Well, it’s goodbye to our home.

It’s goodbye to our acreage home and now onto a different perspective for a couple of months.

We’re done with garage sales and marketplace selling— we had been fortunate in being able to find someone who is happy to hold off on picking up the washing machine and the fridge the night before settlement, and we’d downsized our refrigerated foods to fit into a couple of cooler bags with ice, to see us through our last day in the house. And with that, we have said goodbye to our home of the last 2 ½ years and, oddly, I can’t say we’ve been too emotional actually—it’s been so busy and hectic that, I suppose, we just haven’t had time to be too moved by it all but, perhaps more to the point, it was never our dream home. Besides all that, though, at the end of the day, it’s the sale of our home that is enabling us to travel Australia and experience a lifestyle we could only ever have dreamt about.

The last couple of weeks have seen us giving away, selling, or throwing out anything that we won’t, or can’t, take with us, and then it was a matter of trying to figure out what stuff can go into short-term storage, and what we’d need to have on hand for the next couple of months, and therefor drag around from place to place, until we get the caravan. We happened to find a great deal on storage at one of the popular storage companies, which saw us getting 2 months of storage for the cost of one month—2 months should work out to be perfect, all things going well. With all the stuff that won’t be needed, until the van is ready, in storage, the plan is to downsize further when we sell the 4-door hatchback, as we’ll be left with just the Ranger, and for all our Tetris skills there’s just no way we can squeeze everything into one vehicle.

The last evening in our home was spent eating dinner seated on a doona on the loungeroom floor, streaming on our laptop as the tv went a couple of days prior. We still had our bed as it was being picked up the next morning, so that at least meant for a good night of sleep, while Alina had already been sleeping in a portable cot, having sold her cot a week prior. On our final morning, and with the bed having been collected, we were left to finish off the final touches to cleaning the house, along with loading the last of everything we owned into the cars. It was surprising as to how much you actually can’t fit into a dual cab ute, and it was literally a “throw it in and quickly shut the door” operation to get the very last of our things packed into both cars. And so, with our home empty and both cars packed, it was time to hand in the keys to real estate agent and make our way 50 minutes down the motorway to our first house-sit. The drive was more one of trepidation than sadness, I think simply because there was still a degree of uncertainty with our plan, particularly that there are never any guarantees with regard to van delivery dates. But, while we’re understandably nervous about how it will all come together, and I can see that I’ll continue to second guess our decision way into our travel, it’s a super exciting chapter for us in our ongoing story.