My truck home by Lisa Keaveney

I have been away for over 21 days from social media. I dabbled a bit but not much posting and this is the reason why….

As most of you know, I live in a semi-truck with my husband Andy and have been since January 2021. I packed up my stuff and either put it in the attic or in a second storage unit. We already had one but needed a second one as a controlled climate because of a leather couch we had.

I went back to my hometown about 6 months into this new journey to clean out the climate-controlled unit because my son was buying the couch. I decreased my boxed life by at least 6 large moving boxes and got rid of the climate-controlled storage unit. That put me down to one storage unit and the attic because I transferred the boxes, I still wanted, to our original storage unit.

I went back to my hometown again last fall in the RV and decreased my boxes by at least 4 from the storage unit. That wasn’t as big of a deal for me because I unpacked some of that into the kitchen of the RV.

I went back to my hometown once again at the beginning of September this year and decreased my boxed life AGAIN to about 20 boxes total, 14 in the attic and 6 will be unpacked in the RV! I purged so much stuff it was an incredible experience.

This is where my 21 days of learning started. The first couple of purges were minor, I got rid of things that really didn’t mean much to me. This trip was hard on me a bit because it came down to most of my treasured items in my life.

I have been a self-proclaimed hoarder for years; I don’t throw that term around lightly. I did not hoard trash, but I did hoard just STUFF, useful stuff but stuff none the less. I found it comforting to give some of my prized possessions to people I knew would like to have them. I told these people that if they didn’t want the stuff to do what they wanted to with it, but DONT TELL ME!

I came by this hoarding honestly; my mother was a hoarder of identical things, like if one was good 50 was better (of the same thing).

My mother’s mother was an organized hoarder. She was a doll maker and collected all kinds of material and other items she could use for doll making. She had my grandfather paint boxes white so she could label them, and they were all labeled for sure.

My grandmother’s mother (my great grandmother) was also a hoarder. You have to remember though, these 2 generations lived through a depression and kept everything that was useful.

I have decided to break the chain of hoarders and my daughter is doing well at not hoarding as much. I gave myself permission to be able to let go of things long before I went home to go through my stuff. So, there was a lot of mental preparation while I was riding down the road. Mental work can be hard sometimes but necessary.

The other thing I did to prepare myself to purge was really get into this nomad lifestyle. You can’t have a lot of stuff and live in a 50 square foot semi or a 340 square foot RV that’s for sure. Plus, I don’t want to tote things around I really don’t need or want.

I feel so much better, I am not going to lie, it hasn’t been easy though. When my daughter was selling my first Disney mug to a stranger, I did feel a little twinge of homesickness for my stuff. I made tough decisions and choices on what I was willing to get rid of and what I wanted to keep and stood by those decisions and choices.

My memories and pictures are stored up in the attic of the house, those were non-negotiables for me, and I am lucky I have a place to store those.

This is not an easy life, but it is the life I am choosing to live, and I TRULY love it!! I tell people how I am living, and I get a lot of the same reaction; “I don’t know how you can do it.” “I don’t know if I could ever do that.” “I would kill my spouse if I lived 24/7 in such a small space with him/her.” I laugh and wonder how I do it sometimes too.

I am back on social media and getting back into my routine in the truck. Please drop a line and let me know what you think of this kind of life. Could you do it? (Even for just a week, month, or year) What about purging to just the essentials, could you?