We closed the sale of our house today, and it’s been a bittersweet moment in our lives as we become homeless by choice.
We lived a dream life for nearly a decade. We purchased a house in the mountains, surrounded by trees and natural beauty – but not people. We were an hour from the nearest grocery store and 90 minutes from the nearest city.
There are memes made about how we chose to live. In the meme, they ask, “Would you move here and give up social media for a million dollars?” Well we did it and didn’t need a million dollars to do it. We lived where the deer and the antelope roam, but the cell phone signal didn’t.
We had the remote, secluded mountain life that others dream of… and today, we traded it off for a camper.
Home Ownership Comes with Complications, Too
Yes, we’ve sold our sticks-and-bricks house and committed to life on the road in a rolling rectangle with wheels. Are we crazy? Maybe. But if you’ve ever lived on a rural mountain property, you already know: home ownership is not all white-picket-fence dreams and sun-dappled porches. It’s more like dry rot, driveway erosion, and propane tanks that only run out at 10pm during a blizzard at Christmas.
So, in honor of this monumental milestone, here are some of the real reasons we’re choosing full-time RV life over the so-called “security” of home ownership — especially in the mountains:
1. No Instant Gratification… Literally
Living in the mountains means you’re blessed with scenic views and soul-soothing silence — and cursed with no delivery options whatsoever.
No pizza.
No DoorDash.
No Uber Eats.
Not even Amazon Prime.
Two-day shipping? Try two-weeks-if-you’re-lucky and you better pray your package doesn’t get rerouted to “Undeliverable” because your driveway scares the FedEx driver.
2. Everything Breaks. Always.
Owning a home means you’re never not working on it. Roofs leak. Windows warp. Pipes freeze. Septic tanks burp up unpleasant surprises. Even your “low-maintenance” appliances conspire against you the moment you dare to take a weekend off.
Our cooking range once tried to kill us with a carbon monoxide leak.
And just when you think you’ve fixed everything, you realize nature has other plans. Spoiler alert: Chipmunks will destroy more insulation than you think, and if a squirrel wants in, it will get in.
3. The Grocery Gauntlet
“Oh, just run to the store!”
…Said no one who lives an hour and a half from the nearest grocery store, one lane road, mountain pass, and two elk crossings away.
A “quick” grocery run is a full-day commitment complete with weather window calculations, extra fuel, and a detailed route plan like you’re prepping for an excursion on Everest.
And don’t forget the cooler. You’re not coming home in time to keep your ice cream frozen or your edibles from melting.
4. Fire Season is the New Anxiety Season
If you’ve never lived through a Red Flag Warning, count your blessings.
The moment those words hit your weather app, your brain spirals:
- Do we have enough gas?
- Where’s the fire?
- What direction is the wind blowing?
- Should we pack the animals? The heirlooms?
- Wait — did we pay last month’s insurance premiums?
Fire season isn’t just scary — it’s existential. There’s nothing like standing on your porch and sniffing the air like an amateur meteorologist trying to decide if it’s campfire vibes or an incoming apocalypse.
Once you’ve experienced a wildfire, you’ll never look at a campfire the same.
5. Rodents, Rattlesnakes & Random Power Outages
Country living means cohabitating with the entire cast of a National Geographic special. Every critter wants in — and some of them will succeed.
You will:
- Battle mice in the closets.
- Scream when you lift the toilet lid and find a spider that could rent a car.
- Lose power randomly for “reasons” that no utility company can explain.
Bonus fun? When the power goes out, so does your well pump. That means: no lights, no water, no flushing, and exactly zero fucks given by the utility company.
6. Snow Removal = Full-Time Job
Living in the mountains sounds dreamy until you realize snow is your new boss, and it’s an overachiever. Luckily for us, we didn’t have full-time jobs or deadly commutes… so we would wait it out. But when you get with four feet of snow, you might wonder if you bought enough groceries to last.
You will shovel. You will plow. You will beg your truck not to slide off the icy roadways. You will learn to identify snow types like Eskimos and know exactly how many inches = cancel all plans.
Oh, and surprise storms? They’re just the universe reminding you who’s really in charge. The weather report may call for clear skies, but when it’s 44 degrees and you’re at 9,000 ft. snow and graupel are not your friends.
7. Isolation Is a Double-Edged Sword
Sure, the solitude is lovely… until you need a neighbor. Or a mechanic. Or a tow. Or a plumber. Or an emergency room.
Out here, it’s just you and your YouTube degree in DIY survivalism. Hope you watched that “How to Thaw a Frozen Pipe with a Hairdryer” tutorial before the storm knocked out your internet.
Have an emergency? No worries, it’ll only take an ambulance, the fire department, or the sheriff 20-30 minutes to come to your rescue – and they’ll likely show up with an attitude because they’re a volunteer that you just got out of bed at 2am.
8. You’re Always Behind Schedule
Rural life operates on mountain time, which is code for: “Nothing is on time.”
Contractors don’t show. Deliveries disappear. Mail takes a sabbatical. And don’t even try to schedule anything official like permits, inspections, or DMV renewals unless you’re prepared for an all-day wait.
So, Why are We Going Homeless by Choice?
Because freedom.
Because we’re tired of fixing things that break so that we can sit still in one place.
Because we’d rather deal with small, manageable chaos on the road than big, overwhelming chaos in one location.
Because we want to wake up in the desert, fall asleep by a river, and have the world as our backyard.
Most of all, because after years of doing everything “right” — the house, the property, the work — we realized something:
Home isn’t a place. It’s a choice.
