My family of 4 moved from a house to a 400-square-foot RV. Here are 5 things that surprised me most about the experience.

• My family of four sold our 1,700-square-foot house in Florida and moved into a fifth-wheel RV.
• Getting rid of most of our belongings was easier and more rewarding than I expected.

My family of four moved from a 1,700-square-foot house to a fifth-wheel RV that's a fraction of the size, a decision that drastically changed our lives.

In 2014, my wife and I were falling behind on mortgage payments for our house in Florida, and our paychecks weren't covering our family's monthly expenses.

For a full year, we stuck to a tight budget and worked many part-time jobs, which allowed us to pay off over $60,000 of debt. We were on such a high after paying off everything except the house that we began researching more affordable living options.

We considered moving into a shipping-container home or a yurt before I stumbled across an RV tour on YouTube. Hours later, my eyes were bloodshot, and I had a search history full of RVs. I was convinced that RV life was in our near future.

A year later, we purchased the exact truck and 400-square-foot trailer that we'd glued on our vision board. Here are some of the most surprising things about the experience.

Getting ready for the move was a lengthy process

We moved into the RV and immediately began downsizing. If something didn't serve us, we threw it into the yard-sale pile.

After cramming our few remaining possessions into our new home on wheels, we settled in and stayed put for 10 months while my wife and I figured out a plan to exit our jobs.

We soon found out that it wasn't just our careers we were leaving behind — we were also leaving behind life as we knew it.

RV life was a challenging adjustment, and it led me to reevaluate my priorities

A week after resigning from our respective jobs, we said our goodbyes to friends and rode off into the sunset.

My career as a fireman taught me to follow protocol and orders. Though the job was rewarding, these skills were a far cry from the self-directed mindset that I needed to survive on the road. My wife, who's more disciplined and entrepreneurial than I am, adjusted much better to RV life than I did.

Before the move, my identity was so wrapped up in my profession that I felt lost when I wasn't working as a firefighter anymore.

It wasn't until I leaned on my family that I realized my life purpose is to be the best husband and father possible. Living in such a tiny space with three other people allowed me to get to know them very well. Though the space was smaller than our house, my love for them was growing larger than ever before.

Embracing a slower-paced life outside of the rat race gave me a lot of time to think. I learned that how I earned a living was much less important than why I earned a living.

I adopted a more minimalist, slow-paced lifestyle

We were forced to adopt a minimalist lifestyle solely due to the physical limits of what our RV could safely handle, but having fewer possessions to worry about also felt like lifting a huge mental burden off of us.

In my opinion, minimalism isn't just about tangible objects. It also became about opting out of the constant demands that society used to place on me.

When I wasn't on the clock at work in Florida, I was often on the clock with family and friends. I was spreading myself thin trying to please everyone. Even though there are a few things I do miss about living in a traditional house, the trade-offs just aren't worth it in my opinion.

Taking pressure off of myself to do everything and be everywhere has opened my eyes to a different way of living, and that happened when I moved into the RV.

We debated calling it quits before we met other people living and traveling in RVs

When we moved into the RV, I thought we were trailblazers. Unbeknownst to me, there were countless other families already living in the vehicles.

For a year, we traveled around the country by ourselves and moved locations every four or five days. We were exhausted, missed our friends back home, and considered exit strategies.

Then, my wife found an online community promoting a family RV rally, an event in Florida for people living on the road. At the gathering, we met families that had been traveling for years and had truly made the road their home.

It's a concept that I still sometimes struggle with, but I've never known a tighter community than the nomadic one I've met through RV life. We left that weeklong rally with plans to caravan with several other families.

RV life might seem isolated and lonely, but we're rarely on our own

After years of living on the road, I've almost come to expect chance run-ins with our nomadic friends. We've recognized familiar faces in the desert, in national parks, near Mexico City, and at campgrounds.

Even though the RV community has grown significantly since the early days of the pandemic, it's still a relatively small movement. So, you can imagine my surprise when I heard someone call my name in a rural grocery store in Kansas.

There are an infinite number of things to see and cities to tour, but we've learned that doing so is always better with friends.

In our fourth year of full-time travel, we set out to caravan more often with like-minded people, and it's made all the difference.

My wife and I have found our people, and my kids have become friends with their peers, dissipating my concerns that they weren't getting enough socialization. We now like to travel with several families at once and pull away whenever we need a break as a family.

There's no such thing as a perfect life, but the life we've created for ourselves on the road — with its challenges, adventures, and surprises — is the closest I'll ever get to one.