Picking up our New RV and MOVING In! (4x4 Dynamax Isata 6 30FW)

I'm starting to shut down because I'm realizing, oh my gosh, we're out of space. We're out of drawers. It's hitting capacity and there's so much left over there. Well, here we go again. Are you guys ready for this? I am ready. I'm excited. I didn't sleep very good last night. I was like a little kid on Christmas Eve. And we're actually very lucky that it's not raining today or tomorrow when we have to transfer all of our stuff from the fifth wheel to the new motorhome. So we think the unit is still in PDI. We're hoping to take a tour of the factory this morning and we don't know how long we're going to have to wait. I mean, there's a small chance we might not even be able to pick things up today. There's always a chance. So don't forget about that. This was Chris and I's first time touring an RV manufacturer that is completely motorized. It definitely had a different feel to it with all of the chassis around. And it was crazy to hear these units take roughly eight weeks to complete the assembly process. Mooride is the one that does all the upfitting for Dynamax, including the frames and storage boxes. Next time we're in Elkhart, I'd like to tour their plant and see exactly how they do the fabricating. Jared Graber, the regional sales rep, was our tour guide for the morning. And it was really interesting to see exactly the way these things are built. I especially liked the composite flooring being used. Lots of high quality aluminum being used for the framing. And I really like to see all of the maple hardwood construction of the cabinetry. One of the things Dynamax is possibly most known for in the RV industry is their paint and really the whole paint process. They have three giant 25 by 60 foot paint boosts on site. And of the total eight week assembly process, about two and half of those weeks are spent just on the paint. They started doing these Explorer themes almost five years ago. But what I really like is the way they do any custom solid color you want, if that's your thing. We then ended the tour with a bang and got to see the beautiful Isata Six getting finished up on the scales. Any guesses on the cargo capacity? We'll talk about it more next week. But a little hint, it's probably more than you think. Well, it's official. We're heading into our new home. And we're starting moving in right now. So we actually have a big day of moving in. It is going to be a long night and a long weekend. It is. How does this feel? Slide in? This feels pretty good. This feels pretty good. You could say I'm feeling it. I'm excited. It feels great to be back in a motorized unit again. And we're going to take a little spin. Guess where our first stop is going to be? Walmart. Walmart. We're going to just get in there, get a couple of things we need to actually do the move itself. And then we're going to take it home and get set up. But the real question is, who gets to drive first? I have the keys. There's one permanent driver in this house as of now. It's going to be two, but I think that driving home, maybe it'd be safer if the more experienced driver drove. Not if I beat you to it. Well, I guess we're back to our usual positions for now. I'm going to get in that driver's seat. She just likes it in there so much. I do. I'm permegrating right now. Can you see it from outside? You look pretty good in there. Okay, this feels different. This feels different, doesn't it? This feels different. It's going to take some time to get used to, but I think that it won't take very much time. But like right now, I guess the biggest thing for me is trying to get a depth of my length and my height, because that's really the things that are changed, right? Yeah. And the Ford mirrors are so much different than the Ram mirror. My mirrors are in position right now, so just making sure that they're in the exact perfect position. I actually like the Ford mirrors better than the Ram because the convex mirror or your blind spot mirror is bigger on the Ford. And that's what you primarily use when you got a big truck and a big rig. You're going to use those convex mirrors so that you can see everything. Yeah, you can see a lot more of ground with those. And that's nice. This thing drives like a brand new truck. Hear a little bit of the motorhome rattling back there. Not bad. Okay, so we don't know what the noises are yet. We don't know the rattlings and the squeaks and all the noises of her yet. Right. But we're going to figure it out. We are. Oh, it's kind of busy out here right now. It's rush hour in Elkhart, Indiana. I kind of like that I can look up right now and I can see out that window. Can you see the window this way? I sure can. I can see blue skies and fluffy clouds. We're like looking at trees or something and I can see the skylight up here. Get used to us saying Walmart a lot. I feel like that's where we're going to be shopping and spending most of our time since we don't have a towed vehicle. This 34 foot class C, we know Walmarts are pretty safe to go to, but we're going to see how small we can get in this thing. I don't know how I would feel if I was brand new to RVs. This would probably feel pretty big. For me coming off of a fifth wheel, this feels small, right? So that's a nice advantage to have. But I'm trying to think of all the people out there taking this for the first time. It's big, but what's nice about it is in your side mirrors, you see the whole entire line while you're driving, including while you're turning, which if you're towing, anytime you turn, you're going to get that break in your mirror. You know what I'm saying? So when you have a straight body, you get to see straight down to the back, where obviously in something with a pivot point, like a truck and trailer, you get that pivot point. Yes. So my first impressions, it feels comfortable. It feels good. It doesn't feel weird or foreign. This is what the feeling I was looking for, getting back to that motorhome