September 17, 2017

It’s a ridiculous idea, right? Sell a perfectly perfect home to move a family of 6 into an RV. Who even considers that? Let alone actually does it?

We do. We are the Krause family, and we are giving up our dream house so we can seek out our dream life.

Photo by Kelly White

It probably sounds like a complicated decision to many of you. You might think we thought about this and did a ton of research for a few years- at least more than a few months.

We didn’t.

Late 2016, I played the idea over in my head a bit. I don’t even know where I got the idea. We don’t camp! But we both have always wanted to show our kids more of the country and of the world eventually.  I mentioned it to Scott a couple times. We both said something like, “That WOULD be pretty fun… someday.”

I couldn’t shake it, though. We just had our 4th baby in December 2016, and it suddenly occurred to me that our oldest- Kendall- was about to turn 9 in 4 months, and that would be half of his time with us… gone. Halfway out the door.

Photo by Kelly White

Okay, assuming he actually leaves the house at 18, but still, even if he doesn’t, we need to have a responsible, functioning, contributing member of society all ready to go in just 9 more years! I’ll write more about Kendall and how he factored into this in another post, but he was one of the biggest reasons we finally said no, not someday, TODAY.

One night in February 2017, we sat down to dinner at our kitchen table, and I said- again, but this time to the whole family- “Guys, wouldn’t it be amazing to go on a trip all around the entire country? This country is great, and there’s so much we haven’t seen. There are so many people who are different from us that we can meet. There are national parks, there are volcanoes and icebergs….” They were all with me up until I got to the part where I said, “We just have to sell this house! We could buy an RV and a truck, and we could all go on a big adventure together!”

RECORD SCRATCH

Kendall was not on board with selling our house. And again, that’s an entirely separate blog post.

As a whole, though, the family – well, the members old enough to talk- agreed it WOULD be so fun. Our daughter Leyna’s excitement was palpable at the thought of visiting a volcano, which obviously we can’t drive to- another blogpost.

And then, instead of hearing “someday” from Scott, he turned to me and said, “But could we really do it? Right now? Do you think we could really make it happen?”

COULD WE DO IT?? Oh, challenge accepted!

With that little glimmer of hope, I created a plan within a week. And within a couple more weeks, my cautious husband was on board. We started looking at RVs in March, floated the idea to friends and family shortly after, and then made a public announcement in May. It took a few months to get our house ready to sell and on the market. And now we wait.

Things are still up in the air. The RV isn’t purchased, nor the truck. We are still showing the house (week 3). It’s all hurry up and wait.

But now seems like a good time to get things rolling here on the blog. I know so many of you have questions, and I’ll get to them soon, I promise! In the meantime, please follow us on Instagram @Happy.Loud.Life and Facebook.com/HappyLoudLIfe. We have a YouTube channel coming shortly! Also sign up for our newsletter here.

Who actually does this? It turns out so many people do. We’ve found a thriving community online of thousands of families that make this work for them. If you’re curious or researching, I highly recommend the Fulltime Families FB group and the Ditching Suburbia podcast (I was interviewed for episode #64).