How to plan for a long-term departure.

This weekend is a moving weekend. I’ve rented a van and been moving boxes and furniture to storage. My master bedroom is now empty and goals for rest of weekend are to get my second bedroom (office) and garage as well. Unlike a shorter vacation, don’t just plan to leave my residence occupied. This time I’m putting all my stuff in storage and renting it out. This makes sure someone is watching the place and gives me a place to come back on my return.

On previous long trips I’ve done a mixture of things:

• Three months in 1997, my stuff was in transit as part of the move
• One year ride in 2001, I put all my stuff into one bedroom of my condo and rented out the rest at a reasonable rate to a friend
• Ten months ride in 2007, I left stuff in a duplex and had tenants in other unit below
• Six months in 2013, I put everything in storage. Had an apartment before and after but not during

The other project that has been going on for a while is to sort everything I own into three piles:

1. First pile is everything I need on my trip, a limited set of things.
2. Next pile is things I give away or throw away. Probably the best thing to reduce clutter, though sometimes I find myself doing it a second time on return when I look at what was stored and think, “did I really need this”
3. Third pile is things to store.

I’ve been doing this for several months and slowly getting it all sorted out. However, now with a rented van and storage unit time to get things wrapped up.