Minimalist Living- Downsizing to Full Time Van Life.jpg

We take showers in here once or twice a week and then the rest of the time we take our showers elsewhere. When we moved out of the house we started getting rid of so much stuff. We keep our laptops in here it just gives them a nice safe place while we're driving and it's padded. The monthly expenses in the van are on par with what we were paying just for rent where we used to live which was central Ohio. Hi we're Laura and Jor. Welcome to our van come on in to take a tour. Welcome to the inside of the van. We are here in the kitchen. So we've got a sink with hot and cold water and we've also got two big countertops in here. As far as countertop space goes we have a decent amount of counter space. We have a few kitchen appliances and they can all fit at the same time and I also have some space to prep and cut food so it's definitely sufficient for what we need. We have a one burner induction cooktop with a pot and a pan and then also we have a nine-in-one ninja foodie. It bakes, it air fries, it sautés, it pressure cooks. It does everything else that we need since we don't have an oven. So between the one burner induction cooktop and the foodie we can pretty much make anything that we want to make. We have an all electric fan so we don't have any propane and we have 620 watts of solar on the roof. We really try to stay in sunny spaces. We also can charge our batteries using our alternator. So we typically have enough power to make at least one hot meal a day in the van and then that's usually dinner and for lunch we make something cold or a salad. We have two toe kick drawers here. So the first one if they're just pushed to open this one has all of our laundry supplies and then underneath this side is where we have our cat food and our cat water and this is their eating and drinking area. We put these toe kicks in because they are just a great way to use every single little nook and cranny in the van and of course we're limited on space so we just wanted to really utilize the teeny spaces underneath the cabinets. This is our fridge. We can pretty much store a week to a week and a half's worth of food in here. It does have a couple of shelves as well as a freezer so we can have two to three freezer items at a time. Since we are in a van every space is the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom, it's all one in the same. So while we use this countertop for our kitchen and for getting ready we also call this our dresser area because it does store pretty much all of our clothes and then it also has all of our photography equipment down here in the bottom. We have a full-length pantry across from the kitchen. The one side sorts food but the other side instead of just it being a blank wall we decided to use the space and it is a full-length mirror which is great for getting ready. And right here we have the shower which I'll show you next. This is our Nautilus sliding shower door. It is self-cleaning and then in here we have a full wet bath. We have a shower with hot and cold water. The shower pan is 24 inches by 36 inches and we do not take the toilet out when we take showers. Typically we take showers in here once or twice a week and then the rest of the time we take our showers elsewhere but it is enough space to just kind of take like a navy shower really quickly and we are so glad that we put a full wet bath in here because after we get done swimming or hiking it's just awesome to have a nice place to take a really hot shower. We do have an airhead toilet. We would definitely buy the same version again. It has a vent that goes outside so there really is no smell. We clean the back portion out about every six to eight weeks and then the front tank we empty that every two to three days. If you were a single person you could probably empty it once a week. There are always plenty of trailhead restrooms and park restrooms that we find and it's very very easy to use. Outside of the bathroom we have this accent wall that Joran designed. We went with a black and white and green and obviously a light colored wood decor in here. We decided that we wanted something light, bright, airy and a little bit minimalist and this wall really goes along with the mountain motif that we have in the kitchen. Several years back we were living in a house and we were spending all of our weekends and all of our free time on the house just maintaining it doing fixer-upper projects and that kind of thing and we had a lot of conversations about kind of changing our lifestyle and spending more time traveling, spending more time outdoors. We originally wanted to build our own tiny house and move into a tiny house and for a few reasons that just wasn't really practical or in the picture for us at that time, Laura kind of suggested that instead of a tiny house why don't we just convert a van because then we'd be able to be in that small space with a lot less maintenance and upkeep but we'd also be able to freely travel around. At the beginning of 2023 is when we moved into the van full-time and we've just been traveling now for a little over about a year and a half now. When we decided to move out of the house we started getting rid of so much stuff. We had like a couple yard sales, we dropped a lot of things off at Goodwill, we gave away a lot of things. It really made us take a good hard look at everything that we had because we knew we certainly couldn't bring it into the van. It just allowed us to get rid of a lot of stuff that was kind of making us feel a little bit anxious and stressed so it just really helped free us up from the clutter and the things and and that was a really nice benefit to it. So this is the back half of our van which is basically the living area, sleeping area, and workspace for us. We have the u-shaped bench here and our swivel table which we can move. This is where we work throughout the day. It's also where we pretty much have all of our meals as well. We went with full length