One of the things that feels most weird about our 50 state road trip is that it means we won’t have a home for the next five years. We’ll usually be moving every 5-6 days and so just as we’ll get settled, it’ll be time to move.
It’s also why we’re getting rid of nearly all our possessions. After all, if we won’t need the items for the next five years, there’s a good chance we don’t need them at all.
We’ve known ever since we started planning our road trip that it’ll mean we’re homeless, albeit with a roof over our heads each night. What’s changed in the last few days though is that we’ll be homeless sooner than expected.
The Original Plan
Our original plan had been to move out of our apartment towards the end of November. That’s because we leave for New Zealand and Australia on November 29 and only return a few days before we set off on the road trip on January 1.
The Revised Plan
We then decided to head south over the Thanksgiving period as we’ll be changing our state of domicile to Florida. We’ll be hitting up a DMV near Jacksonville for our driver’s licenses and license plates on the Monday after Thanksgiving, then driving back up to catch our flights the next day. As we’ll be leaving for Florida the day before Thanksgiving, that made our official homeless date November 22.
The Revised Revised Plan
Our apartment complex has some fairly demanding cleaning requirements. This includes cleaning the tops of the kitchen cupboards (which are 10 feet off the ground and can be barely reached, let alone seen) and shampooing the carpet. Doing all this cleaning is much harder when we still have our bed, sofa, tables, etc. in the apartment.
We’re planning on doing the cleaning the weekend of November 18-19. Well, I say “we” but I mean “Shae” as I’m away in Chicago again that weekend. That means she’ll have to do the cleaning all by her lonesome. To make it easier, we’re going to make sure everything’s out of our apartment by the end of that weekend. As a result, our official homeless date will be November 19.
The Revised Revised Revised Plan (For Me)
Except it’ll be even earlier than November 19 for me because of my trip to Chicago. I leave on Thursday afternoon, so my own official homeless date will be November 16.
That’s exactly one week from today.
One week until I have no permanent home.
One week until I’m living in hotels for at least 5 years.
Eeeeeek.
I’m more excited than scared about this. It’s just a strange sensation knowing that we’re not going to have a home to come back to because we’ll be traveling permanently.
Benefits
The good thing about these revised plans is that it means we’ll be staying in hotels for a few days after I get back from Chicago. The reason that’s good is that these additional nights will mean Shae should be able to earn SPG Platinum status by the end of the year.
SPG Platinum status can also be matched to Marriott Platinum status. One of the benefits of Marriott Platinum status is Silver status with United. Silver status provides upgrades for her and a traveling companion (i.e. me). We’re flying with United from Washington D.C. to San Francisco before our flight to Auckland in a few weeks. The Silver status with United will hopefully mean we’re upgraded from Economy to Economy Plus on that leg (the San Francisco to Auckland leg is in Business class).
It also means that our Extreme Minimalism will be becoming even more extreme over the next week. As a result, we’ll probably have a bumper edition next Wednesday.
So, it’s only one week until we’re finally living up to the “No Home” name 🙂
Wow! It’s been fun seeing the build up to this point! It’s exciting to see it all finally coming together and to see your No Home journey officially begin!
Thank you! We’re excited too 🙂
If the cleaning is a huge time suck, inconvenience and expense, you could… skip it. They’ll take a cleaning fee out of your deposit, but it shouldn’t be more than a few hundred dollars. Depending on how rough the next few weeks are, you may want that option!
That’s a good point and something we’ve considered. Our deposit was only $400, so we might go down that route. Every dollar we get back obviously helps though, so it’s hard to know which will be the best option.
Shae if you need a hand with the cleaning, message me – I will bring over Helga (our Dyson) that Saturday morning, if you wish, and give you a hand with the cabinets and other stuff.
Thank you so much for your kind offer. I ended up getting it done, but I had you in mind if I got desperate. I know how important family time is so I appreciate yo offering to help me out on your Saturday morning.
Hire some college students to help clean!
I will be attending the Expo in Chicago, but please share any good tips you learn from the sessions!
It sounds like a friend or two have offered to help Shae clean if necessary, so hopefully it won’t end up being too bad.
Hope you enjoy the Expo – looking at the schedule, it looks like I’ll be in there about half the time on Saturday as that seems to have quite a lot of good sessions.