How to stop rattles in your motorhome - Motorhome / Caravan Tips, Tricks & Improvements

I've been left unattended in charge of the motorhome. I'm all on my own. I don't get to do this very often. I've been left unattended in charge of the motorhome and two classic motorbikes. I'm in an empty motorhome. There's nobody else here. It's amazing and very, very rare. The one thing I am going to do while I've got the opportunity is go through all of the cupboards and sort stuff out. And I thought at the same time I would show you how we stop rattles and crashes and bangs on the motorhome as we're driving along, because that's one of the worst things that we had to learn was how to stop everything clinking and making noise. So I hope it helps. Come and see what we do. So I'm going to start with the bit that's everybody's bugbear, which is the galley. And as you can see, that's our galley area and our fridge. But I'll start at the top and I'll work my way down. So cupboard number one. I'm quite excited. I'm not entirely sure what we're going to find. This is our condiments cupboard. We have several of these plastic tubs, which are brilliant for keeping everything together. So I'll take them down one by one and show you what's in them. So in this one, we have a sugar. You can't really see that on the bike, can you? We have sugar, tea bags and coffee, all of which need refilling. We also have a couple of other different types of tea, hot chocolate, very important, and some vitamin tablets. That box there is really quite well packed. If I shake it, there's very little rattling. Admittedly, those tablets do rattle, but not a lot. But those ones hardly rattle at all. So next box is the one underneath it. And then this one here, I have a couple of spare container tubs. And this here is our salt and pepper. So what I've done is I've just put one of those cloths in between them. And if you shake them, they don't make any noise. This tea towel here is doing a very important job. Without it, it would move. I've literally just rolled it up, popped it in there, and I've kept it low so it's the same height near enough as these containers so that this box sits on top neatly in that one. So they sit in there quite well. This is all our random utensils that we use fairly regularly, actually. OK, it was way too hard doing that one handed. So what I do is we have a lot of this non-grip stuff all over the place, and I alternate a utensil that's been wrapped up in non-grip stuff with a utensil that hasn't, pack them in tight, and then the condiment that we use on a very regular basis go down the sides. So they're all in there, they're all in there. And the trick to things not making noise is to pack them in tightly. Now this whisk would rattle against that. So all I do is I wrap that, wrap that up in there, and that puts in there. That's not too bad in there. And last but not least, the tin opener that goes in the top. Last one to come down is this. Now we got a new thing the other day. We got a kitchen roll holder, and the kitchen roll holder has a little box on the top there. So I'm going to put our scrubby stuff and our cloths all in the top there. Also got a random bit of non-slip which will go in there. So in this box now is just going to be washing up liquid, ketchup, very important, and soy sauce, as you do. Now as you can see there's a lot of room left in that and they'd move all over the place. So I'm just going to take another one of our tea towels and pop that in there. And because they're plastic they won't make too much noise. So that is cupboard number one tidied up. Okay cupboard number two. This is plates and a random min bag. So what we've done in this cupboard is I've put everything into one massive box. I bought these, these are to hold spices, but it came in a pack of like 24 and I got a bit intimidated. I haven't actually put them up yet. So in this random box of goodies we've got three side plates, bearing in mind there's generally only three of us, and between each one there's a layer of thin cardboard. We've got a whole stack of plastic plates when we're traveling and just can't be bothered to wash up. I've got three bowls that again what we've done is we've put some paper plates between them. If I take one out you'll see that that's a paper plate that we've folded into the shape of a bowl. Push it down and then the next one stacks on top of it and they don't clink because these are proper, they're melamine, but they feel like china. That one goes in there and then the third one goes on top of that. Now in here we've got three pasta bowls, a lot of people like why do you need pasta bowls, but they came with the set and they're really pretty. And then at the back we've got three big plates, one two three. So that is actually not too bad, it looks a bit of a mess but that's mainly just because there's an awful lot of tea towels in there. So if I stretch that one out a bit and then I'll put you down to do that. Those three go in there sideways and those go in there. And that entire whole box we bought a plastic box that fit in the cupboard. Underneath the box I've got two chopping boards and a pack of bin bags which is actually a really bad place for them. I might take them out because I keep forgetting they're there. But these are chopping boards that I use fairly regularly. All I do is I lift the box up and I can just pull the chopping board out steady. I'm going to put those bin bags down the side there, they can go in there. And I'll put those spice things that I bought back in there as well. And that whole thing, what's rattling on there? I think it's against the back which might be why I had a bin bag. So what I'm going to do with that, take my bin bag, shove it behind that plate, it's the plate at the back. There we go. And that's now making very very little noise. I mean obviously if you go over a bump you're going to get some noise. Okay under here we have our cutlery drawer and this cutlery drawer is the thing that caused us the biggest issues because it's cutlery. So here's what we did. The first thing that we do with all our cutlery is we put them into an elastic band and as you can see that holds them all together and actually stops them making too much noise. I've laid a tea towel on the bottom. I've also got a bit of this non-slip stuff, we use this everywhere. This stuff's quite thin and then I've got black stuff that's quite thick. You can see the difference I hope