New in from Navarre, FL

[norfla71]

Good morning. My wife and I currently own a Salem LE Sport 32 SRV toy hauler, but this will not work for us when we retire. She expressed interest in an Airstream and thought this would be a great resource to start with. While not currently in the market (looking at another 5 years before purchase) we need more information to be better informed consumers. Lots of good info, with our main decisions being newer or buying cheap and restoring (labor of love). Truck is a 3500 Ram Cummins and are not limited to size/weight.

We will have lots of questions, I'm sure, but need to take it easy until we get serious. Otherwise, happy to be onboard.

[Wayward]

Welcome. With a 1-ton diesel you can skip over all the "what can I tow with this?" discussions. Maybe a 30' in tow and a Bambi in the bed of the Dodge?

[norfla71]

You gotta give me a challenge; the Cummins won't understand it's pulling something!

[SteveH]

If you plan on full timing, believe me after owning a square trailer, especially if it has a slide, you want to be looking at the biggest Airstream ever made, and even then it may seem small to you.

[norfla71]

Considering we have also thought about the R-Pod I would say size is not the most important consideration. Like everyone else comming down from something larger we just need to learn how to live without a bunch of crap we don't need. Besides, I have an 8' bed with a cap that can handle the overflow.

[Protagonist]

Originally Posted by SteveH

If you plan on full timing, believe me after owning a square trailer, especially if it has a slide, you want to be looking at the biggest Airstream ever made, and even then it may seem small to you.

The original post didn't mention full-timing, but since the subject was raised, I can't resist chiming in…

If you plan on full-timing, the FIRST step is to move out of your house into an efficiency apartment for six months to a year. By downsizing like that BEFORE getting the trailer, you'll already know whether you can stand to live full-time in a small space like a travel trailer.

That's not original advice. It actually comes from Lin and Larry Pardee, well-regarded among the live-aboard sailboat crowd and authors of several books about the live-aboard boating lifestyle. But the advice applies to a trailer equally as well as it applies to boats.

[norfla71]

Her folks used to live on a 35' sailboat for the better part of a decade, before age and medical conditions scuttled that.

Not sure about living in an apartment, though, we just need to bite the bullet and learn to live without all that excess stuff we've grown used to over the years. I can do it, not sure if she can, which is why we will only be "full timing' about 4 months out of the year.

[Protagonist]

Originally Posted by norfla71

…We just need to bite the bullet and learn to live without all that excess stuff we've grown used to over the years.

Living small is living small, no matter where you do it. If you can do it in one environment, you can do it in others. The inability of some people to downsize from a 2,000 square foot home to a 200 square foot RV is one reason why 5th wheels and Class As just keep getting larger and larger. They don't downsize in stages, but rather all at once, and it overwhelms them.

The thing about stuff is, it always expands to fill whatever space is available for it. It's simple physics, the Boyle's Law of stuff.

I've developed a trick, cadged from other sources, to downsize my accumulation of stuff. It's the right-to-left rule:
Clothes - Every time you wash clothes, always hang the clean clothes on the right-hand side of your closet, on the very end. Eventually, the left-hand side will have nothing but clothes you don't wear. At whatever interval you decide upon, whether monthly, quarterly, annually, whatever, get rid of anything on the left-hand side that you haven't used at all in that interval. I can virtually guarantee there will be something you haven't used on the left-hand side.
Books - Same thing, when you read a book, put it back on the right-hand side of the bookshelf, and slide everything else to the left. Soon the left-hand side will have nothing but books you don't read, all ready to be discarded.
The same trick works for videos, shoes, just about anything that you have more than one of.