vibe, looking behind you, seeing your home. If you hear a noise, you can look back and you know what's going on. I like this feeling a little bit. Just being connected to your home. Yeah. It does not feel like the Ram, I'll tell you that. But it's comfortable. I mean, it also doesn't feel like I'm in a big motorhome. I feel like I'm in a truck right now driving. And I think that's part of why people like the chassis on the Rams and the Ford, because you really feel comfortable. You don't feel like you're driving the Freightliner. It feels very familiar. Yeah. That was good. We fit in two spots and easy peasy. That was fun. A little bit of adrenaline rush. It's always a little bit nerve wracking driving something new for the first time because you have to be extra careful and extra cautious and overall much easier. So it's going to take some time to get to know the curves, the turns, the turning radius. I definitely noticed though, holy moly. And I really like being able to see my tail end in my mirrors so that I know when I'm changing lanes, if the person in the other lane is definitely behind me or not. So that's nice. I no longer need to rely on a rear view camera. So a couple of pros, instant pros. Today is moving day. We're going from a 33 foot fifth wheel to a 34 foot class C. And when we went from the travel trailer to the fifth wheel, I remember moving day was less stressful because everything fit nicely. Yeah. It's really easy when you're going up in size versus down in size. So we have a couple of areas of concern for today's move. First and foremost, the kitchen. One of the big perks about fifth wheels is the amount of storage that they come with. So we have ample storage in here. I don't even know how many cabinets and drawers we have. It's too many to count. I counted it. It's like 20. I'm surrounded by storage. We're going from 20 drawers, doors in the kitchen, uh, down to about half, maybe about 10. Yeah. So that's going to be a point of stress. We're going to, I guess my approach with this entire move is moving things that you must have. The things that you must have, you get in there right away. You designate that spot for it, and then you're left with, you know, some items that you might need to consider. Is this worth cramming in there and feeling like you're way too much stuff? Or is this something that we embrace minimalism with and we part ways? So I already have a purge countertop started with things that really don't need to come because when you're living in a small space, if you have too much stuff, it feels horrible. The clutter is everywhere. The just ease of grabbing things is non-existent. So you really need to have the appropriate amount of items for your space. Our second point of concern is our office. We have quite a bit of space, three large drawers and eight big kind of cabinet shelves up there with all of our work supplies. And that's going to be a little bit of a change. Yeah, that's going to be a tough one because right now we use our drawers just for putting our laptops and our calendars and the things that we literally use every single day. So where are we going to put those things? I don't know. And that one does have me stressed out because at least with the kitchen things, I just pick what's important. But with the office things, you can't create a desk when there's no desk there. So that will be an interesting one. And then the third point of contention is going to be clothing slash bedroom type of storage. We have a nice big six drawer dresser in here as well as a semi walk-in closet. I call it a step-in closet. A step-in. And it's... We have all these shelves back here. Yeah, that's kind of like hidden, hidden storage back there. This and the dresser are going away. We do have that giant wardrobe in the new RV. However, it's just one big open bin. We did try to go to Walmart and to get some shelving so that we could maximize the efficiency there. However, we didn't have enough time. It didn't have exactly what we need. So Aaron put in an order today. We should be getting some shelves and that's going to help a lot, but we're still going to be downsizing on our storage space. Oh, and the dogs have not seen their new home yet. We were going to show it to them last night, but we got home pretty late from picking up the new RV. We were pretty exhausted. And so we're saving it all for a big day today. So in the kitchen, I think we'll start with the refrigerator first. We don't think that's going to be a huge problem. We are going from a 19 cubic foot down to a 15 cubic foot, but in all honesty, the 19 cubic foot, that's a really big fridge. So we haven't had any issues with that. I think we're going to be fine with the 15. That's also a pretty large refrigerator. So that'll be the first step. Are you ready for the first fridge? Yeah. I'll keep, I'll bring over. Yeah. Just keep on bringing it. Counterspace is a little different. I know. We're used to like the center island and also the office desk is like a drop zone. Yeah. So we're definitely taking advantage of the sink cover for extra counter space. And then I hate to say it, but we're going to have to use this overhead bunk as like a drop zone for moving too. Yes. So that'll be a nice space to temporarily put things until we work through some storage considerations. Temporary. The fridge was pretty easy. That moved over flawlessly. Now it's onto the pantry. This is where we're going to start to feel a squeeze. Yeah. I would say that our pantry and this one is not twice as big, but it might be, it's hard to say. It might be 50% bigger. So this entire pantry, easily over a hundred, 200% bigger. Three times as big. It's a lot, this is a lot bigger. Okay. Yeah. Well, we'll see how it fits. We'll see how it goes in. I just had a breakthrough. Very exciting. You know, moving in is frustrating. It takes time. There's trial and error. And I just had the perfect solution for this giant pantry space. Look at how perfect those containers stack. The