We decided to sell our house and move to Ontario where we can buy acreage which is more affordable then here in BC. We want to build our Earthship and still be able to afford to travel in the winters. Since we would be living out of our Surveyor travel trailer for a couple years while we build the Earthship we were planning on selling almost everything we own; keeping only the bare minimums and sentimental items instead of paying to move them and then store them for a couple years.
We pondered the possibilities... and changed our minds on almost a daily basis and sometimes two and three times in the same day!
Since selling our businesses over a year ago we have been investing in rental properties in Ontario. Originally we planned on buying acreage right away to start building our Earthship but since we want a large acreage and the bank wants 50% down payment on land, we have decided to buy a rental which needs some work, fix it up to improve it's value and then look for land. Since we don't have typical jobs any more we will have the time to do this once or twice and be set to start the Earthship and continue to not have to work :)
With this change though we realized that selling off of our furniture was silly as now it would need to be replaced since we won't be living in the RV for 2 years while we build. So we bought a small trailer to load up the furniture that we wanted to keep. I say a small trailer because we needed to find a trailer that could be shipped since our truck is pulling our RV (we want the trailer to store tools etc on our land while we build and use it for maintenance on our Ontario rentals).
So we started to plot out what furniture we could take with us by mapping it out on our floor :)
The original quote for shipping the trailer full was reasonable but then the fees kept going up as we had to pay by pound...not such an economical choice after-all...and we already bought the trailer! So once again we put on our thinking caps...do we sell the trailer we just bought and go back to shipping things by pallets with our friend at Air Canada, pay by pound to ship the trailer or do we rent a truck and pull the trailer???
In the end we decided to rent a truck and pull the trailer. Yes we will be paying for gas in two trucks now to move but in the end we know roughly what the cost will be and have budgeted for it. It feels much safer then hoping we are guessing correctly at how much our possessions weigh (our bedroom suite is enormous). I have heard horror stories from people where their moving costs doubled or higher due to weight and we can't afford to take that chance!
Now we had one last decision to make...our hot tub! We and I mean the whole family loves our hot tub and we use it many times each week. We put it on craigslist to try to sell it but it was very expensive to buy even second hand when we bought it and selling it for basically nothing breaks our hearts! Since we going to be living in one of our rentals for a couple of years we have decided we should take it with us. As luck would have it, it is a couple inches too big to fit inside the rental truck! Still it is more economical to pay to ship it then it is to sell it for nothing and replace it in Ontario. So yeahhhhh we get to keep our hot tub!
