We've got a date!

Well we took the plunge...we bought tickets! So I guess that means there's no turning back, right? I feel like we needed this to really get us going. It's nice having a deadline sometimes to give you something to work towards rather than some indefinite point in the future.

February 21st. That's when our adventure begins. We are flying into London (because it was the cheapest) and we'll explore from there. I've been busy contacting hosts to try to line things up, so we'll know where we're going and when. If it was just me and hubby, we wouldn't be doing so much planning, but with 2 kids in tow, we have to be a little more certain about having a place to sleep. We've received several positive responses and as of now, it looks like we'll definitely be going to France and Belgium. One family in France even has kids the same age as ours, which I think is so great!

So needless to say, I'm quite excited, but also, overwhelmed. There is so much to do. We have all of our stuff to sell and/or store. There's house repairs that have to be done before we will be able to rent our house. Not to mention lots more money to save so that this trip will even be possible.

We've got just a little over 3 months to get everything ready...here's hoping we can do it!

Do we take the leap?

Okay, it's decision time. I got an email about European fare sale and checked the prices on tickets. Turns out we could get 4 tickets to London for about $2500 right now! I really don't think we are going to be able to do any better than that, but of course, that means we would have to decide on a departure date now.

So we're weighing the pros and cons of buying the tickets...
Pros: they're cheap!, we set a date and have a definte goal
Cons: we have a deadline we have to meet or be out $1000 to change our tickets.

So hopefully I will have a departure date very soon!

One step forward, several steps back.

So things were rolling along pretty good, but we realized we had to reevaluate our timeline. I just didn't think that a) we would be able to get our estate sale ready in 3 weeks time or b) we will have enough saved and be ready to leave by January. As a result, we're postponing the sale until my brother returns from his trip. I am officially bummed.

But on a brighter note, it looks like we are going to go to a cob workshop early next month! It will be a week long, and they will be covering all aspects of building a house out of cob. So we're excited about that anyway. Looks like my mother might tag along to watch the kids for us, so I'll actually be able to learn something as well!

At this point, I'm not sure when we will be able to get away, and that has me down. I want a plan, a departure date, and TICKETS so we can't back out! I guess it will all come in due time. My brother will be back in December, so January would be a good time for the sale. We will just have to see how much we have saved at that point to see when we'll be able to go. If we don't leave until late February or March, then I could sell more stuff at the spring consignment sales which could possibly bring in another $500-$800 or more.

Oh well, it will all come in time. I'm not good at waiting (maybe someone is trying to teach me something), but I am going to do my best to hold off until we are in the best position to go.

Progress!

Well, I feel like we're finally getting somewhere. When we first came up with this idea, we had about $12,000 in CC debt that needed paid off before we could even start saving for the actual trip. So I just paid off another credit card this month and our total is now under $4,000!!!



We also have been super lucky so far (fingers and toes crossed) in that we haven't had to replace the a/c yet. We got another opinion from a very nice guy named "Bubba"...seriously, the guy's business card says Bubba. But we now LOVE Bubba because he was willing to try to fix our leak. We figured it was a long shot, but we really didn't have anything to lose if we tried letting him run some StopLeak through our system. It's been close to a month and the a/c is still running nice and cold!



So my brother is leaving in a few weeks on his trip to France...he got the idea from me, but he didn't have all the technicalities to deal with that are holding us back. I had been thinking that we would just have our "estate sale" in January before we go (did I mention January is our new goal?), but yesterday, I started having second thoughts. I didn't like the idea of trying to sell everything at the last minute - what would we do with the stuff we couldn't sell and didn't want to keep? It would also help with planning if we knew how much money we would have from selling off our stuff. After talking it over with my brother (he does estate sales for a living and was planning on doing ours when he got back from his trip) and with J last night, I think we are going to have the sale in........3 WEEKS! I still don't know for sure if it's going to work out, but at the moment, that's the plan.



We've got a ton to do in the next 3 weeks to get ready, but I really can't wait. I was talking to a friend today about selling everything, and I think she was surprised how excited I was to be selling all my stuff. I just think it is going to be liberating. You know the old saying about how you don't own your stuff, it owns you? That's exactly how I feel...we've been owned by our stuff for too long and I'm ready to be free. But like J was saying last night, we don't want to be stupid about deciding what to keep and what to sell. I told him my plan: anything that we either wouldn't replace if we sold it or would replace with something different or better, we sell. I don't see a point in selling something that we know we would have to buy when we come back. That just doesn't make any sense. Consequently, we'll be keeping a fair amount of kitchen stuff - it would be super expensive to have to come back and buy a whole kitchen's worth of stuff. But do we need 2 sets of mixing bowls? 2 sets of glasses? 4 pie plates? When was the last time I baked a pie anyway? (I wish I could say I bake all the time, but I actually can't remember the last pie I made) And how did I end up with so many casserole dishes anyway? Do I really need to be able to make 6 different casseroles at the same time?



Some things will be easy to get rid of, but some of the family items are a little harder to let go. For a long time, I had this attachment to all my "family" items, but I've really reached a point where there is very very little that I wouldn't part with...for the right price. I don't want to give the stuff away, but I'm tired of holding on to stuff just because it belonged to my grandmother, aunt, dad, etc... I want to keep a few momentos that will remind me of those family members and let the rest go. It's just stuff. All of it is just stuff and I'm tired of having too much stuff.

I think October is out

The chance that we would be ready to leave by October has pretty much dropped to zero. The minor bump came when we noticed our poor little Pug's eye was looking bad again. She's had problems in the past but nothing too serious...til now. Now aparently she's got glaucoma in her left eye and will eventually have it in the right as well. So we have the choice of removing the eye (for around $250) or starting her on meds that might work but cost around $150.

But the vet bill is nothing compared to the news we got when the a/c guy came out...we have to buy a new a/c system! We knew it was on it's way out, but I was really, really hoping that it was going to hold on for another year or two. We've got an unrepairable leak (several opionions agree it can't be fixed), so it doesn't look like we've got a choice. So now we're going to be out $3,000-$5,000 to get a new system installed.

Here's hoping we can still manage to leave by January!

How this all began...

I stopped to try to figure out when we started considering this new "plan" and it took me a while to retrace my thinking back to where it started. I finally realized it was after our vacation to Florida when we were talking about wanting to live near a beach. Okay so how did we get from wanting to live near a beach to wanting to go travel around Europe for a year? Somehow one of my searches for "cheap places to live near the beach" got me to some websites about how to travel the world on a dime.

We are totally sold on the idea now, so as soon as we can we're packing up and flying to Europe for a year. We will be working on mostly organic farmstays in exchange for a place to sleep and our meals. Hopefully we will learn enough to be able to set up our own place when we come back. The main thing we want to learn about is natural building since we have been wanting to build a cob house and possibly live off-grid for a few years now.

We weren't sure how open people would be to taking in a family with 2 small kids, so I've emailed lots of potential hosts to get an idea if this trip would even be possible. We've gotten enough positive responses that we should have enough places to stay to make it work, so now we just have to get enough money together to pay off our credit cards and to get by while we're there. We've been wanting to do a major downsize for a long time, so now we have the perfect motivation to actually get it done. I'm trying to get several items onto Ebay each week and we're planning on having a big estate sale shortly before we leave to sell off everything else. I just can't wait to get rid of everything! We have so much stuff that we don't need...it's ridiculous. I'm really excited about the trip, but I think I'm actually almost as excited about freeing ourselves from all our "stuff".