between the really thin stuff and the really thick stuff. I've got some of the thinner stuff and again I'm literally just wrapping it up, holding it tight together and putting it in the cupboard. I've done the same thing with the forks although I think we went out of elastic band so they are just stuck together neatly. I put a layer of this non-slip stuff, stuck the forks in there neatly and that all fits in there quite compact. On this side I've got two big serving spoons and I've also got our other spoons. Put those spoons in, tuck them in neatly because that is actually quite tight in there and then the other side of them, put those serving spoons, so they tuck in there too. That will then all fold over when we're travelling and then when we come to set off, tuck the tea towel in all over the place as tight as you can, fold it back on itself so it's quite tight on the drawer, tuck it in everywhere and if I rattle that drawer, it's not making much noise at all. Now if it does go a bump, you will get the odd clink but actually we find the plates clink more than that, that works really well for us. The next thing that we found that rattled incessantly was the oven. You've got this, if I take the kettle off, that rattled really badly and the glass screen that folds down on top of it, didn't rattle too bad but that underneath it, the two together, it was horrible. So what we do is our drainage mat, which is brilliant by the way, I think I got it from Asda maybe. Pick it up, again I'm doing all this one-handed, lay about half of that underneath, don't put that on if you've been using the gas burners to cook something because they'll still be hot when you have to wait a good half hour for them to cool down enough. So put it under that, fold it back on itself and then fold that down on top and that doesn't make any noise at all and that's great. The next thing that makes a lot of noise, our grill pan. So what we do with this is we have our oven mitt, keep it out and put it into the grill and push so that when we're traveling that doesn't rattle. Last bit in the actual oven itself, so let me move that over as you can see, we did a couple of things in here. First thing we did is we put these little rubber attachments, they'd stop you burning yourself on the hot shelf and we've got a couple of these, we cut them up so we've got one on either side and that means the tray can't move side to side, obviously it can move up and down but it can't move side to side. We've put a couple on there as well to stop the door clanking against it. Now you can hear there is still a residual movement, a residual noise and that does happen if you go over a big bump, there's very little we can do about that but what we've done, we have a little clip as well that shuts that but that still makes a noise. So we undo the clip and the other half of the oven mitt comes down into the oven, shut the clip tight, very tight now, that doesn't make any noise at all. We have a random cupboard in here which is really useful, sort of, I'll give it a six out of ten, it's sort of useful. This shelf here is good and this is what we put all our utensils in. Again we've applied the same principles that we applied to the cutlery, so everything is covered with a layer of cloth. Sharp knives should always be stored blade down, some naughty person has put it back in blade up. That's layer one, we've also got a lighter there in case our auto lighter on the oven isn't working for some reason. And then layer two here, I've got scissors, bread knife, very sharp knife, our tongs which are normally stored like that and another handy knife that we use on a regular basis. So how I would do that, I actually really want to make a foam insert, you put that in there, again blade down so you can't accidentally cut yourself, then put this tea towel over the top, cover everything up, bread knife, tongs in there, little knife in there, and last but not least the scissors. Everything is fairly separated and obviously the tongs are plastic, if I rattle that drawer nothing's clinking. Under here we have our bottles, so this is our drinks bag and we have these little fabric bits, we bought that I think it was a couple of pounds from Jessica's and that stops them clinking together when you're traveling which is really good and also keeps them standing upright and safe. So we've got a bottle of wine, two bottles of squash and space for another three bottles if you insist. We tend to keep our beer in the pack because again it keeps it secure and they don't really rattle. In that cupboard as well we have this shelf space which was for the grill pan technically but we've made it work extra hard and it stores all of this lot. So I'll show you what we've got, first of all take out the plate in your microwave and also here is the thing that sits on because they rattle like crazy if you leave them in while you're driving along. We have a chopping board, that's the one we use most. We have two oven trays and again they're separated by a line of the non-stick stuff just by rolls of non-stick stuff and we have a grill pan which I'm pleased to say is clean. We very rarely use our grill I'll be honest but it is there if we need it. So we start by putting the grill pan into the space and then we'll put our oven trays. Now the grill pan has this little cloth, tuck the little cloth in front of the metallic grill pan and the oven trays go in there and that whole thing doesn't rattle and again if you tuck that extra bit of non-stick in front of that it won't rattle against the side. Now these are quite difficult, this one's crazy because of the plastic, but the glass bit for the microwave we found quite difficult to store. We store it in between the two lots. It just goes in and it's so tightly packed that it can't really move and then last but not least is our chopping board which just goes down the side and that's all in there and you can hit it and it doesn't make much noise. So there we go guys I hope you found that little tour of our cupboards and how we stop things rattling useful. I hope you found a tip or two that you can use in your own van. If you have any other questions that I haven't answered as always let me know in the comments below and I will do my best to answer them for you. If you like the video give us a thumbs up, if you haven't already consider subscribing we really do appreciate it and until next time take care, safe travels, see you soon.