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The theme for our closet is, “Never organize what you can discard.” This is embarrassing. I’m going to show you what I had to deal with. I’m not even sure how it got this bad, but that’s how it happens. No one sets out to have a ton of clothes in their closet that they don’t wear, or a bunch of shoes that they no longer wear, or boxes of junk that they’re not even sure where it came from or boxes on the top shelf that they don’t even know what is in them. So, here it goes....
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Tonight I got to spend some time with my oldest son. We walked around Target and looked at some toys he was saving to buy, and then we headed over to Panera Bread to eat a cookie the size of my head and draw some stuff. What you see above is our first father-son collaboration! He drew the robot's body lines and I gave him a quick overview of how light and shadows worked, filling in the shading.
What really struck me was when I gave him the pencil to start drawing. He didn't hesitate, or ask me what I thought he should draw. I wish I could have gotten a video, because the sureness of each stroke was amazing. He just dove in and pounded this thing out in 30 seconds. It was beautiful.
I was so struck by his confidence - it was nearly foreign to me. And I realized in that moment that I had a lot to learn from my little guy. Fear of failure is something we all struggle with - it becomes harder as we get older. Self-consciousness kicks in and we subtly begin to question our art, creativity and instincts.
Drawing with Jett made me remember that I shouldn't be so worried about what others think. That I should embrace whatever craziness comes out of me and run with it. That I still have a lot of work to do to be comfortable in who I really am.
So the next time you sit down to draw, paint, sing, write, play, run - whatever - do it like you mean it. Embrace it and own it. Find that childlike confidence and bare your soul. It won't be easy, but you'll be glad you did.
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Good evening, my friends! I sit here at our picnic table on a camp site in Panama City Beach where we've decided to spend a few days with our tent and our kids adventuring. They're all asleep and I'm here working and writing by lantern light, listening to the reeds rustle off the lagoon and double checking around the table to make sure no small animal is about to attack me.
Since Ashley's Pro/Con list a couple of weeks ago we've been talking quite a bit at our house about what traveling full time could look like. Here's a few more thoughts now that we've had more time to digest things. Also, I'm definitely the more pragmatic one between the two of us (i.e. I think hard about process and details).
PRO - NO HOUSE PAYMENT - or just lower bills in general. We actually sat down and did the math, added in realistic travel expenses (you still have to pay to stay somewhere every night for the most part) and we would still definitely come out ahead. Which is pretty cool! I still have a sneaking suspicion that there are other travel expenses we're missing, though.
PRO - THE CLEAN THING - I do feel like we spend too much of our lives right now cleaning, and am definitely intrigued by having so much less that it would actually make a difference. Will it cut down on the time? I don't know. A good friend of ours who does travel full time mentioned that while there is less cleaning, you are cleaning way more often because there's so little space. You don't really have a choice as most rooms are serving multiple purposes. I'm a bit more sentimental than Ashley in regards to certain things to hold on to, but we're making really good progress going through our house right now and just really de-cluttering and cleaning things out. Post on this soon!
PRO - MORE FAMILY TIME - This is one of those that I deeply hope is true. I find myself getting really excited about new adventures with my family and having more time to teach my kids stuff. My skeptical side knows that I'll still have to work, though. And finding that brain space balance between focusing on my job and all the crazy adventures sounds hard. Also, I'm a little worried that if I'm less available for my clients it's not good for my business long term. That's more on me to delegate and figure some of that stuff out, but it's a concern I have.
PRO - CREATING WITH THE KIDS - This is also something I deeply hope is true. I'm a little worried at how feasible it will be with limited workspace and room to store materials and tools. I know personally I need physical and mental space to be able to create. But hopefully being in lots of new and interesting places and situations will provide opportunities we wouldn't have come up with on our own. I'm excitedly optimistic about this one in general!
PRO - THE OUTDOORS - I have always enjoyed the outdoors. There's just something about being in nature that helps put things in perspective. It refreshes your body and soul. Like Ashley said, she really wants to like it, but it may be a long road :) Picking our climate will make things easier, but having to deal with bugs, potentially not clean showers and lots of dirt will be a hard adjustment for everyone.
PRO - NEW PEOPLE - I'm not as excited as Ashley about this, but it'll probably be good for me.
PRO - FURNITURE MOVING OR LACK THEREOF - I want to believe that we won't be rearranging things, but even with furniture bolted down I know Ashley will find a way :D
PRO - DEBT FREE - This is a huge one. We've cleared out all our debt other than the house and not having that weighing us down sounds really awesome. The devil's in the details, though and we'll have to be very careful as we look at renting or selling the house to make sure we don't screw ourselves over somehow. The other tricky part here is that we've committed to not going into debt to get a trailer or truck to haul it. So in the short term we're going to have to bust it, work extra and save like crazy to make that happen. But we always love a good challenge!
