Adapting to vanlife
So, some of you have asked how we have adapted to vanlife, now that we are a couple of months in. In a nutshell: it has been a steep learning curve! It is stressful at times when we become keenly aware that we are winging it! We had never stayed in a motorhome before we bought one, not even to try one out for a night! And plus, we had arranged to rent the house out so there was no looking back, and we had a lot to learn! That’s a lot of exclamation marks, but this has been a period of surprises and discoveries!
Vanlife certainly makes you much more conscious of your energy usage – we are still finding our way around voltage and wattage and various ways of charging or using devices and other electrical equipment – and water usage too, both how much clean water we need and the storage & disposal of waste water. The amount of clean water we have, and the ‘grey’ water we are holding (water from the sinks), are noted in a digital panel above our door, so we have to keep an eye on that to make sure that we don’t run out of clean water or fill to capacity the grey water tank.
To date we have mostly stayed in campsites and motorhome stops which have electric hook up points, water facilities, showers, toilets and sinks, but further down the line we’d like to freewheel it a bit more. Our van has a solar panel and a leisure battery, but this doesn’t power the sockets. So we are looking into ways of adapting this to leave ourselves free from hook-up. The more experienced worldschoolers we have met wildcamp almost all the time and that’s our aim.
Living with less stuff was an aim for me for this trip and that’s going well, I’m finding. We’ve already had an additional two clear outs since heading on the road, offloading things which we thought we’d use but we don’t really need. It’s something other ‘vanpeople’ talk about. Interestingly, people don’t talk about wanting bigger vans; they often want smaller vans, even families with growing children. They just aim for a better use of space!
As for us, we have settled very well into our van. It’s cosy but gives us all we need. We’re got the hang of cooking full meals now, after a month of sandwiches! We use laundrettes which are commonly found here and are good value (and have adapted to three washes a week rather than ten!). We know how to fill up our LPG gas tank which provides the gas for cooking, but also runs the heating system and the fridge when we are not hooked up to an electricity supply – and we’ve used the BBQ for the first time. And driving on the right is ok now!