Tagalong Goes on a Diet

The first time we drove through the RV part of the mobile home park we’ve been staying at was to see the wares for purchase as part of a parkwide yard sale. I remember being surprised that RVers had things to sell. With precious limited space, it made sense to me that they’d only carry what they had room for. 

Fast-forward a few years, and I have a new understanding and appreciation for those RVers showcasing their undesirables for sale. After two years on the road, we managed to accumulate quite a bit ourselves — especially while stationary. 

Purging Our Possessions

Wanting to lighten our load before hitting the road again, we took a full day to address our accumulation issue. We went through every cabinet in Tagalong — inside and out — to determine what to keep and what to purge. 

Starting in the bedroom, we sorted through all of our clothes, hanging and folded, and formed three piles of giveaways. Eager to keep the momentum going, we moved to the bathroom and consolidated what we could and trashed what we didn’t need. 

From there, we transitioned to the kitchen, going through all seven drawers and 14 cabinets, including the pantry, to wipe them down and identify items we could do without. Next came the living room, mostly electronics. We found lots of objects we hadn’t used in two years and didn’t need. 

I almost forgot about my office with its door closed. That’s what I love about it: I’m able to close the door at the end of the workday and be home, forgetting that the little room exists behind its entry. After going through the six drawers in there, I eradicated a mountain of printed documents.

Cleaning the Cellar

Three bags and two boxes of donation items later — plus two trash bags of throwaways — we moved outside. Recovering from his second cataract surgery, Bob sat while I pulled containers from Tagalong’s bowels. We pilfered through bin after bin, finding things we could have used if we knew we had them, such as a bee sting kit. That could have come in handy when Bob stepped on a bee at Lake Michigan and it stung the underside of his foot. 

We found plenty of possessions to part with: fishing poles and a tackle box, jack stands, a bottle jack since we had a newer one, a gas hose, drawer racks, and other odds and ends. We loaded RV living items onto Gulliver’s tailgate and drove around the park, stopping where we saw other RVers sitting outside, enjoying Arizona’s beautiful February weather. Our tactic worked, and people took our non-essentials. 

The rest of the RV living goods we stashed next to the dumpster. A half hour later when I returned to deposit our three bags of trash (yes, we filled another one), most of the items had already disappeared, no doubt going to homes where they’d be put to good use.