What started us down this path was deciding to move from our 2 story 1400 ft^2 house to a small single story one with minimal yardwork. We looked around and couldn't find anything locally that grabbed our attention. So we widened our search tentatively picking Prescott or Payson Arizona to move to. But other locations are still of interest, such as SD. Then inspiration struck and we decided, if we’re going to pack up everything and move 1000 or more miles, to travel for a few years. So we knew we’d store our important stuff for when we land.

We started some 9 months ahead. I went through my machine shop and discarded, gave away, or sold what I didn't want to take. Craigslist and E-Bay were helpful in selling. I then moved the machines and tooling to a storage unit.

We cleared out the stuff in our pole barn. Most of this was marked sell and moved to the storage unit, or went to land fill. This cleaned out the pole barn, the first step in selling that property.

We contracted with a great group for two "estate" sales, one from the storage unit and one from our house. The sale of stuff from the pole barn, now at the storage unit, was first and went well.

We then attacked the house with the intent to box up what we wanted to keep. The boxes were moved to the garage (now empty with the shop moved). That let us better clean and "stage" the house for showings and sale. The house was put up for sale and we had an acceptable offer within a week. We then vigorously attacked the stuff still in the house. We left what we wanted to sell in place and moved the keep pile to the storage unit.

Finally the estate sale was held at the house selling or donating all that was left. This sale went very well also. I highly recommend hiring someone who does estate sales. They know how to price items for the best return and will donate all that remains after the sale. If we'd done it ourselves we'd have priced everything too high ending up with a lot at the end. We'd also have re-thought decisions to sell many items, also ending up with too much stuff.

We had four parcels of land to liquidate. The two larger dollar properties, the house and pasture land, were sold though a real estate agent. The two low dollar ones were sold privately. The final result is that our bank account is larger and we own no real estate.

So, all we own is with us on the road or in one storage unit in Oregon.

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