Independent overland travel through Africa in a Unimog called Moglet

Like lots people, we live in a house. Its not a huge house, and its not a tiny house. And like lots of people, our house is full of 'stuff'. Far too much 'stuff'. It amazes me just how much 'stuff' the two of us have managed to accumulate.

Before we head off into the wild blue yonder, we're planning on renting the house out. Partly because the housing market at the moment is pretty bad if you're trying to sell (and rumour has it, its likely to carry on its steady decline for another 18 months or so yet), but also for Justin (as in 'just in case'...). Like most people going on an adventure I imagine, we're really hoping its everything we hope its going to be and we have a fantastic time. But, being the realists/cynics that we are at our ripe old ages, we also like the idea of the safety net sitting back in the UK. We're in the fortunate position that rental income will cover the mortage and whatever odds and sods of bills that hang about for us in the UK, so it seems daft to sell up if we dont really need to. Fingers crossed, we'll be away long enough for prices to recover, and when we come back we'll sell up and go start a sheep farm in the Lake District, or race huskies in Canada or something instead!

So, before renting the house out, we need to empty it. No doubt some will go to the charity shop, some in the bin, some parcelled out to relatives, but most of it will need to go into storage. And isnt that a frighteningly expensive thing! I had no idea, until I started looking - a box thats a similar size to your average single garage is likely to set you back anything up to £150 a week - and thats really going to rack up if we're away for a couple of years! Plus there's the added complication that I really dont see our furniture etc fitting into something that small... :-(

September Update - Plans have changed slightly, and we're now looking to rent the house fully furnished. Personal stuff will go into the loft, but essentially we'll leave everything pretty much where it is. An article in the weekend papers a little while back summed it up nicely - its apparently cheaper to rent a flat in Mayfair than it is to rent storage space! Why people dont just rent an empty house and use it instead, I'm not sure...

October Update - more plan changes on the horizon! We've had a couple of agencies round to vet the house and give us their thoughts on renting it out. All have been unanimous in their views that an unfurnished houe will let much quicker than a furnished one. And not only that, but having the furniture in it doesnt even add anything to the montly rental amount! So we've kind of decided to put it on the market for a week or two as it is at the moment, but make it clear to prospective tenants that we're open to discussions on the furniture. From a hassle perspective, leaving it pretty much as it is is the preference. However, I have managed to find a storage company about 10miles down the road who can rent us a 20ft container for around £90 a month, so its looking like a more viable option if we havent found a tenant in a fortnight or so...

November update - so much has happened since the last update, I dont really know where to start! Bottom line is we found a tenant, nothing went into storage as he wanted the house furnished, we used the loft for odds and sods, and moved out on the 15th November!