Although van life is increasingly popular — or at least increasingly visible, as the many people who ask if we “do the YouTube thing” prove — it’s still not well understood.
Short-term road trips make more sense to people: Sure, you can handle just about anything for a brief period. But can you actually fit two adults and one dog in less than 70 square feet for years on end?
The answer is yes, but that’s not where people’s curiosity usually ends. Here are the biggest questions people have when they learn that my partner and I have lived in a van for over three years.
Do you plan on eventually moving into a house or an apartment?
“Oh! You don’t have a house yet,” a new acquaintance said when she asked where our home was, and I replied that it’s just the van.
In truth, we used to own a house — but we sold it to afford our conversion build in 2023.
Many people find this backward. As property prices move further out of our generation’s grasp, I understand the assumption that full-time van life is nothing but a stop on the way to our real American dream.
Living on the road provides time and location flexibility we didn’t have in a stationary neighborhood, though — and with lower monthly expenses. We plan to keep it up for the foreseeable future.
Do you wish you had more space?
I won’t pretend it’s easy to fit everything we own in our van.
I literally cannot buy new clothes unless I get rid of something else. After we’ve stocked up on dog food, the too-full pantry might spit kibble bags on my foot whenever I open the door. Sometimes, especially when we’re cooking, our kitchen “hallway” becomes a bottleneck.
That said, being forced to think critically about what we keep has both made me more thankful for the possessions we do have and more convinced we don’t need more. Plus, everything is always within reach — it’s nearly impossible for things to get lost.
Beyond storage struggles, we don’t mind the tight proximity. After all, my spouse, dog, and I spent most of our time within laughing distance, even when we had a four-bedroom house.
How do you even stay clean?
Although we have a shower in our van, limited access to water fill-ups means we don’t rinse as often as we used to before we hit the road. And, of course, the floor of our van gets muddy with two people and one dog going in and out.
We’ve come up with ways to still stay clean, though. We use washcloths and wipes. We only go in and out through the side door, which has a dirt-catching indoor mat — and we often set up camp with an outdoor rug on the other side.
Opening our back doors quickly airs out any cooped-up smells, and our ceiling fan helps here, too.
Although we don’t have a washer or dryer in our home, it’s never hard to find a laundromat every couple of weeks (even if we do struggle to clear enough surfaces to drape clothes that can’t go in the dryer).
I’ll admit it sometimes feels weird to brush my teeth in the kitchen sink — in our case, our only sink — but it’s also great motivation to stay on top of washing dishes.
We’ve also started challenging the idea that “healthy” has to mean “super scrubbed.” My skin is actually clearer than it was pre-van, and my hair has adjusted to less-frequent shampooing.
Ultimately, van life looks different for everyone
Of course, living on the road can take multiple forms, and my answers to these questions aren’t the same as everyone else’s.
Different van lifers prioritize different things: Not every van has a full bathroom, for example. (Not having one was a dealbreaker for me.)
I love our version of van life, though — fewer showers, messes of laundry spread on the dashboard, and painstaking decisions about which belongings we can fit, included.
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