cabinets on either side up here so we have a ton of storage space which we're really happy with that we went ahead and maxed out all the storage we could get back here. We also have two windows on either side. They have sliders with screens in them as well so we get a nice cross ventilation during the day if it's hot and we can open them up at night to keep it cool in here. And this bench over here we keep all of our plumbing and heating so we have a 30 gallon water tank in there and we also have a hydronic heater. And then the bench on this side is where we house all of our electrical so we have four 100 amp hour batteries in there. We have a 3,000 watt inverter and everything for our solar. On this side we've got our little mini projector which we actually turn on and project onto this little section of the wall here so we can hang out in the back or lay in bed at night and watch a movie or tv shows. And on this wall we also have a built-in storage cubby so we keep our laptops in here it just gives them a nice safe place to stay while we're driving. It's padded we don't have to worry about them rattling around and they're also just quick and easy to access throughout the day while we're working or if we're cleaning up. Back here under the each of the windows we also built in some storage here we call these like our little bedside cubbies so it's kind of like having a little bedside table for each of us. We can tuck away cords and things like that and they just get covered up during the day with our cushions. When we're ready for bed we just take these cushions and the table put it all in place and we'll show you how we make our bed for the night. So this is the back of our van and right now we have it set up in bed mode. It's a really nice large bed it's about the size of a queen maybe slightly larger and we've got these four inch thick foam pieces the cushions that we use as a bed. It's really comfortable and we're really happy with the way it turned out. The bench bed conversion design is great for us because it gives us a nice large working and dining space during the day but then we we have all this space at night to sleep. Back here we also have some storage from the bench area. We've got our water fill port that goes straight to our 30 gallon water tank and then we also added this spray port back here so we can hook up a hose externally. We can spray things down outside if we need to or even if we wanted we could take an outdoor shower here. This door opens up and gives us access to a bunch of storage under here. That's where we just keep general cords and stuff for filling up the water tank and and all that. And under here we have a lot of long storage where we can keep like we have a telescoping ladder that helps us get up and clean off the solar panels or access the roof so we have plenty of space for that. And on the right side over here we just have a switch this is for our star link when we have that hooked up. We actually converted it over to 12 volt and we just threw that switch there so we can turn it off and on pretty easily since it does use quite a bit of power. Speaking of internet the other option we have is a wi-fi hotspot that we carry around and a weboost cell signal booster that is up on the roof. So we use the cell signal booster most of the time probably about 90 percent of the time but we also do like to boondock out in the middle of nowhere with no cell signal so having the star link which is new for us this year that's a great supplement to the cell signal booster as well. And then we also have an ac outlet back here in the back so if we need to plug anything in that we're going to run outside that's pretty convenient to have as well. The total cost of the van for us was right around $78,000 so we bought the van it was practically new for $40,000 back in 2021 and we put about $38,000 into it for the conversion. Monthly most of our expenses are right around $1,000 to $1,500 total. Most of that is gas. We also pay for our cell phone bill and Starlink now. Obviously we have groceries and insurance on the van and then we also have a monthly gym membership. The monthly expenses in the van I would say are pretty much on par with what we were paying just for rent where we used to live which was central Ohio. For work I do digital marketing for a hotel management company and that's my full-time job so we both sit down every single day nine to five. Joran's full-time job is working for our blog which is LoreJorExplore.com. We write about van life and lifestyle stuff, recipes, and then we have lots of travel guides. If you want to see a more detailed breakdown of how much the van costs we have a blog post up on our website. It breaks down every expense and on social media we share every month a lot of details on how much we're spending and what we're spending it on how it relates to van life. A few exterior upgrades we made to the van are an aluminus rack on the back there and to that we have mounted a Rover Vans expedition box. We use that to store we don't want to keep inside the van anything that's dirty so we have our leveling blocks and some traction devices in there things like that. We made a custom roof rack to hold our solar panels to that we also have mounted an exterior light bar so that's handy when we're setting up camp at night or need to see a little bit better outside and we did make a few suspension upgrades underneath the van so we added some super springs basically extra leaf springs and some bump stops those all help kind of firm up the suspension since we're a pretty heavily loaded van it's been a great improvement really so that makes it a lot nicer when you're taking turns. If you guys want to learn more about the van or the van lifestyle you can follow us on instagram at LoreDrawerExplore and you can also go to our website loredrawerexplore.com we cover the van build lifestyle stuff and also put out a lot of adventure travel guides. Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you on the road!