SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE

From Trinity:  If you asked me 2 years ago if I could live in a tiny space with minimal things I would quickly say " Hell No! I LOVE my stuff too much!" 

" Imagine a life of less... a life of passion unencumbered by the trappings of the chaotic world around you.. imagine an intentional life.  It's not a perfect life, it's not always an easy life... but its a simple and happy one. "  -The Minimalist Imagine a life where you know where every single item is in your home.  Imagine your house being clean all of the time.  Wow, that seemed like a DREAM life to me, seriously who lives that way!?  The concept of minimalism felt so distant and unachievable.  I would say "that's just not me".  I was busy working 7 days a week, busy filling the house with things that I thought would make me happy.. and yes, it did.. but it wasn't the deep happiness I was looking for.  

FAST FORWARD >> I'm currently writing you from our 280 square foot home on wheels overlooking a lake and living the life we've carved out and created for ourselves.  We just watched the documentary MINIMALISM on Netflix, it's a documentary about the important things in life.  I instantly want everyone to watch it and understand why we are living the life we are and to be able to relate.  I've realized this past year that a simple life is it, and stuff is not the answer for me.  

Kermit made an excellent point.. he said " Live life like a dog!" They don't need much of anything except shelter, food and love"... this was very profound to me as I quickly started thinking about "but I NEED this.. and I NEED that...  I had to ask myself " Do you really need 4 curling irons, do you really need 5 pair of brown boots.. and so on."  

So, we did it.  We traded our stuff for experiences to create a life that makes us feel rich on minimal money.  We have come to realize the value of time vs. money.  We don't want to live to work, if we keep our expenses low we can keep our experiences high.  Was it easy making the transition out of a 4 bedroom house full of anything we wanted down to 280 feet?  NO WAY!  Was it worth it?  HELL YES!!   

NOW, DO SOMETHING GREAT AND GO WATCH "MINIMALISM" ON NETFLIX NOW!  

"Love people and use things, because the opposite never works"  - The Minimalist  

STAY SAFE IN YOUR RV!

Did you know that most RV locks can be opened with the same key!?  Yikes!  Before we hit the road into the unknown we switched out our main door lock and all of our cargo bin doors.  Kermit created a video for you..... hehehe! 

Today marks 9 weeks living full time on the road and about 14 weeks living in RV.  We just launched our new YouTube channel, PLEASE SUBSCRIBE and stay tuned for many more videos about life on the road, how-to videos, and random wacky stuff...  Thank you always for checking us out! Comment below and let us know you stopped by :)  

CHECK OUT OUR CHANNEL HERE >  CLICK HERE

LINK FOR LOCK WE INSTALLED, WE'RE LOVING THE KEYLESS ENTRY!!! NO MORE CARRYING KEYS EVEN WHEN YOU WANT TO GO FOR A QUICK WALK AROUND THE CAMPGROUND, YAY! 

AN UPDATE IN A NUTSHELL...

We’ve been on the road for 5 1/2 weeks now and the wifi scene is pretty much non-existent.  We’re reporting from a scuba diving center in Florida deep in horse country currently about an hour away from a Starbucks.   Quick summary to catch us all up > We departed York Pennsylvania on October 2nd driving straight down to Georgia to visit with Trinity’s family for a few weeks. It was so much fun spending time with family and Kermit was able to play live music 3 times within the first 2 weeks.  See fun slideshow below:

From Georgia we went 7 hours south to Sarasota, Florida.  We stayed in Sarasota Lakes RV Resort and met many nice people.  We had crazy troubles the first week on our own and away from family. Our dog Riley got super sick and didn’t eat for 6 days straight.  After many times to the Animal Hospital, IV’s, X-rays, etc.. we finally discovered he had a bad intestinal blockage.  **Shout out to Dr. Erin Siems at ANIMAL HOSPITAL at LAKEWOOD RANCH, Bradenton FL for your wonderful care and lovely staff **

The truck went into the shop for routine preventative maintenance and turned into a 4 day disaster.  But, aside from those troubles we visited some beautiful places and celebrated our 3rd Anniversary :)  

While is Sarasota area we explored Siesta Key, Anna Maria Islands (we loved Bradenton Beach), St. Petersburg, Lido and Venice.   Each place offered a different feel and it was so fun transporting our Pa registered motorcycles and riding through palm trees in Florida!  

For a few more days we’re parked in Florida and have been doing many kayaking adventures, our favorite so far has been exploring the Rainbow River in Dunnellon Florida .  We used Rainbow River Kayak Adventures and their awesome shuttle service that we highly recommend.  If you ever do this, we encourage you to paddle upstream from K.P. Hole launch to the spring head as they suggested, it’s the most beautiful waters!  

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED OR DONE IN THE FIRST 5 1/2 WEEKS ON THE ROAD? 

-- WIFI is like gold! 

