Downsizing to Become Nomads
After 20+ years of home ownership, we didn’t have a master plan to become nomadic. Rather, our path to becoming nomads was an iterative process with plenty of twists and turns. Now, we want to share our experience with readers who might be interested in taking this journey from owning more to living more. It starts with downsizing.
In this blog, we share what the downsizing process looked like for us.
It is not unusual for people to think about downsizing their home in waves. It’s a very ambitious goal to go from a large home to a small home and then to a 5 x 10 storage unit in under 24 months. For one thing, a slower downsizing process doesn’t make for dramatic television transformations (think Marie Condo or My Legacy List, where clients quickly go from mess to no mess in a number of hours). We took a more agile approach to downsizing our home.
It’s important to note, before we share our downsizing experience, that we moved four times before our first downsizing move. Because our moves were corporate relocations, we never had to sort through our stuff. We were usually busy wrapping up our jobs at the old location up until mere hours before the movers arrived. These movers (paid by the companies we worked for) came each time we moved, packed up all the household items, and took them away. A few days later, all our stuff was unloaded when we arrived at our new home. This is a great way to not realize how much stuff you really have!
In May 2020, the day after quitting my final corporate job, our large suburban home in Durham, North Carolina sold. Darren had been wanting to work on his boat captain license for a long time. Now, with me untethered from the 9-to-5 and Darren working remotely from home, we had the flexibility we needed to move to the coast. We decided to look for a 2-3 bedroom rental in Wilmington, NC.
The First Wave of Downsizing
I quit my job with this first wave of downsizing in mind. We knew we were going to sell the home and move, so we’d already started to remove things from our home for the home staging process. We rented a storage unit a few miles from our home, and began to fill it with the things we would keep for the next year. Everything else had to be sold or donated. Between the first of June 2020 and the first of August 2020, we downsized from 4400 square feet to about 1600 square feet worth of “stuff.”
This first pass at downsizing went quite well. In terms of getting rid of things, we had the most success with Facebook Marketplace and informing friends and family of our downsizing. With the Covid-19 pandemic raging, it was convenient for me to take a photo of the item and place it on our covered porch. With this contact free pick-up, people simply paid via Venmo or cash in an envelope. Consignment was not an option at this time due to the pandemic, so we also took a 6’ x 12’ trailer of large household goods to friends and family.
It was an intense couple of months, to say the least! However we met our volume and deadline goal and successfully moved into our sight-unseen rental home on the coast.
The Second Wave of Downsizing
Settling into our coastal rental was a little rocky at first. We soon realized that our corporate office wardrobe and large suburban furniture would not fit well into the coastal lifestyle. As we dealt with this mismatch of lifestyle vs belongings, I injured my back during the unpacking process while trying to catch a falling box of books. The injury required several sessions of physical therapy.
On the brighter side, we were getting by just fine on one income instead of two, and our investments were starting to rebound from the March 2020 stock market crash. We’d set a financial goal for Darren’s departure date from W2 life, and we could now see that goal on the horizon.
Feeling a little cooped up during the pandemic before vaccines were available, we continued our downsizing. We had a lot more free time now that we didn’t have a large home to take care of. The smaller rental was easy to clean and we were not responsible for the exterior care.
With our free time, we ate healthier, home-cooked meals and walked more in Wilmington than we ever had in Durham. As summer turned to fall, we found that there’s not a lot of boat captaining work in the winter in Wilmington, even though the fishing is quite good. Perhaps we didn’t need to be in NC in the winter? This realization inspired us to make plans to walk the Camino de Santiago—an adventure we’d been thinking about ever since we watched The Way a few years before. This got us thinking about other travel options that would be available to us when the constraint of 3-4 weeks of vacation was lifted.
As we dreamed of and made plans for our travels, we continued to downsize. Items that were more unique in nature often didn’t sell well on Facebook Marketplace, so I reopened my dusty eBay account and had great success getting rid of things.
