VAN LIFE TIPS: Where to Shower on the Road

Hi I'm Leah. I'm Ben. You need me? I've got a van life t-shirt on. Obviously I know what I'm talking about. I printed it myself. Yes we are van life pros. Damn it that's why we're making this video. Some of you will know us from our travel series and life adventures inside this Kombi and for those of you that are yet to subscribe what are you doing? Click the red button. We're here today to talk about what Leah? Washing on the road and keeping clean How am I smelling? Yeah you're right you never ever smell ever. Anyway so we're going to give you five options to shower on the road because we know it's really really really hard for some people to like give up a shower if you're wanting to do and live the van life. So we're going to give you some tips. Yeah it's um it shouldn't be a showstopper guys you can still stay clean and staying clean is really important. I've actually on my project Astro Alaska I had over a hundred different people coming in and camping from anywhere from one night to several months. I mean look at Leah she's still here she won't leave. Like there's been a lot of people that have come come through here and people take hygiene. They're a bit more relaxed about hygiene some people. Thank you yes. It's more important to some people than it is to others. Let me tell you it's okay when you go camping for a weekend to be a little bit scruffy and maybe wait till you get home to have a shower. That is not a good idea when you're living in a vehicle all the time. Things get dirty you need to keep on top of hygiene this is a really really important topic and so this is how you can stay clean on the road. Okay so first one. First one is finding a real shower. This is the best option really which should be the top of the list. This is the the best way that you can stay clean. It is but if you're living on the road full-time it's really hard to be doing this every single day. So you can't really be or you can but it's going to be very tiring if you're always searching for a real shower. You can find these real showers in places like gyms and pool centres, recreation centres, campsites. If you're going to be in one country or one place for a long period of time joining a gym can be well worth it just to get access to their showers to be honest. Yeah and you can have some exercise in the pool and jump in the sauna. Yeah it's heaps good. I've seen these guns. Also at beaches, free showers at beaches. Yeah they're cold showers most of them and they're just designed for like surfers and people like giving themselves a wash. It can be done but you you found it a little bit creepy right? Yeah people would always stare at you if you're like there's you know washing yourself or it's fine to do it every now and then but and it's cold as well so it's not really ideal but if you want a warm shower the other options are better. You can also get a shower from couchsurfing. Go and stay with a local for a day or two. You know this is the kind of thing that you want to be mixing up. You want to like attack this hygiene thing from like several different angles. Your daily hygiene, your emergency hygiene and this is your best case scenario. You want to try to get a nice good shower at least once a week or more often if you're somewhere hot and sweaty like we are right now in Mexico. Most of them cost money as well so again it's not ideal to do it every single day because it will just blow your budget. You can save money by showering together. Yes it's true we've done that heaps of time. Don't tell people that! It's just for the money honestly that's the only reason. I don't even look. So if you do have a friend or somebody that you can just you'd feel comfortable being naked around just jump in a shower with them it's a lot cheaper. Okay another option for staying clean on the road is installing one and having one permanently in your vehicle. Which is great because then you can go way off grid and you know backcountry and still stay clean whilst you're out there. We have a solar shower and that gets heated up by the sun so it's not ideal when it's not sunny you don't have a warm hot shower. It's also pressurizable if that's a word so you can basically have a pressurized warm shower. If you do have a solar shower or a road shower like we do you want to try to have your shower before an hour after dark it starts decreasing in heat pretty quickly so have it just like towards the end of the day is the perfect time to have a shower. It's really handy to have and if you don't have anything like the road shower you can build yourself one which you had throughout the whole of Latin America just a pvc pipe and a hose. That works really well. Yeah they do work it is a really budget option much cheaper than the road shower but it doesn't really stand up to the test of time and it depends on where you are and where you're getting your parts from as to what's available. Just a little tip in fact let's stick that in our book. We've got some tips on road showers and how to build your own in our ebook so you can go check that out if you want. Number three. Number three shower bag kind of like a kind of like a shower on the roof but it's a more portable option you can fill it up and just stick it in a corner. The good thing about option two of having an installed shower is that it can permanently heat up in the sun and it's out of the way and your water supply is there on the roof or in some tank somewhere. That's really good but like if you want something a bit more portable you can go and hang on a tree. A shower bag a solar shower is really good and they're like 20 bucks right? Yeah they're really really good but it's not ideal if you're on the move all the time because you kind of need to set it up for a while it gets hot so it's pretty. It's like a budget option weekend camping