—  Now that we’re in the south we cooked ALOT of boiled peanuts (you may say “eww” but you don’t know what you’re missing! )

— Don’t always go for the expensive resorts/campgrounds thinking the will be better. Our last resort was half the prices of the surrounding ones and it was super nice! 

— We miss friends and family… we also miss Lebanon sweet bologna, cooper cheese and TROEGS beer! 

— We both kayaked in the ocean for the first time, beautiful!  

— We kayaked down the rainbow river in Florida and didn’t get eaten by an alligator!  

— We’ve realized that all the hard work and planning, weekends we missed having fun is now paying off on this trip. This has been a very rewarding experience and we feel very grateful that we took advantage of having the opportunity to achieve this. 

— Almost everyone we’ve met in Florida is from Pennsylvania! 

— We need more Verizon Data!! hahah We blew through data in just a few days and I was not even working! 

STAY TUNED FOLKS! We’ve been shooting videos and starting our fun YouTube channel soon.  Also, we do daily instagram videos and post,if you don’t have an account it’s easy and free to join… we’re listed as @kermitandtrinity.  

Thank you for your love and support, it means SO MUCH to us.  PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW AND LET US KNOW YOU STOPPED BY!  :) 

HOUSE TOUR! WANNA SEE INSIDE THE CAMPER?

Come on in! Wipe your feet at the door and take a tour of our 280 square feet of living space that we now call HOME! We've done many renovations (before and afters coming in another blogpost)   Our home is a 35' 2009 Keystone Fuzion Toy Hauler.  The rear 10 feet is a garage for our motorcycles and kayaks.  We're hauling this beast with a Chevy 3500 duramax diesel with Allison Transmission.  We've done alot to beef up both (we'll get into that another day) 

 Welcome...... 

LEAVE US COMMENTS BELOW!!!! >>>>>>  We would love to hear your feedback!  Did you do renovations to your RV?  Could you see yourself living like this?  Do you camp alot and have cool places for us to check out?  Let us know!   THANKS SO MUCH FOR STOPPING BY AND SAYING HI! 

DAYS BEFORE THE BIG LAUNCH...

[ From Trinity ]

It took weeks to organize and throw even more stuff out! 

It's surreal. Are we really doing this? ... Did we really just get rid of 95% of our belongings? ... Are we living in 280 square feet, like all the time!? ...   YEP!!! IT'S HAPPENING!! I kept asking myself this for a while after we moved out of the house!  It kept feeling like we were just camping on Kermit's brothers property and any moment we were just gonna go back home.   I had to finish out my wedding photography contracts ( shout out for www.trinitywalkerkeefer.com // @trinitywalkerkeefer // ) here in York county Pa so we're all set to officially roll out October 2nd! 

I'm happy to report that we've settled in and it's going GREAT in the camper! StephenRiley (pup) loves it because we're so close together.  I thought I would go into shock going from a 4 bedroom house and 6 acres to 280 square feet but it actually feels quite cozy.  The other part is it's super manageable.  For instance we now know where to locate every single item in our new home.  When you're living this small  everything has to be organized which means no more junk drawers or mystery boxes hiding in closets. Bonus.. I can sweep our living room floor in about 33 seconds!!! hahah Winning! 

We've done SO MUCH prepping for this trip.  Just in the past 2 weeks here's what we've accomplished on top of working full time jobs:  ** we'll be doing a breakdown post of installing most of these items and why you need them for your RV along with tons more of how we've altered the truck and 5th wheel*** 

• Installed Inverter with inside wall mounted display  (takes DC power from your RV batteries and electronically changes it to AC)
• 2 deep cell batteries
• Cam locks on cargo doors (PEOPLE! CHANGE YOUR LOCKS OR ANYONE CAN GET IN YOUR CAMPER USING CH751 KEY THAT COMES WITH MOST CAMPERS) 
• Outdoor shower hose for washing the doggie
•  Banks speed brake for the truck to drastically help slow the truck and trailer down steep grades - safety first! 
•  New front tires on truck
•  Allison deep dish transmission pan for truck ( to keep transmission running cooler)
•  Surge Guard surge protector with wall mount display (many camp grounds have unreliable power and this could save all of your electronics in your camper from frying! )
•  Toilet flush valve (just because it was leaking on floor, yikes) 
• Finished the backsplash in the kitchen with aluminum peel and stick tiles.  
• Mounted knife magnet to hang our knives (because the knife block takes up half the counter!)
• Installed storage with a tiny "kids dresser" from idea to hold office related items

We have done so much more to the camper and the truck to get ready for life on the road, we'll be doing an extensive post soon, stay tuned.  

StephenRiley gets to hang with his sister Lucy while we're here!  #twinning

Thank you so much for stopping by and following along our journey! Hit that contact button and let us know you stopped by or drop us a comment line below :)   You can also find more recent news on Instagram : @kermitandtrinity