House Tour (of my tiny mobile house)

Traveling and living in a minivan for several months at a time requires a lot of organization, paring down, and choosing among necessities. Which of them is more necessary? I tried to keep as much as I could, and to that end, I've divided my van up into the same rooms or areas I have in my house.  I'll show you in the photos that follow.

Of course, the bedroom is the most important, since that's where I'll be spending 1/3 of my time;  to make the rest of the day the best it can be, the bed has to be comfortable. It's a regular twin bed with a gel foam mattress from Costco, and it's the most comfortable mattress I own!  Not bad for camping!  When I close up those curtains, it makes a very cozy little nest.

Under the bed is where most of the stuff gets stored. Let's take a look at all the room under there.

On the driver's side from the left, we have the junk closet, where all the occasional use equipment is stored: tarp, guy ropes, tent stakes (for the guy rope attached to the tarp), window screens and the magnets to make them stick. Next is the propane closet -- I normally use one tank every 3 days, so this is almost enough for a month. After that comes the liquor cabinet (it's so nice to end some of the days with a drink, and it's occasionally a way to meet my neighbors in a campground). After that is one of the pantries (there is another in the back); this is stuff I don't use very much, but it's nice to have it when I need it. Last of all is the empty (almost) closet that will get filled with stuff I want to bring home. The package is for a quilt store in Canada;  it's so much easier and cheaper to mail it from Canada, so I'm going to wait till I get there to mail it.

In front of those baskets are a portable gas grill and a 3 gallon water jug (it would be awful to be caught somewhere with no water).

Around the other side of the bed are 3 rubbermaid bins that slide underneath. They are the linen closet (towels), the clothes closet, (t-shirts and pants) and the coat closet.  I've got plenty of warm clothes with me -- a lightweight shirt, sweatshirts, a fleece-lined jacket -- I'm in no danger of being cold! (Plus there are a hat and gloves in another little compartment.) Up at the head of the bed is a narrow plastic chest of drawers to supplement the clothes closet.

That round "table"you see at the foot of the bed is actually the potty. It's a 5 gallon bucket with a toilet seat, and there's kitty litter in plastic bags inside. It's neat and clean, and easy to dispose of without any mess, and when it's necessary, it's really nice to have!

The other very important part of the house is the kitchen, which I have set up in the back of the van behind the bed. Before I decided how to set this part up, I scoured the internet for ideas and combined quite a few of them for my final product. I decided on a headboard made of pegboard that would hold all the utensils and pots and pans, leaving the rear well for a cooler, another pantry (this one gets used a bit more), a two burner Coleman stove, and the other miscellaneous bits and pieces that are necessary for cooking and eating outdoors.  For this trip I even managed to pack a TV tray table that fits in the back next to the bed, so that if it is raining, I can sit in there and eat, or work on my computer.

That white bin on the left in the photo says McGuyver on it. That's my McGuyver box, named by my son David when we went camping at the Grand Canyon last year. Whenever we needed something a bit out of the ordinary, I was able to pull it out of that box.  Extra batteries, screws, pegboard hooks, cable ties, toilet paper, bungee cords, carabiner hooks, tie-down straps, duct tape, WD40, empty food containers, you name it, it's probably in the McGuyver box.  Hopefully I'm prepared for almost any circumstance!

I fabricated some screens for the windows -- it can get pretty hot inside, and some nights it's to hot to sleep with the windows closed, but the bugs can be ferocious.  The back window screens are held on with magnets and the front ones go entirely over the top of the door, kind of like a pillowcase. It helps keep the inside bug free and, along with my battery operated fan, I can stay pretty comfortable.

There's almost all the entertainment here as there is at home -- my Kindle is full of great books, I have my iPad for games (words with friends ) and news whenever there is Wifi, and my computer to email and write the blog (and post whenever there is Wifi!).  My phone (which works in Canada!!) is full of audio books and music. There's no TV, but I'm learning to live without that.  I can charge everything with car chargers or my little inverter, so power isn't much of a problem either.

See, all the comforts of home, but a whole world out there to explore! It's going to be an exciting summer.