“If you focus on what you left behind, you will never be able to see what lies ahead.” – Gusteau, Ratatouille
How do we live in such a tiny space with all we need on a day to day basis? With alot of creativity, honest evaluation, and bad words. Mainly, we try to create storage space out of every available inch and corner of our little camper. Under the bed, under the couch, under the dog.
Removing the bunk beds was the only way we could survive as full-time travelers. We opened up that space and made a pantry and "closet". We had to. We have one real cabinet. The manufacturer thought it would be fun to give us two doors under the sink and call that storage. Only they put all the pipes inside and seriously restricted the space that was usable. Thanks Forest River. Very funny.
We had one cabinet for our 4 plates, bowls, coffee mugs, cups, and all of our food and appliances. Seriously. RV living requires a lot of space creativity and ingenuity, but Einstein himself couldn't figure out our one cabinet conundrum. Hence, demolition for repurposing. Quick aside for Non-RVers...weight is critical. We had to reuse all we took out to create the new space without adding any additional weight. I'll cover towing capacities and weight distribution in another post, but suffice it to say you can't add materials or extraneous stuff all willy nilly. Ok, where was I? Ah, getting rid of more stuff. Sob.
We had to pare down what we thought we needed several times before starting this do-over journey. Occasionally, we still do. I started with a pile of "absolutely necessary" items in the corner of our condo when we got our camper and decided to leave our stationary life behind. After several trips to drop these necessities at the camper door, it was starting to resemble a garage sale in the parking lot. I realized I was going to have to multiply my step count exponentially back up to the house and started taking those "maybe I can live without" must haves back up two flights of steps. Time to re-evaluate and pare down again. Back to the sorting board.
This happened several times before I got smart with the kitchen pile and carried one appliance down at a time. I made exactly two trips...air fryer and instant pot. Yep, that's it. The next pile I tearfully started was the "I might need this so I can't throw it away" stack. That pile too eventually dwindled and some items were forcibly pried from my fingers by my husband. When he went for my purse collection, I threatened him by dangling his favorite drill over the balcony so he understood how I felt. Trust me, he got it. Sadly, only two purses made the cut. I found out later that he hid the drill behind the mini fridge in the camper outdoor kitchen. Ass.
It's not easy. I'm not going to lie and say it is. RVing is hard, as is living with a severely limited amount of stuff. This wasn't even our first time minimizing. Technically, it was the 3rd. We started our RV journey in 2019 and had a huge garage sale to unload everything we had collected over the years. Our life then consisted of a 6x10 storage unit packed within an inch of the door not closing and what we could fit in our 36' Class A. That seemed ok for the 3 months we traveled until a freak onboard generator accident burned everything to the ground. We came out of that fire with the clothes on our backs and very little else that was salvageable. Lots of help from friends and strangers got us through that dark time. Thanks to the park manager, we were able to find a rental for the next few years while we tried to rebuild, refocus, and put together the remaining pieces of our scorched lives. And accumulate more stuff. Lots more stuff.
Fast forward 3 years and there I was on the floor of said rental sorting through said accumulated stuff I bought to feel whole again. It was painful and difficult, but the RV dream was stronger than my attachment to my stand mixer and Kate Spade. Although it was close.
Six months later, we are making it work with 7 outfits each including our shared tshirt collection. My daily skin and hair routine has been reduced to a great conditioner, one day/night moisturizer, and a collection of hats. Who knew camping hair was on trend?
Can we as a society live with much less? Of course we can...if we choose to live that way. It has to be a conscious choice you continue to make every day and every trip to Walmart. You have to be honest with yourself about what you're doing and why you're making these tradeoffs. We did and we still struggle with being more minimalist. Reducing our footprint, living simply...whatever socially responsible phrase you want to use to describe it. Doesn't matter when you're having to dig around water pipes to find your only tupperware lid.
Loved this. Really thinking about how smart you two are while we are packing. Don't know how you do it.