CON - THE LAUNDRY - Not being able to throw your clothes or sheets into the washing machine whenever you want will be a big inconvenience for us. We do a lot of laundry. Maybe part of the fix to this problem is being smarter about our clothes and how often we change, but there are six of us either way. It'll be an adjustment to go somewhere just do do laundry.
CON - CLEAN SHOWERS - I don't care quite so much about how long and warm the showers are, but if we end up doing a lot of campground showers it's just kind of gross. Even the "clean" ones. I'm sure I'll get over this eventually, but it doesn't sound awesome to me right now.
CON - FOOD & STORAGE - Since we'll be continuing to eat Whole30 style (not strict, but pretty close) the drastic reduction in storage, cooking space and food prep area will make it a lot more difficult. Hopefully we can snag a trailer with an outdoor kitchen so we won't feel quite so cramped. And so we don't make the RV too hot with all the cooking we'll be doing.
CON - MY WORK - Like Ashley said, I'm used to kids running around while I work, but a lot of the time they are upstairs or at least far enough away that they aren't destroying my train of thought. The drastically reduced space definitely means there's more chances for me to get distracted. Also, because I do so much design and visual code work I am much more productive on a large monitor. And I've been doing the standing desk thing for over a year and would hate to go back to sitting all day. I'm hoping we can find a way for me to have a standing desk with my large monitor mounted to the wall or something. Being comfortable is an important part of being productive and I don't want to be fighting with small screens and back pain all the time.
CON - THE MAIL - There's a whole lot of stuff tied to your address. My business gets checks there sometimes, the government still likes to communicate with you this way for things like drivers license renewals and tax documents. I know there are services that help with this so I'm just more stressed about using one with the right implementation. Also, changing your address in general is just a pain in the butt. But whatever, I'll deal with it.
CON - HOUSE RENTAL - The idea of this isn't really a con. Renting the house for a year lets us try this travel thing out and still have a place to come back to if it doesn't work. It also lets us potentially make money as rental fees would be more than our mortgage. The mental overhead of figuring out all the details and legal work that go along with renting is the con, though. What happens if stuff break while we're gone? What if the people who rent it mess it up? I know there are ways to deal with that, but it still worries me. It's still our house until we sell it.
CON WAY WAY LESS STUFF - Don't get me wrong - I am all for de-cluttering and simplifying our lives. At this point I don't have a great frame of reference for just how little we'll be able to take. It might be no big deal. It might be traumatic (especially for the kids). Like most of the things on this list I'm all for the big idea, but worried about the details of how it will be in real life.
CON - CHIROPRACTOR - Agreed on this one. We're big believers in keeping everyone in alignment to prevent sicknesses and back problems/pains. Not having someone around we know and trust will be hard.
CON - CHURCH - Ashley said this really well. I know that our kids do like going to certain classes at church, but we've felt drawn to something much simpler and smaller for a long time now. Will we be able to find others like that on the road? I sincerely hope so. I hope we can get out of our little bubble and really grow with some fresh perspectives.
CON - THE ADOPTION - What Ashley said - we'll have to revisit this later. Too much to think about for this post.
So! Yeah. You probably noticed I'm a little more hesitant and worried about how things will actually play out rather than how we think they'll play out. But there's a reason Ashley and I are good for each other. She pushes me to try new things and I help find the balance between the big idea and the implementation.
Finally, a good friend recommended this book to us that gives great concrete answers to a lot of our questions. We'll be reading it and sharing our thoughts soon.
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If you know us, I bet you can guess who's idea it was to make a Pro/Con list. ;) A couple weeks ago we sat down and just jotted down the first few things that came to mind about the benefits of traveling full-time and the no so awesome parts of traveling full time. These are my thoughts on the list and Jon will be jumping in with his own take in a later post.
PRO - NO HOUSE PAYMENT - We plan to rent our house for the first year of traveling just to make sure this is what we want to do. Our house payment is pretty low and so we would be able to profit between $400 - $600 which in turn could be used for our stays at the RV Parks and traveling expenses. There are also many other pros that could be put into this category such as NO HOA FEE, NO YARD WORK, NO LAWN TREATMENT PAYMENT, NO SECURITY SYSTEM PAYMENT, NO RURAL METRO PAYMENT, NO EXTERMINATOR PAYMENT.....That's a huge chunk of money right there.
