In March of 2023, we sold our Florida home anticipating that our South Carolina condo would be completed within six to nine months. Because we sold our Florida home fully furnished we decided to spend the interim time traveling and renting Airbnb and/or furnished apartments one month at a time. As is typically the case, the South Carolina build took much longer than originally anticipated. Sixteen months, to be exact.
After putting all of our worldly belongings in a storage unit nearby our pending condo, we embarked on our nomadic lifestyle one month at a time. We stayed in places throughout the US and abroad (i.e., England, Italy, and Belgium). We like to think we got better at navigating nomadic living every month. Here is how we did it…
We rented a mailbox at the UPS store and changed our address to have all of our mail delivered there. Many credit card companies will not accept a P.O. box and UPS provides you with an actual physical address. Only one credit card company did not accept our UPS box address, so we used my in-law’s address in that singular instance.
What we kept with us when we were traveling by car in the US
- Seasonal clothes, shoes and outerwear packed in suitcases and easy cary bags with shoulder straps for efficient moving (most places we stayed didn’t have luggage carts, so we needed to be able to carry everything, oftentimes up and down stairs)
- We each had a basket with all of our bathroom supplies (e.g., shampoo, conditioner, makeup, hair styling equipment)
- Equipment for making cappuccinos and coffee beans
- The VitaMix for our daily smoothies (I know, excessive, but we love our smoothies)
- A box of our regularly used spices, flours and sugars
- Backpacks with our laptops, iPads, phones, ear buds and chargers
- (During warm weather months) Turkish beach towels because they take up much less space than traditional beach towels
- My enameled cast iron bread baking pot (we bake bread every few days, so this was a must) in a large canvas tote that could subsequently be used as a grocery, farmers market and/or beach bag
- Our bed pillows with Blissy silk pillowcases (I kept each one in a giant sturdy Pottery Barn bag) – having our own pillows was important to us, but it may not be to you; they definitely took up a lot of space in our small car, but to us they were a must have whenever possible
- Tennis and pickle ball racquets
I wish I’d taken pictures of the car packed to the brim. I think I would be really, really good at Tetris. Whenever we’ve traveled – even when the kids were young – everyone just brought there luggage out to the car to let me do my thing. Even when they said it couldn’t be done, I usually made it work. I recall one particular road trip where our dog, Bruno, was my copilot. I had things stacked up so high that our little nine pound bundle of joy was eye to eye next to me in a comfy little made up bed on top of luggage and blankets.
When we traveled abroad
- We always travel light and never check our luggage, so I recommend checking out my post on living out of a carry on for a month to learn what we packed.
- We brought everything we typically had with us in the US to our storage unit and left it in a specific area to quickly retrieve when we returned.
A few additional tips
- I kept a standard shopping list on my phone for when we arrived at our new destination. These were items we knew we would need during our stay but were too bulky or perishable to travel with us. Once checking in to our rental, we’d head straight to the grocery store to stock up.
- We coordinated stays in our previous Florida town for doctor and dentist visits.
- We regularly called our UPS store and asked them to ship our mail to our current destination.
- We like to work out daily and bought a month membership wherever we could. Some of our rentals were in complexes with a gym, pool and/or tennis courts, which was a real plus for us.
It was great to get into our condo and have an actual home base after sixteen months, but a part of me misses the adventure of learning a new city or visiting a favorite destination every month. We’ve continued to travel for 2-5 weeks at a time several times a year and I hope we are able to do this for a very long time. I honestly think it keeps us young.
One final tip: Check out my post on vacation rentals for suggestions on how to book a quality rental.
Best,
Lisa