With my employment ending, I expected to have ample time to leisurely prepare for the start of our international trip. I was entirely wrong about that. We would have been in an hours deficit had I stayed at my job any longer. JC and I were cranking through tasks almost non-stop over the last week. We even had AC and BC picking up some of the work. Our longest day was starting sometime around 5:30am and not stopping until 8pm.

We ultimately made it out of our house and hit the road. This post has some of the final details related to that.

Storage

There is a storage unit that we have despised ever since it popped up within easy eye-shot of our house. It’s actually within easy eye-shot of virtually the entire small city we live in. At first, the giant ugly orange public storage sign was glowing so bright it seemed like a full moon was having a nuclear event. They must have received countless complaints because of that. They eventually turned off the orange part at night so only the white “Public Storage” was lit up. I was very judgmental of the people who had so much shit they had to offload it to a storage unit. That behavior created the need for it to be built in the first place, and now our stuff is in that storage unit.

After some trial in our garage and consulting with a moving company, we settled on a 10×20′ storage unit. Determining the size was difficult, mainly because of a lack of experience in moving and packing/stacking things. Our four bedroom house did in fact fit in that storage unit, but only because of the skill of our movers and because we left the outside furniture for the renters to use.

I have to give public storage some credit even if I hate having their facility near me. Accessing the facility is convenient with the app, and the storage units are clean, climate controlled, and smell completely neutral.

The Act of Moving

JC and I moved ourselves into a two bedroom apartment in our late 20’s. We swore we would never self-move again, until we almost considered it for our four bedroom house in our 40’s. We came to our senses though and hired a company to do it for us.

They saved more than our backs on this move. They somehow played 3d tetris with our belongings until they fit it in the 10×20, and were thoughtful enough to carve out a space at the front of the unit for the things we had to take ourselves on the last day. This was worth every penny.

Cars

We sold both of our cars and no longer own any vehicles. We sold these through Peddle, which made everything so easy. You just submit the vehicle specs to them and they provide an instant quote that you can then decide to accept. After accepting they schedule a pickup time. They bring a tow truck, do some very basic checks of the vehicle, give you cash or a check, take the title and drive off.

While this was easy, it was still a little nerve wracking. The stress was only due to our very tight timeline, where we were trying to sell the final vehicle on the day before we left for Costa Rica. Had we for example printed and signed our names in the wrong spot on the title, we would not have had time to correct it. I’m not exactly sure what we would have done if it fell through.

This was also sad, particularly parting with the Corolla. I owned that car for 22.5 years, and it is verifiably the best car purchase in history. It’s low purchase price and ultimate reliability is a major factor in how we were able to get to a financial position to pull off this trip, and how we achieved FIRE (arguably).

House

Getting the house ready to rent started months ago with fixing deck boards and adding basement railing. Since then we have worked through a list of 100+ documented tasks and countless undocumented tasks. This included a lot of cleaning, fixing small annoyances that we ignored for years, and administrative tasks (landlord utilities, HOA things, etc).

Even this was tricky because we had to hold back on certain tasks and not pack certain things so we could continue to live in our house up to the end. On the final night we were down to our loaded travel backpacks and sleeping bags. We basically camped in the house the night before the final day of possession.

I thought I would be sad about leaving the house, but I actually wasn’t. It’s probably knowing that we’re gone for one year and then we’ll be back. I also expect that the day when we return, it’s going to be like returning to a house that is unmatched over the course of our travels. The comfort, convenience, cleanliness, and crisp Colorado air will be just what we need.