width fits perfectly and I can fit them for high. These are nice and mice proof, Ronin proof. We actually bought these while we're in the van. Yeah. And it's a lot of stuff that you don't need right away daily either. It's like, so it's more like rice and quinoa. Yeah. Yeah. I use them once a week, monthly, who knows what. So a little bit of a pain to like get out of the back, but, but you could fit a lot of them back You can. So this is going to be on my list to check Amazon, go through our previous orders and see if they still sell these. If they do, I'd like three more. If they don't, not a big deal. We'll fill it with anything. Okay. So the next big thing that I got to tackle is the TV cabinet. I'm going to call it the TV cabinet. You can see that's a 40 inch TV. So it's a huge cabinet. And that's really the main cabinet in this kitchen. There are two smaller ones like, uh, up top there, but, uh, we need somewhere to put our plates, glasses, you know, things like that. So this cabinet is, you know, a pretty good spot to do that, but you can really see how big this is. And I've noticed on some of the newer models that they have shelving built into this. So I think since this was a prototype, it didn't get the shelving put in and we're going to do our best to make it work. And when we bring it back next week, maybe I'll see if they can throw a shelf right in the middle of this, because this is a really large cabinet. And then the second thing here is all of these TV cables. If you kind of see when you close it, those cables kind of do a sweep of about, I don't know, a quarter of your shelf. So I got to figure out a way to kind of get these out of the way. So they're not hitting things as we close it. I think I can actually shove them behind the TV inside this hole and clean that up. Okay. So corner cabinet, and then we have one set of four nice plates and bowls. I don't know. Does everybody carry around this in their RV? We try not to go crazy with it, but you know, it's nice to have a decent set. And the big ones fit nicely there. And you can even stack those on top like that. But now that we're in a motor home and there's a little bit of the rattle noise we got to worry about, we might have to switch this up. Look how nice that fits. That looks really nice. That's definitely going to be an issue driving. And then this thing can go right next to it. But you can see how tall this cabinet is. Very, very big. So definitely need some type of shelf right in the middle. So you can really utilize that space. Testing out the air fryer, taking a little break for lunch. It's four hours later and we aren't done with the kitchen. It's like we've barely done anything, but we've done so much. It's going so slow because we're not just packing up boxes and moving them to the new place. It's everything's getting put away as we bring it in. And I'm starting to shut down because I'm realizing, oh my gosh, we're out of space. We're out of drawers. It's hitting capacity. And there's so much left over there. Yeah. I mean, the good thing is, is that all of the kitchen stuff is over. So hopefully the kitchen is the slowest room. And when we get to the bedroom and the bathroom and the office, those will speed up. So one thing we're not quite sure about is the overhead bunk. And, you know, obviously these can be very multi-purpose, a lot of families and people love them because it's easy to have a big open bed up there that you don't have to set up like on the table. But for us where it's just the two of us, we're not sure what to do. We really do like the openness. There's three big windows up here and that really helps bring some space or some light into the space. We're feeling like it's a little, for us, not utilized. And we might have to figure something out with that. It's definitely going to be helpful for when we do get everything in here and it's going to take us some time to like work through some items. It'll be nice to have that up there just to throw stuff and get organized. Yeah. A lot of boxers. I don't have as much clothes as Chris does. And I don't know if it's all going to fit, but I think with the new shelving in there, we at least got a chance. Well, it's been a long day. It's eight o'clock. It's been about 10 hours of non-stop moving. And, you know, I honestly thought we'd be done in one day, but we definitely need two full days and that's not even going to, you know, really get us to get those final little touches in. So now that we've got most of the stuff moved in, we're ready to bring the dogs over. And this is their very first time being in here. They've had to watch us all day through the windows, wondering what we're doing. Hey June bug. They are so concerned right now. Hey girl. Oh yeah. Your bowl. Hey girl. Oh, they like it under there already. So a few people in the comments have asked us what the dogs thought about this decision. And we said, we haven't told them yet. So this, this is the first guys. This is the new home. Surprise. It feels nice in here. Yeah, we're getting there. I like the space. It doesn't like for as much stuff as we moved back and forth. 10 hours. It feels pretty good. Right? Like there's not crap everywhere. We'll definitely highlight the end of moving in and getting everything finalized and kind of talk about how everything worked out. Cause it was, it was tricky. It was challenging, but what we're excited to do is take our first trip in this, our first road trip coming up soon. Ever wonder where the name Irene iron travels comes from. It's actually named after my online fitness and nutrition coaching business, Irene iron fitness. I help people move better, feel better and eat better with strength training and real food. No fad diets, no harsh restrictions, no counting calories and absolutely no processed food in a package. If you want to get stronger and feel better at any age, check the description below for the links with my new clients special or join in on our next and upcoming group challenge.