Her Bohemian Camper Van - Tiny House Living At 58 Years Young

Hi, my name is Bev. I'm 58 years old. I currently live in my 2004 Chevy Express 1500 van. I've been living in it since November of 2020 and traveling around the country and I'd love to take you inside and show you around. This is my kitchen setup. I have an Apicool 55 refrigerator that I can access from the driver's seat or from right here. I made a couple of modifications in here just to keep things organized a little bit. I set a plastic shoe box in there that way I'm not having to dig everything out and I found that really helpful. I power it a couple of different ways. It plugs into the DC outlet in the car like the cigarette lighter charger or I can plug it in if I have shore power. All right this is my kitchen setup. It's set up with an electric pump on the back side and I can take you around and show you that in a minute but basically I just flip this switch and I have running water. I've got a freshwater tank back there and a gray tank and I'll show you that. I have five gallons in each of those tanks in the freshwater tank and the gray water tank. Five gallons of water typically lasts me about a week. So in the van I love having these different trays set up. So the kitchen counter space is so small that I have this extra tray here and it's like having extra cabinet space. I keep my stove tucked in down here. I just have a butane stove. I tuck it in here for traveling and it sets up right here on the counter just like that. I love this little butane stove. When I first got it I had it hooked up to a propane tank and it had a cord running out the back and I had a little setup back there but I decided that was too much of a hassle taking it apart every time I needed to put the stove away. So now I just use this canister of butane in there. That lasts me about three weeks and really seems to do the trick and plus it just makes it so easy to move it around and put it away. My morning coffee setup is pretty simple actually. I keep both of my cups right here. One of the things that I've learned about van life is I hate digging things out. Like if I have to move four or five things out of the way to get something I want it's super frustrating. So I've arranged the van so I have everything right within reach. So the morning coffee routine is pretty simple. You know the pan is right there. My coffee cup is right here. I fill it up with water, pour it in the pan and then I've got my coffee funnel and I'm drinking coffee in about two minutes. Now a couple of things about the kitchen is I really don't like clutter. I like things to be organized and I like to be able to find them when I need them and I don't have any real cabinet space for food. So what I did is I bought this box that just kind of sits down in the nook and I have it's like my little grocery compartment right here in the and I don't have to pull the box out to access it. I cut the sides of it right here so I can just lift it and access it like that. And then I found that wasn't quiet enough so I have another little box with food storage here. I would do the kitchen setup just a bit differently if I had it to do over again. The guys that built it didn't understand that I needed every square inch for storage so I would have put a cabinet door here on the front and I would have put a couple of even small drawers for storage. Let me take you around to the other side of the van and show you what that kitchen setup looks like from the back side. The kitchen setup back here is basically I have my freshwater tank here, my gray water tank here and then a little electric pump which is how the faucet actually works. It's pretty easy to change these two tanks out. Basically I just unscrew the lid and pull it out and dump it. In this tank I typically buy water because I use it for drinking water and coffee and stuff like that. I tend to do the dishes but more or less like I wipe it all out with a paper towel first so the dish is pretty clean so it helps conserve on water. I have a couple of things that I'd like to try out in the van. I haven't done that yet. I don't have a shower set up but I have the pieces for a shower set up. I just haven't tried it yet. So what I did is I bought this hose that'll snap onto the faucet and I was thinking I could turn the faucet around put that on but I bought this immersion heater and I was thinking maybe just take a five gallon bucket of water, heat the water up with the immersion heater and then slip it in this spot and that might work but I haven't tried it yet. This is basically my 30 amp cord storage. I hang it up right here and then tuck some of it in the pocket to take some of the weight off of that door handle and then I also have an extension cord here. I love these net bags. Like this particular bag has my dishrags in it and I can easily access it from the kitchen there. I thought it was important for me to have a pretty decent cell phone signal wherever I'm at so I had a weboost installed and I have it hooked up a couple of different ways. So when it's plugged in with this one is when I'm plugged in with electricity. So this one runs off of electricity. It's hooked up into an outlet right in here and when I don't have electricity I plug the top one in and that's connected to my car battery. The electrical outlets that I have in the van are tucked in right back here in this nook. So I have an electrical outlet right here and then I have another one back in the back of the van. I also rigged up an extension cord so I can plug it into my jackery so everything can pretty much work off the jackery also. The storage nook right here used to have a television in it. When I originally got the van we took the television out so now I use it for