PRO - LESS CLEANING!!!! This one makes me super happy. While we both share the work load at the house, it is primarily me who stresses over it all. We would be going from 2700 sq ft to approximately 150 sq ft. That makes me super happy! The other pros that go along these lines include less time trying to get the kids to pick up all their crap toys. Less stuff in general. Each of the kids will have a tote that they can fit whatever they want to take with them into that one tote, and that will be their toys to bring and play with. If it doesn't fit in the tote, we can't bring it.
PRO - MORE FAMILY TIME - You may be thinking... "But, you guys are together at your house all the time." While that is true, Jon still works from 9-6 every day...sometimes more, sometimes less but usually he's right there in his office from 9-6. When we're traveling, I'm sure there will be many more late nights with the kids exploring, our weekends will be for exploring instead of cleaning 2700 sq ft of house. There will be much more time for family learning time and exploring things together due to the fact that there will be little to clean, no yard work to do on weekends, and no birthday parties to attend. It will be us, with each other, having adventures and making memories.
PRO - MORE TIME TO CREATE - Jonathan and I want to create with our kids. We want to inspire them to come up with new ideas and make something they've never made before. We want them to have the freedom to try new things and to not be afraid to fail. Having our weekends free of cleaning and yard work and other responsibilities will give us that much more time to create with our kids.
PRO - MORE TIME OUTSIDE - I am going to have to learn to like this. I do like being outside....if the temperature is right, and there are no bugs flying in my face, and..... I just need to learn to suck it up and get out there. Another pro that goes along with this is we get to pick our weather!! If we don't want to be blazing hot in the summer, we'll head far north. If we want to be swimming every day we possibly can, we'll head far south. If we don't want to deal with snow, we'll stay where it's warmer in the south. Heck, we may even need to head to Mexico...because we can :)
PRO - MEET NEW PEOPLE - While I do have a few friends who I will miss terribly, I am so excited to meet new people. I'm going to get out of my comfort zone and talk to people I've never met. I'm going to put myself in a position to get to know people where we are camping. (this is a big deal for me) I even practiced it this last weekend when we went camping with our family for the first time. I talked to a family of 6 who had been at the site for several days and turns out, we have a friend in common and they were also from Knoxville! I can't wait to meet other RoadSchooling families and ask questions and get inspiration and advice from them. We can share our experiences with people who have the same mindset as we do. It's hard to find people who think similarly to the way we do...we're weird.
PRO - LEARN SURVIVAL SKILLS - The kids have found a show on Netflix called Man, Woman, Wild and have watched every episode. They can tell me how to survive in The Amazon, Alaska and Smokey Mountains. They tell me the rules of the berries they can eat and how to purify water for drinking. It's pretty cool that they retain so much from that show. I'd love to get a book on survival skills that we could go through as a family. They would think that was the coolest school activity ever!
PRO - NO MORE MOVING FURNITURE - Jon likes this one, I can tell you that. He hates it when I move furniture all the time. It's much better now than it used to be. We're pretty limited on where we can moving things downstairs, but the playroom gets rearranged monthly. When you're in a 5th wheel that's approximately 150sq ft, there isn't many places to put the couch :) Besides, it's bolted down anyway :)
PRO - DEBT FREE!!! - This is huge. The only debt we have right now is our house. While that is awesome compared to most people our age, we still want to be completely debt free. We want to pay cash for our rig and either sell the house and be completely debt free, or rent it out and make money off of it to help pay for our stays at the campsites!
CON - LAUNDRY - We will need to go to the laundromat each week which will take a bit of time away from things that we want to be doing, but I'm constantly doing laundry here anyway... I think it may even be easier to take it to the laundromat and get it all done in a few hours (while we can be doing school work waiting on the clothes) on a week day when Jon's working...that way it won't take any family time away.
CON - NO MORE DATES - Along with no dates, also means no family close by. This one does suck. We get to go out about once a month or sometimes twice a month right now thanks to Jonathan's awesome parents. All that ends when we're in another state. We would never leave our kids with someone we don't know and fully trust. So, I'm guessing our 'dates' will consist of sitting outside by the fire after the kids go to bed and maybe splitting a cold MexiCoke :) Now, that doesn't sound so bad to me!
