CHANGE OF PLANS
WHIRLWINDS OF SELLING A HOME
If you have ever sold a home I am sure you can relate to the emotional roller coaster that comes along with selling, packing, and moving process. In our previous blog post we shared that we decided to sell our house on a whim. Granted, we built our house with the full intention of moving in a few years and talked about selling occasionally. However, through all this talk there was very little action, until we had a change of plans when an opportunity came along.
Putting our house on the market was both exciting and challenging! Since neither Spencer nor I had ever sold a house before, we were pretty naïve about the process. We certainly didn’t expect some of the random time and last-minute showing requests. It was a tad inconvenient at times since we had a toddler with a loose schedule and I worked from home. Understandably so, as most couples prefer to tour your home before work, during lunch or after work. None of which were exactly ideal for our family’s schedule. But when you want to sell your house, you find a way to be accommodating.
WE ACCEPTED AN OFFER
After a month of showings, we had received two offers and accepted one! It was really exciting! Our buyers were eager to move in and wanted to be in our house by early-December! At the time it was mid-October when we accepted the offer…Eek! If you remember in our previous blog post, I mentioned, we really didn’t plan to sell our house. Which meant two things 1) we certainly hadn’t started packing, I mean we barely began to purge a few things and 2) we had no idea where we would be moving to once our house sold. Let that sink in for a minute. We essentially were to be out of our house in just over a month and had NO concrete plans of what was next for us! We didn’t love the idea of moving around the holidays, but we knew that was likely when deciding to list our house for sale in September. Our main goal was to not have to move over the holiday weeks. Thankfully we negotiated an arrangement where we would move out the second week of December.
Out of 100 my stress level was probably 175… the time crunch was on and we hadn’t packed, we didn’t know where we were going to live, we were striving for more family time, not less, and I was working on growing two businesses. Mix in all the emotions of leaving our eight-year home, the only home Kade has known and I was sad to not be spending one more Christmas in our home.
Spencer kept reminding me everything was going to work out and that we were ready for the next chapter. So we continued to push on with the purging and plans to start packing in the beginning of November.
Lookback Lesson: If you know you are going to sell your house PURGE! Purge and Pack ASAP. Some progress is better than no progress. As I mentioned we were naïve on the process and certainly on the amount of packing and purging we had to do. (More on this in the next blog post).
PLANS CHANGE
During our weeks of purging we were also going through a few significant steps necessary to selling a home. Specifically, the house inspection to which we were very confident we would pass. As we expected our house was in phenomenal condition however we failed the Radon test. Frankly I hadn’t even heard of Radon before and wasn’t sure what it all meant. Turns out we had a clogged pipe, spent about $800 to have it serviced, and voila is was fixed. However, it scared our buyers and they rescinded their offer.
So there we were end of October with a house still on the market, items purged, and boxes ready to be packed. For a moment it was a real bummer, but we quickly realized the most recent turn of events happened to be in our favor. We had a change of plans and decided to pull our house off the market. At least until the New Year so we could enjoy the holidays in our home one last time and give ourselves additional time to pack and plan our next steps.
Lookback Lesson: Plans change, God intervenes when needed. We need to adapt and push through. Only we have the power to control how we react to situations. It’s also important to be mindful of how we react in front of our children. They are little sponges and absorb all that they see and hear.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE
If I had to sum up the month of November into one word it would be talking. We talked and talked and talked some more about our options. At this point nothing was off the table. We discussed staying another year in our current home, buying land in MD, renting, buying land in NC, and traveling.
Traveling continued to be a common theme that piqued our interest. Spencer and I happened to be enjoying an evening fire on a brisk November night when I decided to revisit a conversation we had shortly after returning home from Australia. At the time Spencer wasn’t too keen on the idea of traveling for a few months but it just kept popping in my mind. To my surprise he was pretty warm to the idea. We started brainstorming scenarios and ideas of how our travel could play out. Airbnb, long term home rentals, extended stays and RVs seemed to be the most realistic options for family travel.
Shortly after that most recent conversation Spencer started showing me RV’s for sale. I was in disbelief because my “I don’t camp, camping isn’t my thing” husband was not only somewhat considering us camping, but actually living in an RV! We had certainly come full circle and back again on our ideas and future plans. Out of all the options I thought living in an RV would be the most unlikely of all due Spencer’s previous thoughts on camping.
THE BIRTH OF ADVENTURTUNITY FAMILY
Since we had a little flexibility in our schedule now that we were staying in our home through the holidays we headed to NC for Thanksgiving. During our 4.5-hour drive to Raleigh we found ourselves talking through our full-time travel plan. And if we pursued that direction how we would share our journey with you. The good, the challenging and the downright awesomeness of locking arms, embracing change, and running full on into family adventures!
We both come from product and marketing backgrounds so we looked at our travels as a business from day one. We started writing down impactful words, ideas, missions, what we were about, and what was important to us. It was on that trip where Spencer combined our desire for adventure with act of seizing opportunities and with that the Adventurtunity Family was born!
THE PATH IS NOT ALWAYS CLEAR
Our plans had changed left and right. From selling our house and planning a move to Raleigh, to not selling our house, considering staying in Baltimore, and now traveling full time. Our direction was very unclear at first but through many conversations, life experiences and decisions we ended up right where we were supposed to be.
By mid-December we were about 75% decided that traveling full-time for year was the right plan for us. That’s about the time when Spencer introduced us to the Less Junk More Journey family. It was wonderful to see that there were families, quite a lot of them who have already taken the leap to live and travel fulltime in and RV. Watching their stories gave us a lot to think about. You know the big ones like will we be able to support ourselves financially, what will our parents think, what will our friends think, will we enjoy that lifestyle, will we miss all our things?
Ultimately the answers to these questions were more about perspective. Spencer has the driving force behind changing our outlook. I am a bit slower to adopt these thoughts. But when we shift the questions to a positive outlook there is confidence that accompanies answering them.
Instead of will we be able to support ourselves which comes from a place of fear we asked ourselves what are ways and ideas we can support ourselves? Instead of asking what our parents will think which, also comes from a place of fear or being judged, we asked ourselves how can we get our parents excited and supportive of our decisions.
When making or navigating life’s changes maintaining a positive narrative is the key. Your positivity, confidence and belief will carry you through the uncertainty!
The next time you are asking yourself a question and can feel the doubt or fear seep in behind your answer try rephrasing the question. It’s challenging and it doesn’t just roll off the tongue without practice but its amazing the difference you feel about your answer when you ask the question from a positive and believing mindset.
Ready to read more? Up next we sold our home without a plan.