In general, most of our items were “rehomed” via eBay (quirky or eclectic items that were easy to ship), Facebook Marketplace, and Goodwill. Later, we also took some large items (furniture) to consignment shops. If we could not sell an item ourselves in 30 days, it went to the consignment shop or Goodwill.
The Third Wave of Downsizing
So, we set off to walk the Camino (more on that in another blog!). Four weeks into our on-foot journey through Spain, we started wondering why we were keeping so much stuff in storage.
We were thinking of ourselves as “travelers with a home base,” but wondered if we really needed a home base. Having enjoyed renting for a year, we were less than enthusiastic about owning a place. We do get excited about small homes we see in our travels, in places that we like. But then we think about the work involved in upkeep. And in our late 40s, these homes will likely need two remodels in our lifetimes.
After being separated from our stuff, and taking some time away from the process of downsizing, we were learning more towards a storage unit than a home. We decided that our aim would be to get down to a 5 x 10 storage unit (which would be close to our family’s farm in Kansas).
Our final storage unit is located near our farm in a 5 x 10 storage unit. We kept art, some taxidermy, a few handmade items like a favorite walnut cutting board, saltwater fishing equipment, and special books that are not available on eReaders like Kindle.
The Agile Approach to Downsizing Home
If this all sounds overwhelming, don’t get discouraged. Downsizing is a process!
Here’s what’s important in the downsizing process: Be easy on yourself! This will allow the time you need to downsize with intention, which is key to feeling good about where you’re headed post-downsizing. It's not unheard of for downsizing to take 18 months or more, so don’t rush yourself. Instead, take our agile approach to downsizing: take many short cycles or sessions of work that allow for rapid progress and continuous revision.
What We Learned From Agile Downsizing
When we started downsizing, I started, both to record the process and to record what needed to be shipped or dropped off for donation or consignment. Over the past two years, we have learned a lot about downsizing, and the journal helped me to remember the lessons. Here are a few important ones:
The process can be physically challenging; you’ll be lifting heavy and awkward items.
The process is mentally challenging; you’ll get tired of the repetition of “take a photo, describe, post, coordinate.” You may also experience decision fatigue regarding what to keep and what to let go of.
The process is emotionally challenging, more for some than others.
The process also allows you to question values you didn't know you had. For example, if you are cheap or have a frugal bent, it is going to take you longer as you anguish about letting go of each item for considerably less than you paid for it (and less than what you can buy a similar item for).
There is a spiritual aspect to this process. Giving things away made me feel lighter and less burdened, and more willing to share with others
You will get a lot of questions and advice, often unsolicited (especially if you are from the Midwest or Great Plains where holding onto things “just in case” or for “sentimental reasons” is part of the culture).
You may challenge the people close to you without meaning to. By eliminating clutter from our lives, we were expanding the possibilities of our lives. This felt good to us, but people close to you may not always like to see you grow and change.
Our Conclusion on Downsizing for Nomadic Living
Here are some of our main takeaways about downsizing with the goal of nomadic living:
We highly recommend the process. Through it, we learned about ourselves and others.
We began to see that the things that we owned had either a lot of value to others, or very little.
Even without a home base, you may have a few items that you want to keep in storage. You will need to decide where that storage will look like. We will be covering this in another article, so stay tuned!
Your pile of belongings is one of the largest barriers between you and an unconstrained life. We’ll be writing more articles with “how to” guides for paring down your belongings.
Downsizing can help prepare your mind for your asset drawdown strategy. Selling real physical assets from your home can help you prepare mentally for that challenge of letting go of savings, investments and real estate.
Thanks for reading and for following us on our journey from the corporate suburban life to nomadship! Bookmark our blog so we can stay in touch!
A little about us: We are full-time home-free travelers. In our mid-40s we sold our suburban home, quit our corporate careers before it was called the Great Resignation, sold almost all of our belongings, and hit the road to slow-travel the world. Some links in this article are affiliate links, meaning if you click through we may earn a small commission to help cover hosting fees and software at no extra cost to you. Thanks for reading our blog!
