Road Trip Questions: What Do We Do With Seasonal Items?

When we tell people that we’re on a 5 year, 50 state road trip, needless to say they often have a bunch of questions for us.

One question we’ve been asked a surprising number of times has been “what do you do with your seasonal stuff?”

Well, here’s your answer with a little backstory.

One thing I did while Stephen was away was visit our items at the storage unit. We sold, donated or threw away probably 90-95% of our stuff when preparing for the road trip, but we kept a few special items in storage with my mom in Virginia. She already has a storage unit, so it was just another way to save on our monthly budget. The items we store don’t take up much space, maybe 4 x 8 ft – enough to fit in a closet really.

In spite of all of that, we took off on day 1 with a car full to the brim of stuff. Our car is still “full of stuff”, but it’s not nearly as much and we’ve really streamlined it down to the minimum (that I’m willing to live with or, more accurately, without) and we have a system that works well when we move every 5-7 days.

So over the last 22 months we’ve sent things back with my parents, donated and thrown more away. That’s left our storage unit items a little haphazardly packed and it’s caused me great stress just thinking about what it’ll be like in three more years.

When I was home for two whole weeks, I decided to go through our stored items, repack them, donate or throw away more items and generally make sure they still (basically) fit in our 4 x 8 ft space. Thankfully I went early on or it would’ve been easy to skip it this trip.

The thing is, we’ll be away from the Hampton Roads area for over a year and a half and that means we needed to have everything for that time IN OUR CAR. That’s right – fall, winter, spring and summer clothes, shoes, and other items – like Christmas items (tree, lights, etc.), Frisbee Golf discs, our beach supplies and much more all had to fit in the car.

Now, you might be looking at that last line and thinking “Shae, those are hardly ‘essentials’ – disc golf? Christmas stuff?” and I will say to you what I remind Stephen (who is infinitely more practical than I am) … life is not all about what is “essential.” It’s about memories, celebrations, activities and more and these things help make our road trip and travel lifestyle much more tolerable day-to-day than if we just had a laptop and a Kindle with a few clothes. So we do choose to travel with solar-powered Christmas lights and a beach shade in our car.

Most items just stay in our car and come in to the hotel or Airbnb that we’re staying in each night. After our car was broken into in Ottawa, we’re extra vigilant about bringing everything in, even when it’s a huge pain. This includes our seasonal suitcase. We have one suitcase dedicated to coats, hats, gloves and Christmas items including our mini-Christmas tree and our solar-powered Christmas lights. Previously when we’ve returned back to Hampton Roads every few months we’ve been able to swap out seasons, but with us being gone so long this time we need everything with us.

I managed to throw away and donate even more items on my return to the storage unit.

I packed up the seasonal suitcase and fit it into the trunk in its designated space. The sunshade for the beach fits on top of it while the Frisbee Golf discs tuck in behind. The storage area is now back to its 4 x 8 ft space with one minor exception – we have a new plastic tub and it’s being filled with all our small road trip memories!

We buy a state-shaped lapel pin in each state and a postcard in each location we stay in. We’ve also collected a few trinkets like a bubble-run medal here or a tiny Bob Ross paint night canvas there. They’re all being sent back with my mom when she visits us and added to the trip’s memory box. I can’t wait to see what it’s like at the end of 5 years when it’s full of special moments from all the seasons of our journey.