured out how to deal with. I have custom night guards mailed to me, with no solid ship date. Sharon can forget Zulily, and I can forget Temu, for a year. I bet we’re missing something.
Home Address
Everything requires a home address, including, ironically, hotel rooms. Banks, streaming services, online news subscriptions, cell phones, health insurance, car insurance, Social Security, elections, taxes, on and on, all require an address.
We’ll use one of our son’s addresses and hope that works for a year. If we decide to go longer than a year, we’ve researched and will establish South Dakota residency. They accomodate RVers, so it’s the easiest and cheapest state to have a mailbox that counts as a residence. Also, no state income tax.
Seasons
We’re heading out in the Spring, so we’ll pack for Spring and Summer. T-shirts, shorts, light clothes. When Fall arrives and it starts getting chilly, we’ll need warmer clothes. In anticipation, we’re packing a box of heavier clothes that our son will ship to us when we ask, and we’ll ship our lighter clothes back. At least, that’s the plan right now. There are always stores to get what we need.
Storage
We’ve moved many times. But never have we stored our belongings. Packing is very different when thinking long term. No more last minute kitchen boxes that can’t be closed. No junk boxes, either. Everything needs to last for a year, stacked high in a 10’x15′ storage unit.
We’re thinking about everything we own, whether it’s worth storing or not. Going through all our clothes, deciding how little we can live with while traveling. We’re giving away some, and storing the rest.
And art. How do you store art? Everything I can find on YouTube is about how to move art, or how to store art if you’re a gallery. Does it all need to be boxed or covered, to be stored in a climate controlled environment? I’ll let you know in a year what survives.
There is more. So much more. Stay tuned.