CON - LONG WARM SHOWERS - Man, I'm going to miss my shower. Depending on where we are at, the shower thing may suck big time. If we stay at a nice park that has showers you better believe I'll be in there wasting all the hot water for free, but when it's just us using the water in our storage tank, navy showers y'all. Our kids are at an age where they can almost all get showers so that's nice, just Ada is the only one that still needs baths, but maybe by the time we buy our rig and head out, she'll be ready for assisted showers :)
CON - FOOD PREP/STORAGE - Do you even know how many Ball jars I have? Jon already told me I can't take them with me. Which makes sense. You don't want to have to worry about all your glass jars getting busted when they're being pulled in a 5th wheel behind our truck and getting jostled around like crazy. I've listened to a few podcasts about storage in RVs and most people suggest good Ziplock baggies. They also suggest getting clear boxes for the fridge to put all our items in. Just imagine what you have in your fridge right now and imagine putting your fridge into the back of your truck and driving along the interstate. Can you picture the inside of the fridge when you get to your destination? Holy cow... Milk and eggs everywhere and all my broken ball jars!! Oh, and the food prep area. I currently have quite a bit of counter space...now divide that into 1/6th! CRAP! That will be something to get used to.
CON - JONATHAN'S WORK - He does work at home now so he's used to us driving him crazy. We may need to invest in more sound proof headphones for his job. Hopefully me and the kids will be outside the majority of the day but that won't always be the case. There is always the option of him driving somewhere to work. There are many places with free WiFi that he can go to and we can stay in the 'house' and get our work done.
CON - MAIL - This was Jonathan's con. I don't think this is much of a con. I hate mail. They only good mail we ever get is checks for Jonathan's business but we can have those sent to a PO Box and pay someone to make deposits for us each week or every few weeks. That's not that big of a deal to me.
CON - RENTING THE HOUSE - Another one of Jonathan's cons. I have no doubt that we can get someone to rent our house. We both know people who have multiple properties that they rent out and I'm sure we could pay them to take care of the details while we're away.
CON - STORAGE OF STUFF - They only things that we'll need to store will be important documents. I don't plan on keeping anything in our house. Everything can be replaced. I'm not super attached to anything here... although I do love our couch :)
CON - FAR AWAY FROM OUR CHIROPRACTOR - This one does suck. We have an awesome Chiropractor that we go to every week. He's amazing and will be missed when we're gone, but that is another money saver there, too!
CON - CHURCH - We don't really have a church that we consistently go to anymore so this isn't much of a con for me. I love to do simple church with our family. There are always churches that we could visit if we wanted to. Teaching our kids to live out the gospel instead of having the mind set that 'church' is only on Sundays and only in a building is a huge PRO for us.
CON - BIG ADJUSTMENT PERIOD - This will be hard. I don't for one second think it's going to be all rainbows and sunshine all day from day one. I know it's going to be hard. You take 6 people who are used to their own space and shove them in a small trailer where no one has much privacy and expect them all to be happy...that's just not going to happen. I love our huge house. I don't love cleaning it but I love that I can be downstairs doing my own thing and the kids playing upstairs in different rooms or the big playroom and me not having to worry about them getting their toys in my way, or them not having to worry about being quiet while I work on something. It's nice that we all have separate places but that will change. It will take a long time to adjust to the feeling of us all being right on top of each other all the time.
CON - OUR ADOPTION - I don't even know what to say about this. This is a whole other blog post in itself. We just aren't sure what's going on with that right now. We'll touch on that in another post.
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Guys. We are the biggest ninja turtle nerd family you've ever met. Seriously.
All 4 of my kids love the turtles - and each have chosen their favorite. Jett likes Leonardo the leader, Adali likes Donatello the scientist, Jax likes Michelangelo the fun one, and Ada likes Raph the hothead. It's actually kind of weird how much the turtles parallel our kids. Anyway.
We've watched just about every episode of every season of every incarnation of the Turtles, seen the movies (yes, even the new one!) and we're addicted to the toys.
When Nickelodeon bought the rights to TMNT several years ago I had no idea the Turtles would be back with such a vengeance. But it's pretty awesome to be able to share a love for something you had as a kid with your own kids. Of course, now that the Ninja Turtles are everywhere again, so are the toys.
I'm pretty sure we have every one they've made. We watch toy fairs to see when the next characters are coming out. Guys, we have a problem. To be fair - the Playmates toys are actually really good quality and pretty cheap for what you're getting. They're a good size and lots of fun to play with. Unlike the tiny little super hero toys they make that are nearly twice as expensive and no fun to play with.
I didn't want our kids to have all these toys and just play with them occasionally. I wanted to teach them how to make something awesome with what they have. So naturally we made a Ninja Turtle Video.
We hope you like it! We had a blast making it :)
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Ashley Longnecker / October 07, 2014
Jonathan Longnecker / October 06, 2014
We’re Jonathan & Ashley Longnecker. We love weird ideas, great food, travel, drawing, music, homeschool, tattoos, dreads, woodworking, design and our 4 amazing kids.