Living in an RV Full-time is a Learning Experience

The Top 5 Things No One Tells You About Full-Time RV Life

Today marks our first month living full-time in our class A RV. For those who aren’t aware of the differences in RVs, a class A is the one you drive that kind of looks like a bus. Ours is 30 feet long and approximately eight feet wide, and doesn’t have any slides (which give you more room). Since it’s driveable, and we have a personal vehicle as well, when we’re traveling, there’s also a car dolly attached to pull our SUV. Total length with everything attached is 51 feet. That’s a lot of vehicle going down the road!

If you’re thinking about full-time RV life, or are just interested in how it works, I’ve got a few things to tell you that you may not know. Because I sure didn’t know until I lived it for awhile.

1. Space takes on a whole new meaning

We went from a 2800 square foot, four bedroom, three bathroom house, to approximately 300 square feet of living space. I knew it would be a huge change, but I really didn’t KNOW. The concept of, “I might need this later” goes completely out the window. If you don’t use it on an almost daily basis, it doesn’t have a place on your RV. Literally. And there’s no such thing as stuff just sitting around. You’re driving this beast down the road at 60 mph at times, things will fly all over the place if they’re not properly secured.

This includes items in your refrigerator/freezer. Our first drive before we lived here full-time, we learned that the hard way, as the refrigerator door flew open and the items inside ended up in the floor. Thankfully, we didn’t have much in there and learned our lesson before it became dicey. Installing fridge door locks and tension bars inside the fridge fixed that problem.

It all boils down to deciding what you need regularly and then likely, downsizing even further from there. At first, I had a week’s worth of clothing for each of us (all seasons) and struggled to get it all in it’s place. After living this way for a month, I’ve since gone through everything and pared down to a week’s worth of clothing for the current season, while everything else went into vacuum storage bags to store under the bed.

Our closet is still full. But it’s a lot more manageable than before, and I don’t have to pull half the stuff out to get to what I need.

2. The shower is not the place for thinking any longer

Showers in an RV are short and sweet. Our water heater is around six gallons, so that affords you about 10-15 minutes of hot water. If you push it past 10 minutes, you’re looking at a lukewarm experience. Military showers become the norm, where you get yourself wet, shut off the water, shampoo your hair, water back on to rinse, water off, condition hair and wash your body, water back on to rinse.

My first experience with showering in here was a nightmare. I knew I had to be fast, and thankfully I’ve never been one to linger in the shower, but I didn’t know how fast. We ordered dispensers that are affixed to the shower wall to hold our products. I forgot they had to be ‘burped’ before use, and ended up doing it while I was running the water. Bad idea. By the time I got around to rinsing my hair of shampoo, the water was ice cold. This was a bit over a month ago, when we were still in our house, so thankfully, I was able to make a mad dash for the house to complete my shower. In a towel. In 30 degree weather. Soaking wet.

Needless to say, I now make sure everything is where it should be and that I’m ready to go once I get in.

Space is a thing here too. I’m not a small person. If I’m careful, I can turn around in the shower, but there have been a few times I almost fell out of the door. I’m just waiting for it to happen and provide comedic relief.

3. Using the bathroom is an experience

I’m 43 years old and thought I had gone to the bathroom in just about every kind of way possible. Not so. If you’re claustrophobic, RV life is not for you. Thankfully, my husband and I are not shy, so closing the bathroom door doesn’t happen very often. Which is great, since once it’s closed, there’s nowhere for your knees, much less your legs. Our RV is set up with the toilet and sink in a room, and the shower across from it. There is no extra room in the bathroom at all. Add to that, we hung a shoe organizer on the door for extra storage.

It’s tight.

RV toilets keep a very small amount of water in the bowl. So if you’re doing more than peeing, you have to run some water in the bowl first. Otherwise, there’s going to be a mess to clean. When you’re in a situation where you REALLY have to go, this can be challenging.

Also, you’ll never use ‘good’ toilet paper again. In order for your paper to dissolve properly, you must use RV or Marine specific toilet paper. And it’s not many steps above sandpaper. We ended up putting a baby wipe warmer on our counter for better clean-up. Just remember, you can’t flush anything that isn’t waste or the special toilet paper. That’s how you fuck up your black tank.

4. You become very aware of where everything goes

When you’re living in a regular home, you probably don’t think much about where your waste goes, including what’s called gray waste. That’s all the water that goes down your sinks and shower drains. In an RV, you become well aware of it all, since you’re limited to your tank sizes. Our gray tank is about 45 gallons, black tank (toilet waste) is about 40 gallons, and fresh water tank is 70 gallons. If you’re parked somewhere that has hook-ups, you can skip the use of the fresh water tank and connect to a local water source.

In our bathroom, there’s a meter that shows where you are with your levels. This includes LP (natural gas) which runs your furnace, stove, and possibly your refrigerator and water heater (depending on your setup). Our fridge is a residential one, so it only runs on electric, but our water heater can run on electric or propane.

We’ve become very aware of how much water we use, which isn’t a bad thing. Taking the quick showers helps cut down on water consumption, and how much gray water we’re making. This is all important for multiple reasons. If you’re parked somewhere that doesn’t have hookups, you’ll need to know ahead of time, how long all this lasts before you have to go somewhere to fill your water and dump your nasty stuff. We figured out we get about five days out of the tanks we have, with conservative use. This includes running the generator full-time, which pulls from your regular fuel reserves (gas to run the RV).

5. It can be really frustrating, but fun

The biggest problem we’ve had so far is finding somewhere to park for an extended period of time, on little notice. We’re not quite ready to leave the area where our house was, as we have hubby’s legal stuff to finish contending with etc. Unfortunately, there’s a nuclear power plant in our area that’s in the midst of an outage, so there are workers from all over the country here. Apparently, a lot of them travel with campers, so they’re taking up the majority of the spots available. Also, it’s a tourist area, and it’s Spring Break time, so all the parks around here are full.

In an odd twist, it’s actually considered illegal to live in your RV full-time in this backwards ass state, so it’s also illegal to allow someone to hook up at your home. So dumb. But that’s exactly what we’re doing for the moment. We’ve been parked at my in-laws since we sold the house and that’s where we’ll stay for at least another week or so. Because of course, in their normal way, they’ve managed to get themselves evicted.

So, we’re searching for somewhere with hook-ups in the general area and not having much luck. We can boondock (park using just our generator) on some family property, but that’s definitely not optimal. Somehow, we always manage to make things work, so I have no doubt we’ll figure this out as well.

The Bottom Line

Living in an RV full-time is a learning experience every step of the way. There are so many things we’re having to grow accustomed to, but we’re doing it together, and making the most of each experience. Damian and I both came to realize, we think people should have to live in a small space like this before they decide to get married. Because if you can do it in 300 square feet, you can do it anywhere.

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