When people find out we live in our RV full-time, they are often astonished.  We look like such normal people!  How is it possible that we do not own a house?  Tom and I love not owning a house.  Our home on wheels suits us just fine at this point in our lives.  We are house-less but certainly not homeless.

But people who knew us when we lived in a big house on an acre of land think we must miss it.  They think not owning a house means we feel uprooted and they wouldn’t like feeling that way.  We do feel a certain sense of rootlessness, but it is a good feeling.  Wherever we go, we are home!  We have all our stuff with us when we travel.  Because we don’t have a lot of stuff, we appreciate what we have even more.  And we rarely miss the things we left behind.  The people – yes, we miss them – but not the things.

Our recent sojourn in Ohio made us think again of some of the advantages of not owning a house.  We raked lots of leaves, but we did it to help out family – not because we had to.  We put up Christmas trees and Christmas lights.  But we did it for others instead of at our own home.  We don’t have to pay utilities, a mortgage, or property taxes.  And we may not have much room to entertain, but other people make their houses available to us whenever we want.

So we raked leaves, did home repairs, cleaned up, and put up Christmas lights.  We took out the garbage, fixed a screen door, and went shopping for home decor.  Then we went back to our little home on wheels and were thankful, once again, for the freedom not owning a house gives us.