option. You can also build yourself a little shower out of just like a weed killing jug and that's a pressurizable way to wash yourself. Also another cheap option if you can store that somewhere in your van. So there's options for all price ranges. Number four is my favorite wild bathing. You feel so wild baby. This is the best option for living the van life. The best thing about being in a van and living out of a vehicle is that you're outside all the time so you can be in nature and nature does provide the best baths. We often base our travels around hot springs when it's cold or try to stick near water supplies when it's hot. I will say guys if you are going to shower in nature please please please either don't use any soap at all because you don't really need it or use something that's organic and biodegradable and really safe for the environment and dispose of your suds appropriately if it's one of those types. A lot of people think that they can just like use that that kind of soap in the water supply but really you're supposed to like wash away from it and rinse yourself off away so it doesn't go straight into the water supply which isn't always practical. There are products that exist that allow you to wash in the stream as well there's like the stuff is you could eat it if you wanted to the soap it's it's not good it's not harmful for the environment so please if you're going to wash in the wild please use something that's good for the environment because we love the environment. And I'll tell you we do love wild bathing but yes it isn't ideal all the time like when we're up in Alaska and we had to jump in icy glacial rivers it wasn't the best it was freshing but you don't want to be doing that every day. Quickest bath I ever had. Just a tip on that too if you are going to do that in a cold place make sure you prepare your van with like you know put the heater on and make sure you come back and like rug up straight after because you will get sick doing it all the time. It's a good point like it's you know you can shower in these icy waters but if you stick around with wet hair all the time you'll catch yourself a cold just like your mother. Being sick in van life is not good you don't have anyone looking after you. What about emergencies? Number five emergency washing supplies. This is like the last resort washing options like dry shampoo which is really really good and wet wipes what are they called? Baby wipes. Every van lifer will know about baby wipes they are a savior at the end of the day when you don't want to go out and have a shower in the dark or you're somewhere else where you can't get access to a shower baby wipes it's practically a bath. Yeah it is it's a lifesaver. Well we forgot one thing before this the public bathrooms so washing in public bathrooms like if you don't have anything else like going and using a sink in a public bathroom no it sounds ganky but it's good to like wash those private bits just using a bucket and a um cloth. You can't talk about this. Oh and oh wow one more thing. So many things. This is like your trick if i can find it. Where is it? I don't know what you're looking for. Your bidet. This is a really good tip. Is this what you were looking for? No. Oh she was searching for a water pistol um a travel bidet or if you can't find one of those a water pistol is actually a really good way to stay clean in public bathrooms having a little water supply you do need to stay clean guys there's no two ways about it please take it from us we've been living in a vehicle a long period of time i've tried the not staying too clean option when i've been on the move and not really had the opportunity and it affects your health yeah of course that's all i'll say but the travel bidet is quite quite cool go check that out somewhere if we can maybe have a link maybe not just go google it travel bidet it's really handy to have to clean your bits and another only if you're desperate situation option is to use any any kind of water be creative if there's like water around it rains yeah if it's raining go outside and get wet like be creative and like use water and wash yourself as often as you can what we did once was do you want to tell a story no i've got a lot of stories leo i can't possibly remember them all i know what you're thinking there was one time we're not proud of it but it was necessary where it was really really really hot and we hadn't had water there's no water around we're in the middle of like nowhere and the sprinklers came on really late at night in this particular area so we kind of like went under the sprinkler and got wet and it was so refreshing and i don't regret it because it was awesome because we really needed it um but make sure you do it late at night so no one's like looking at you like on their lawn or it wasn't someone's lawn it was a private kind of like public public lawn sorry um just to get wet yeah but um another point that other viewers have made um since then is that not all sprinklers are clean water a lot of it is recycled and dirty water gray water so if you want to go and wash and somebody else is washing up um suds it's not that bad just don't open your mouth and swallow the water it's all right to get wet so there you go there are some options we hope that it was kind of helpful and we hope that um you can feel a bit more comfortable going out on the road and showering because it's possible there are so many options yes tune in next time for more van life tips and adventure travels from the combi life crew if you want to know more we've kind of like made a book where we put all our information all our experience that we've learned along the way over the past five years into one book so you can go check that out if you want to know more about van life yeah don't forget to subscribe guys until next time you can say it happy travels