Must Watch Before Starting Van Life

Van life! If you guys have got an Instagram account and you spent any amount of time searching for hashtag van life or any of that kind of jazz on the internet you will realize how amazing this lifestyle is of living nomadically and having a forever changing view out of your window. I call bullshit on that. There are two sides to van life and it is our responsibility as van lifers to bring that dark side of van life to your attention. So in this video we're going to be talking about 10 things that you need to consider before deciding if the van life is for you. That's all coming up. Hi we're Ben and Leah and we are the team behind Kombi Life. Some of you might know us from our travel series where we travel across the world in our VW bus. It's very exciting you should check that out but that's not why we're here today. So yeah we're going to be talking about the 10 things that you need to be aware of before you start the van life and number one is trying to get a rig that is best suited for your lifestyle. Yeah for sure I mean if you're going to be spending time in cities you may want to think about if you want it to be a kind of a stealth camping thing perhaps a panel van or if you're going to be out in nature doing a lot of outdoor activities or you're going to be living in it in the winter time you need to really think about the type of vehicle that you want to have before you go out and buy something. Number two is deciding how long you're going to be living the van life for. You may be just a weekend warrior or you may be living in your van full-time for a long period of time. This will ultimately affect how you set up your vehicle perhaps you won't be needing a fridge if you're just there for weekends or if you're using your vehicle for a long period of time you're going to need more storage for like you know off-season clothes additional adventure gear surfboards and kayaks and that kind of stuff so how you're going to be using your vehicle is very important. Preparing a vehicle beforehand for either a long trip across the Sahara Desert or just a weekend trip down to the lake is going to change the style of your rig so that is very important to know. So number three is how are you going to make van life sustainable this is going to be your life is it just a travel thing are you going to pick up work as you go is your vehicle equipped to enable you to work and is it a comfortable place for you to come back from a traditional job or perhaps you're going to work as a digital nomad in which case you're going to need to set up your rig with solar and a sufficient battery supply to allow you to be able to work full-time off the grid and believe me we do that we do a lot of video editing the two of us work on our laptops a lot in this bus and we need a lot of power so that's a serious thing that you need to consider if you want to be able to make it sustainable and work from your vehicle number four is where you're going to sleep so knowing where you're going to sleep knowing how your rig is going to be set up for sleeping is really important you may want to be have a vehicle that's more stealthy so you can do a lot more urban sleeping or you can just go out and be out in the wild there's a lot of places you can sleep for free but knowing these beforehand will give you more confidence in getting into the van life you really need to approach this from a number of different strategies and it will depend on where you're planning to go and what time of year you're planning to go and all of that kind of stuff but it's something you seriously need to think about before you start the van life number five another thing that you need to think about before you start the van life is where you're going to wash because you do not want to be one of those smelly people that lives in a van down by the river staying clean is really really important guys I can't emphasize that enough it affects your health your mood and everything else really think about how you're going to stay clean are you going to be using wild washing are you going to have a shower installed in your vehicle or are you going to use public showers we've actually made another video about this so I recommend that you go check that out yeah this is a real deal breaker sometimes for people if they can't have a shower or a wash every now and then they're really not going to enjoy a van life same as our next point which is where you're going to poop okay everyone else apart from Leah poops it's my understanding that she doesn't actually poop where are you gonna poop guys this is another really important thing that can affect your mood your health and everything holding in is not good sometimes you are just gonna have to release a chocolate hostage make sure make sure that you have that in mind often we will camp in places where we know that we can get to a facility in the morning time we might go and make our coffee in a supermarket car park and then go and use their facilities straight afterwards or something like that or we'll go to a Starbucks in the morning or some other kind of coffee shop because we wouldn't want to be brand-specific if you don't want to do that you can like there are other options like having a port-a-loo or having in store toilet toilet there are lots of options even digging a hole in nature as long as you dispose of it properly that's probably a perfectly good way to do it please do not leave toilet paper we hate those people if you're watching and you leave toilet paper lying around I'm not gonna say bad words but that's how I feel about you yeah bury it yeah so it's really really important to keep regular on the road it's important for your health and happiness and that is going to allow you to do this van life properly yeah I think it's a deal-breaker for a lot of people it doesn't have to be a deal breaker there are options we've been doing it for