A New House?

“This is my temporary home

It's not where I belong

Windows and rooms that I'm passing through

This is just a stop, on the way to where I'm going

I'm not afraid because I know this is my 

Temporary home”
― Carrie Underwood, Play On

A comfy living room.

We've been 3 in a RV for a few years now.  There are a lot of positives and negatives to living in an RV.  One of the hardest things to deal with is temperature.  In the winter you can warm the inside, but it seems a bite of cold is always in the air and the floors are always freezing.  With John getting up at the wee hours, Zoey going to school before daylight, dealing with the occasional frozen pipes, sometimes as long as a week, and it seems we have 1-2 more winters here in Texas, we decided to find a warmer place to winter. 

The search was not wide and not far. We wanted to stay small and economical, so we found a nice single-wide mobile home for rent not one block away from us in our own mobile home park.  It's a nice 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom that has been recently repainted and new flooring installed.  It was for rent, but we contacted the owner and found he was willing to sell.  With a little give and take on the price we had ourselves  a contract for a new home.

You might be thinking: "But, I thought you didn't want to stay in Midland, Texas.  Why are you buying a home there?"  The answer comes down to comfort and money.

The comfort is a gimme.  We went from a few hundred square feet to 1100 sq/ft.  The day we looked at the house, Zoey ran from one end to the other, finally spreading her legs indoors.  Oddly, I found I had less storage and had to buy dressers and other storage to house all our stuff that had previously been so nicely housed in our RV built-ins.  Thank you Craigslist.

Zoey was still sleeping on her crib mattress, and although I received no complaints, she is getting big.  I could have fit a bigger mattress in her loft, but it would have eliminated a lot of  her space for toys; and as we all know, getting a kid to part with their toys only sparks their interest to prove how much they love that toy. Now Zoey has a full-size bed to spread out in and all the space she could ask for.

Yay! Laundry.

And best of all, I now have a washer and dryer, which is soooooo nice. That is one thing, I truly missed in the RV.  (Unfortunately, I still have to go to the laundromat about once a week for John's work clothes because they're too damaging, but no biggie.)

The money angle may seem odd.  After all, aren't mobile homes notoriously not great investments?  In an area where housing is a scarce commodity, our place could, and was known to, rent for anywhere from $1000-$2000/month depending on where the economy is holding.  That means when we leave we either have an income producer or an asset to sell.

So here we are moving out of the RV and into a mobile home.  Does this spell the end of 3inaRV?  Far from it.   With our wonderful travel trailer, we have many travels to come, some in and some out of the trailer. In our future we see a RV adventure of a lifetime, but we still have time and detail to work out, so stay tuned.