storage. This is a starfish photo that I took about three weeks ago and had it printed and I thought it was perfect for that little nook. But basically in here I have a little bit more food storage right there. I also have a bigger skillet for cooking and a few more dishes right there. It holds quite a bit actually. I have a few more cooking utensils. I have baggies in here, potholders, all my goodies. Then I tuck it all back up just like that. This is the toilet. I have a love-hate relationship with it. I love being able to use it in the middle of the night to get up and go to the bathroom. I hate emptying it but I'm glad it's here. I wouldn't trade it for anything. So basically it's a cassette toilet. I made this pretty little cover for it. It also doubles as a footstool when I have the seat turned around and when I'm doing morning coffee I sit here and have my whole setup right here at my fingertips. I got divorced about five years ago and really had an opportunity to recreate my life. I found myself with a consistent revenue stream, no job responsibilities and limited family responsibilities. So I created this crazy list of a hundred things and I began traveling around the world checking things off my list. In March when COVID hit I was in Africa on a safari and the Kenyan government sent everyone home. So that ended my international travel obviously like everyone else's. My best friend had this van and she started the project. She started the conversion but then decided she didn't really want the van. She already had another camper so she called me and she says, Bev would you like to buy my van? And at first I wasn't really too sure about it and she says, just come camping with me and try it out. So I came camping with her and spent the weekend in this van and just fell in love with it. It's like like I bonded with this van. I gave her a name. Her name's Jennifer Vaniston which kind of goes with my Brad Pitt pillow. We make Brad Pitt stops. This van, like one of the things my friend said to me is, isn't it crazy how the van changed your life? And it really did change my life. And this is my bedroom. I love comfortable things. I have a nice mattress in here. I have nice linens and nice bedding. It's important to me to sleep very comfortable. I think sleep is important and I love this big bed. And occasionally I'll have like my daughter will travel with me or I'll have someone else in here. So I felt like it was important to at least have a little bit of space for that to happen. I love remote controls. I have everything back here set up on two different remote controls. So if I want to turn the lights on in the mornings, all I have to do is push one of these buttons and I have two different sets of lights hooked up to this. Like bright lights and dimmer lights. And I can also reach them right back there when I'm laying down in the bed. This is my travel companion, Brad Pitt. He goes with me everywhere. He's a pretty agreeable travel companion and I never have to sleep alone. Storage space in the van is a premium. I keep a couple of baskets back here. Like I keep a little heater in this one, my robe in this one, another light back there. So that extra storage is really important and it's easily accessible back here. When I'm getting ready in the van, I found this little mirror and of course I blinged it out. It was a little too plain. But I just stuck the mirror up in a little, you know, nook there. A little space between the headliner. And so that's my makeup mirror for when I'm getting ready. I have more storage back here. And again, I like to keep things really organized. So I have my bath products and makeup and stuff right here on this side. And then I have all my extra cords in this basket. And then this one is like my glue gun and things that I use for crafting and fixing the van up. I have my disco ball because I think it's important to really love your space. I think it's important to wake up in here and feel good about it. You know, just because you're living in your van doesn't mean you have to slum it. It's like I wake up in here every morning and it makes me smile. I have this rooftop air conditioner installed. It works when I have the generator running or it works when I have shore power. And it's another item that's also hooked up on a remote control. I have my Opolar fan here, which is one of my favorite items in the van. It's a USB fan and it'll run for days off of a charge. Probably three days off of one charge. And I like that I can turn it and point it whatever direction I need to. And I also love that this fan is a clip-on. So you can move it around if you need to. I think that's super helpful in the van. So under the bed is my clothes storage. So basically I have two drawers. I love packing cubes. Again, I love being organized. So I have everything labeled. Socks, pants, that sort of thing. Basically my reasoning was bottom things on bottom, like shorts and pants and top things on top. So in the second drawer here, I have just t-shirts and tops and jackets and that sort of thing. And this drawer goes pretty deep. I actually have a lot of storage in these two drawers. On this side, I keep the Jackery tucked in here. It's pretty easy to get to when I need it. And then I also have a little bit more storage for things that I use in the van. Just like extra toilet paper and the chemicals for the toilet and things like that. The transition into van life wasn't that difficult for me. I already knew how important it was to travel light and to travel simply. I was already using packing cubes and traveling in one suitcase. So the two big drawers here in the van feel a little bit opulent to me compared to what I had. And plus it's nice to have, you know, my coffee set up