What no one tells you about living in a campervan

If you think you have a good idea of what it’s like to live in a campervan the below post might change your perspective.

I imagined the dream life. Non-stop travel. Never ending freedom. Don’t get me wrong… campervan life is all of these things but below is everything that no one told us about living in a campervan.

You will drive a lot. Although this seems obvious I can’t stress enough how much of your day it takes up. Sometimes we hit the road at 10am and don’t arrive to our destination until 7pm due to long distances, toilet breaks and tourist stops.

Chores still exist. We do dishes three times a day, wipe dust off surfaces daily, vacuum and sweep every second day and washing becomes 10x more difficult when you factor in trying to hang two weeks worth in one go.

Your life will revolve around food. You will find yourself constantly planning your next meal and sometimes the supermarket is the most exciting part of your day.

Your bed will be small. Our ‘double’ bed is 20cm wider than a single bed. I am not tall and my toes touch the end. Mitchell is forced to lie diagonally for a comfortable sleep. From research we have found even expensive motorhomes have compact beds so this is inescapable.

You will start dressing like a hobo. Because of space your clothing choice is limited. Your clothes won’t match or you will default to wearing the same thing every day.

You will get bored. Often you have no power or internet for several days. Reading will quickly become your least favourite past time and as a result you will find yourself aimlessly day dreaming about what you’d do if you won lotto or what it would be like to be a contestant on Survivor.

You will spend every minute of every day with one person. You will have no privacy. I could talk for hours on this topic so it constitutes another post altogether.

You will spend a lot of time in McDonald’s. We often waste away three hours every second or third day. Not for the food… Macca’s is purely used for wifi, toilet and coffee purposes.

You will hardly shower. We have a 50L water tank conserved for drinking water, dishes and brushing teeth. Showering at campgrounds is a luxury which is usually every third or fourth day.

Campground showers will become your best friend and worst enemy. You start to appreciate hot soapy water so much that you are willing to press the timed button 65 times in order to get your 10 minutes worth of cleanly goodness.

Things will break. This is probably because our van is an old but we are constantly coming up with innovative ways to fix things which usually involves duct tape. Our bumper has fallen off on the highway at 100kph, our step fell through the floor, the bed hinges constantly fall out of the roof. We have also been towed, visited four separate garages and even been forced to spend the night in a garage waiting for parts to arrive.

You clean up your own piss. This is if you are lucky enough to have a toilet. It must be emptied every second day to avoid a foul urinal like stench wafting through the van and seeping in to your clothes and food. Emptying the toilet also often involves unsightly substances splashing on your hands and face.

People will stare. Particularly in small towns and on arrival to campgrounds. Most likely because our van looks like Barney’s magic school bus and we are the youngest campers by about 30 years. We have also had people write down and snap sneaky photos of our number plate. Why? God knows.

You will wish you had friends. You spend 24/7 with the same person and most other human contact is broken conversation divided by two different languages.

Your belongings will be treated like the white flakes in a shook up snow globe. While driving the fridge and cupboard doors constantly swing open and their inhabitants are strewn all over the floor forcing the passenger to manoevre themselves around a high speed moving vehicle to rectify the situation.

You will develop a weird connection with your van. It feeds you, shelters you, keeps you warm and houses all your belongings. You will most likely give your van a name and speak to it as if it is it’s own person.

You will get used to all of the above. Living in a van will eventually become your normal way of life. You will fall in to a routine and deal with all of these nuisances everyday without complaining. I definitely would not give this journey up and am certainly not ready to sink back in to the comforts of every day city life.

To hear the other side of the story, watch out for my upcoming blog post ‘The best things about living in a campervan’.