Five Adjustments We'll Face When Full Time RV Living!
Hello my beautiful friends! These past few weeks my family of five and I have been shlepping around, getting ready for RV life full time! We recently moved out of our apartment, and are one step closer to officially moving into our 36ft travel trailer! If you missed it over on my YouTube channel, I made a Q+A video on how we came to the decision of tiny living that you can watch HERE, as well as an empty RV tour that you can watch HERE! The feedback in the comments section was lovely, and I'm so glad that many of you enjoyed it! I'll also be uploading a video of us moving our things into the RV as was requested on my Instagram, so please make sure that you SUBSCRIBE! In today's blog post, I thought I'd share five adjustments our family will have to make upon entering full time RV living! If you're an RVer, feel free to share in the comments below what you've learned in response to these adjustments. I hope you enjoy!
1. Living in CLOSE proximity to neighbors
When you're hopping around different RV parks, or campgrounds, your neighbors are never the same, and there’s great potential to make a lot of friends! I actually find this somewhat comforting because I figure if you get stuck next to a neighbor that you don't particularly mix well with, you can at least find peace in that you won't be near them forever! I often wonder how some neighbors may be when it comes to respecting others privacy and boundaries in RV parks and campgrounds? Since RV's can sit quite close to each other, I hope we can still enjoy our outdoor area of our RV without others crossing into our space, and unintentionally invading our need for intentional family time! We'll have to be more proactive of kindly setting boundaries when it comes to maintaining the lesser personal space that we'll have to enjoy.
2. Potential noise issues
Being that the walls of an RV are more on the thin side than those of an apartment, or a home…I hear it's not uncommon to hear...EVERYTHING. We plan on continuing to use our kid's sound machine at bedtime in hopes of keeping out any loud sounds, as well as crossing our fingers that our own kids won't disturb anyone else in the park!
3. Pulling our HOME ourselves
For those wondering, we don't have an RV that you drive from the inside. We have a travel trailer that hooks onto the back of our truck and is pulled from behind us! Unfortunately, travel trailers have a reputation of being a bit more difficult to pull due to swaying, unlike fifth wheels which are rigs that cover the bed of the truck, and are known to pull easier. Thankfully, there are certain hitches that can lessen the sway to make pulling a travel trailer more stable and effortless. No doubt, it's a positive to be able to bring your home with you wherever you go! I imagine it’ll be very surreal, and maybe a bit nerve wracking the first few times we pull our HOME and everything we own in it!! We haven't had to move it yet, but we will definitely let you know how it goes!
4. No laundry machines in RV
Laundry will also be a definite adjustment! Having come from apartments and home ownership where we've been blessed to have laundry machines in our living space, RV living will bring about quite the change! Of course, RVs with laundry hookups do exist, but they also tend to be pricier because space is PRECIOUS, and with larger RVs comes more space at a greater cost. Instead, our family decided on a more affordable travel trailer that didn't have laundry hookups, with the possibility for them in the future. In the meantime, we've decided to entertain on-site RV laundromats once a week, and if that's not doable, buy a portable washing machine, and if that doesn't work, install some washer/dryer hookups! We may have to get creative here and there, but we're up for the adventure!
5. Handling our POOP!
Homeowners and apartment dwellers indeed have it made when it comes to poop. In fact, after this lifestyle, I’ll probably never take residential toilets for granted again! In a stick and bricks home, you can flush that #2, no questions asked, and go on with your life. As RVers, we will have to be more "in touch," and intentional with our poop, literally, haha! We will have to manually empty...CORRECTION...my sweet HUSBAND will have to manually empty our black tank where our poop is stored! ;-) We’ll also have to use special biodegradable RV toilet paper, (not your typical plush toilet paper that you’re probably familiar with)! If you're interested, I can always do an in depth video specifically on poop, RV bathroom maintenance, and what that all looks like! (Not THAT detailed, haha!) It'll probably be a little "crappy" if you ask me, but let me know in the comments below! :-)
I hope you all enjoyed an inside look at five adjustments we'll have to make once we move into an RV full time! Have you dealt with any of these adjustments, or would you have other concerns moving into an RV? Let me know! I hope you'll continue to follow along our RV journey, and be encouraged that you're not alone when it comes to any adjustments that you and your family may have to make in the near future! Adventure on, my beautiful friends, adventure on!!
Cool, Calm, and Collectedly Yours,
