4100 to 550????

As an addict of the tiny house craze, I watched every show I could possibly watch and loved seeing how they fit so much (which really isn't a lot) into a small space.  I love having garage sales and getting rid of things we no longer need/use. I love doing children's consignment sales for the same reasons.

But when it came time to downsize our life from a 4100 square foot house to a travel trailer plus a 10 x 12 shed that Jeff built, that's a different story!  So, in a nutshell, here's how it all got "done":

• We sold a few household items that we no longer wanted/needed: bar items, toys, nightstands, TV trays I've had since college, etc---garage sale things.
• We donated a lot of stuff to a church that holds a garage sale to help with its youth missions trips.
• Jeff's parents bought a house and are letting us put our "life" in one of the bedrooms.  Since they've been travel-trailering for about 6 years, they didn't have some needed things--that we just so happened to need a spot for (refrigerator, guest bed, couch, end tables)--so it's a win-win for all of us!
• We shoved the rest into our UHaul and brought with us! Our UHaul would have been a LOT lighter without our washer/dryer, golf cart, and pouf we lounge on to read with the boys, but those were 3 large, necessary items that neither one of us would budge on! Needless to say, we looked like the Clampetts came to town!

Same stuff...slim versus wide shot! Yes...the golf cart's top had to be taken off in order to fit in the UHaul. Yes, I brought my own washer/dryer...SO NEEDED!

This is MOST of what came out of the UHaul. The rest was already shoved into the Shed/Rec Room/Game Room, etc--the grey building.

Don't forget...we'd just walked off a cruise and into the car to travel halfway across the country. We still had all of our cruise suitcases packed---but I did manage to do the laundry before we packed the washer/dryer, so at least the only dirty clothes we had were the ones from driving from TX to CA! 

The hardest part for me personally was two areas:  the boy's toys/games and my clothing!  We've been here a week and I finally got their area more organized today. It took so long because every time I'd go in the "Rec Room", they'd follow and dump something out...'nuff said.

Here's my closet--and the mound that I shoved into it.  Gotta admit it--I'm pretty proud of myself!

What I started with....which was already a very pared down version of my normal closet!

Update:  here's what my closet looks like now (after we've been here two months). Ignore the pillows above--I make the bed, but 8 pillows is too much for our little trailer so they stay up there unless they're needed!

We've also bought a small storage shed b/c we moved with more stuff than we had room for. We are slowly either finding a place for it or getting rid of it, but we'll probably always have it simply for space here in the trailer.