many many years so just let the poop go next moving on the next point relating to the two previous points is how are you going to stay healthy and happy on the road seriously guys we're not joking when we tell you that van life is difficult I know it looks like a bum option to people that would never do it it can be really challenging always moving around you're going to have to think about how you can maintain this lifestyle so a couple of ways that you can do that is by equally balancing your time spent in the van with your time spent out of the van you have the biggest garden in the world make use of it try to think about what activities you're going to bring from your traditional lifestyle into your new nomadic van dwelling lifestyle getting that balance right is really important to making this lifestyle last really really important so you need to think about what hobbies and interests you can bring on the road that will keep you happy next point how are you going to deal with bad weather we did just say that van life is a balance between time spent in the van with time spent out of the van and when the weather turns you're kind of stuck in the van you get cabin fever right yeah it's really really hard I think that's one of the hardest things about van life is when the weather is just bad and constantly rainy and you just everything in here is wet and steamy and it's not fun yeah there are certain ways you can deal with the condensation and keeping warm in the van but these are things that you're going to have to consider beforehand because otherwise van life can be really miserable there's a lot of people that will come down to Mexico which is where we are right now in the van which is much better than dealing with snow up north there are people that do it yeah they're hardcore respect to you guys yes respect yeah so you're preparing a vehicle beforehand is really good to avoid those horrible days when you're just stuck and the water's coming through your windows so doing things like making sure that there are no holes and making sure that the windows are nicely sealed and also making sure that you have a good insulation it's really important to get prepared before you go on this whole van life journey number nine what is your escape plan once you've minimalized and sold everything and moved into your vehicle and taken across off across the world to conquer the planet how are you going to escape the van life once you're in this little bubble it's really really important to schedule time outside of the van guys any of the long-term van lifers that we know always spend a certain period of time with friends or family throughout the year a little blocks so they can have a break and keep the passion for van life going because it is pretty tiring living in this vehicle and living in a tiny space so we definitely recommend that you schedule time to be out of the van even if you feel like you're really enjoying it you'll just love it so much more when you come back to it after a little bit of a break you don't want to burn out because once you've burnt out he's probably not going to come back I let that happen to you number ten final points on a point is what are you gonna do in the ---- hits the fan it will happen believe me I'm an expert in this there will be breakdowns there will be hard times and you need to be able to plan and prepare yourself for those times they will happen one of the problems with living in a vehicle is that it gets a lot more use especially when you live in it with a hundred strangers like I did so your heavily used vehicle is likely to require more maintenance and potentially break down more often and when it breaks down you have not just lost your vehicle you've also lost your home so on the plus side you're you you're in a comfortable situation when you're on the side of the road you can put a kettle on have a cup of tea and be like oh well that's not so bad as us British people like to do on the downsides it is kind of life-stopping you need to like you can't just say I'll fix my car on a weekend it's something you need to attend to straight away so having a rescue plan is a really good idea if you're not mechanically inclined being mechanically inclined learning a little bit about the maintenance of your vehicle honestly like it makes you have so much more confidence in the places you can go if you know how to deal with some of the problems that you might encounter and it's not that difficult to learn I learned not knowing anything so you guys can learn too we definitely recommend that you have a backup plan for when the ---- hits the fan those are our top 10 things to consider about van life before you join because it isn't all as pretty as the Instagram feeds will have you believe it's not easy but it's so much fun if you can get all these down pat and you are prepared as possible then you will love van life so so much mm-hmm like we do we do if you want to know more about van life you can check out our book it's very useful a very interesting resource that contains all this information about how to circumnavigate the problems that we've mentioned on this list and to just basically enjoy your van life on a long-term basis and make it something sustainable which can ultimately make you a happier person so check that out up there otherwise join us next time for more van life tips and adventure travels from our adventure travel series that is something you do not want to be missing until then yeah we can I happy travel hi we're Lea and Ben. I can't do it, it sounds weird. That's what it sounds like. I'd be like where's the X button. Hi I'm Ben. Hi. Hi. Hi. I'm Ben. what's up guys yeah I would be too number one number one is number one is let me consult my notes because I can't even remember one of them let's do the intro again and fire straight into it Oh Fred Incombe mate my name's Ben this is my mate here Lea first mate Lea yeah