Let’s summarize how we arrived at our decision to uproot our lives and become “Van People.” It really has been years in the making; I just didn’t know it until March of this year (2017.) Humz has always joked that he would sell our house and come back with a van. We had been living in Hoboken (NJ) for just over 4 years and doing the whole working to live and living to work thing where we go to work everyday, only to return home, exhausted, and with little time to ourselves to do anything other than veg out in front of the tv until we fell asleep half and hour later. It was time for a change of scenery…Seattle.
I had traveled there a few times in the last few years for work and loved it so much that before my last planned trip there in 2014, I demanded Humz come with me, even if it was just for a quick 3-day weekend. We spent the weekend bouncing around the city, eating all the clam chowder I could find (and coffee for Humz), taking a duck tour, visiting all the local tchotchke stores, and watching fish throwing at Pike Place Market. We were in love!
Speed forward, Christmas 2016…The beginning of our “original” plan to move out to the emerald city. After some good friends of ours said they had an opportunity to move to Seattle, we said “DO ITTTTT” and we would try to as well. We had joked about making the move for years, but their enthusiasm was the tipping point…All we had to do was get new jobs out there, quit our jobs, sell our house, and haul our entire lives out there…Easy?...Right?
So on a random March Monday morning while Humz was home “sick”, he called a realtor that had sent us a random postcard saying that he had sold the house down the street for above asking price. He was at our house within 2 hours to assess the selling situation. Within 2 days the ball was rolling and after 6 long weeks of non-stop painting, primping, and doing all the house projects that we wished we did for ourselves for the potential new buyers, our house was ready for listing. It sold for over asking price, with multiple offers in less than a week so we decided to use some of the extra cash to go on a cross country adventure to visit all 48 continental states before we have to return back to the working world in Seattle. Humz’s dream of living in a van was about to come true, and quickly, because we were about to be homeless!!
Lucy (our golden retriever) and her boyfriend Ewing showing off the freshly sold digs.
-Katharine