here and my comfortable bed and my own pillows and that sort of thing. One of my favorite ways to camp is what I call mooch docking. So basically I camp out in my friend's driveways and just, you know, plug into their front porch. And they always invite me in. They always say, you know, come in and stay in our guest room. And I never do. It's like I'm much more comfortable in my space, in my van. And I really do feel like this is my home. Like this is my little tiny house on wheels. When I first got the van, the only shades that the van had was these little pull-up ones. And they're pretty good, but you can see they allow a lot of light and a lot of space along the sides. And I felt like I needed more privacy than that in here. I bought blackout curtains and cut them to size. I used Fabri-Tac to hem the edges of them. And then I made them pretty because that's important to me. So I have them basically just hung up here on ribbons. I untie the ribbons. And then I originally I had just squares of velcro, but that wasn't cute enough. So I cut them into heart shapes and glued them back on. And then I can just press the curtains, you know, tied up against the windowsill like that. And it turns the van into a little cave in here. Like there isn't any light leak now and no one really knows I'm in here. I like the little nooks here in the van. I keep toilet paper in here. I keep extra coffee and a few more little grocery items in here. I have batteries in this one and I have duct tape in that one because apparently that's important in van life. The overhead lights here are just the dome lights that originally came in the van. I just took a little trim and glued it around the edges of them. So it made these cute little chandeliers. This is something new that I added to the van. It's a shore power plug-in. The way that I used to have to do it was there was a hole in the floorboard of the van and I would run an extension cord through it to plug in. So this is a big upgrade for me being able to just come out here and plug in instead of laying on the ground doing that whole extension cord thing. This is the generator. I haven't used it much. I was boondocking out in Quartzsite, Arizona about three weeks ago and I did use it out there. I like having it. It's a quiet generator. It's handy. It'll run the air conditioning and it'll run the heater when I need it. It's on a swivel rack. I just pull a pin and loosen this and it swivels over here out of the way. Originally this rack was a scooter ramp but I actually had it modified and cut down smaller. It was too much weight and it was unnecessary to have all that extra on the back of the van and plus the old rack sat down lower and whenever I would go through a dip it would drag the ground. So I tease and I say my van got a butt lift so now I don't drag the ground when I go through those dips. Back here I have more storage compartments. I keep my hose in this water jug. It fits nicely in that little pocket. This is my dirty clothes hamper. I can access it from inside the van just tucking things in here or I can access it obviously from outside of the van and whenever I'm ready to do laundry I just pull it loose and I'm good to go. I have it attached here with a clothesline bungee which comes in handy for a couple of different things like this is a damp rag I was using to clean earlier so I have it clipped on here to dry and then I keep my backpack here for travel so if I want to jump on a plane and go somewhere this is also my suitcase. I've got plenty of storage up under the bed and that was intentionally designed this way so the things I need access to the most obviously I keep closest on this end. So the little bin here I keep my electrical cords and things like that in and then I've got two full storage bins back here and again I don't use these things a lot but I like having them in the van and knowing that they're here if I need them. And then on this side I keep my lawn chairs and my camping table a little camping table I keep my jack and my tools back here for emergencies and also right back here in this nook is the fuse panel for the electricity in the van. So a couple of things I've had to get used to driving the van I used to drive a Subaru Forester. The van is quite a bit bigger than the Forester is so I've had to get used to the extra length on the back of the van when I'm looking for parking spaces especially if I'm trying to parallel park somewhere that's a challenge and then I had an experience just a couple of days ago now I know to be careful when I'm driving the van like if I'm going in a parking garage like I'm fully aware of that but I stopped at a fast food restaurant three days ago and that air conditioner clipped the top of the warning like your van your vehicle shouldn't be any taller than this if you're going to go through our drive-thru. So the second that I tapped it I backed out and now I'm fully aware that I need to be careful when I'm going through drive-thrus also. I don't know how long I plan on doing van life. I love traveling in my van I don't want it to stop. My daughter has requested that I come to Missouri and help her for the summer. We bought a campground so she's managing the campground and it's the first year that it's completely up and running so I'll take my van to Missouri for the summer and help her with that project but I feel like I'm still going to be living in the van it'll just be at my campground. So thanks for coming out today and watching the van tour. I hope you got something out of it. If you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment in this video. I'll be looking at the comments and I'm happy to answer any of them. Thanks for being here. I appreciate you watching. We'll see you next time.