10 VAN LIFE Essentials | Space & Money Savers

so we have been living in the caravan for about two-and-a-half months now during that time I've just been keeping a list on my phone of like things that come up that I think are essential for like not living this lifestyle per se but living this lifestyle a bit more seamlessly and just making life a bit easier to be honest I thought why not share it with you guys it's not the typical list I've watched a few of these videos and they all say the same thing which is just really annoying to be honest most of these things aren't really that obvious and most of them are really small I just feel like these things just make life easier so I'm gonna share them with you if you don't live in a van or plan to live in a van or anything like that place don't click away if you leave in a small space or I have very little storage there's also some tips in here for you so I'm gonna get started I've kind of got some little categories but not really but we're gonna start in the kitchen so under the category of kitchen I've got two things to share with you number one is this this is a drying mat that we bought from came up for $2 basically it just means that when you've got your sink space you can basically extend the drying bed or you can put these here and and just kind of stop some water from getting everywhere so that's like a really basic one but this just makes like washing up so much easier because if we haven't washed up all day or we've cooked up a big feast we can just bring it along and we've got double the drying space the second item is there's a little clips you would have seen these everywhere they sell them it came out IKEA the supermarket basically everywhere so if I meant for is - when you open a packet of anything chips pasta whatever you can just put this on it keep the air out keep it from going stale which is one way to use it but the way that it's really really really handy for van life or if you have a very small pantry is everything that comes in like a plastic bag inside of a box you can get rid of the box open the packet get the air out and do this and it does make it smaller and so much easier to store another thing is that when you buy bags of leaves things like that generally there with a lot of erener like packets of chips anything obviously to protect the stuff but once you're home you don't really need that protection so I just basically open the bag up squeeze the air out put one of these on there and it's still perfectly brand new but you save so much space so these little guys are so cheap and so so handy all right thanks category is kind of like laundry slash toiletries so behind this magical door here is what you would call our bathroom slash laundry so what I want to show you from this category is baby wipes baby wipes are essential for if you're living in a van if you're camping whatever they just so handy let's be honest let's not beat around the bush a lot of the time you don't have access to a shower or clean running water in order to have a shower it can be good days sometimes a full week and just getting save your wife and just wiping those areas that need a clean giving yourself a bag wipe shower it just makes me feel so much fresher and you feel cleaner and it just it just gets you by until you can have a shower again the second thing for this category is one of these Clippy hang of things I don't know what they're actually called I think I got this from flat so like five bucks you can get them from Kmart target to dollar shops anywhere they're just such a life saver for if you just need to do a quick load of like undies and socks which is the main thing you need wash off or bathe is anything and you can just clip it up you can hang it up inside outside anywhere sometimes I hang it up in the shower and you can you know things like this you can even have it hung up while you're driving sorry it just I just make life so easy because you can always have stuff up and drying if you need to the next category is just a bunch of random stuff so let's go sit down number five is something that a lot of people use day-to-day and I use day-to-day back when I was living you know the conventional in a house life but they've become even more important and more essential now living in a van and that is reusable bags so I've got three different types of reusable bags to show so firstly I've got a bunch of these like just canvas tote bags and like I don't know what these are called like net bags I've got so I've got three net bags and I've got three canvas tote bags as well so I use these for groceries I use them if I'm taking my laptop somewhere just to let go sit down somewhere and use it I'll just put my laptop my headphones and whatever else I need in a canvas bag and it's just so easy to take around with me sometimes I use them as my handbag they're just so so handy main thing I use them for is groceries but they can be used for other things as well second type of ryuzu bag is in this little pouch and these are produce bags so I have a pack I think I've got about eight of them they're all the same size they're quite large and they're just little net bags with a little drawstring now I use these for three main reasons number one produce number two I actually keep my pegs in one just because it's so easy to take around with me get them out store them it's so easy and I also use them when I'm going to use a shower I will put my shampoo conditioner face wash razor whatever else I need I can put it in here and it's so easy because like things like the razor and like my keys they won't fall out or like get lost if I keep them all in here and the last reasonable bag I use is this one now this is actually our laundry bag I we did have a proper like a laundry basket thing like it was still a flexible one but it was like had a structured circle bit and I just decided against it because I was like you know what like I need something I can easily carry with me to the to the laundry or the laundromat or wherever we're going to wash our clothes and this just seemed like the logical option so like when there's nothing in it it folds down absolutely tiny but when there is stuff in it you know it's a bag so it can kind of continue to expand and what I generally do is you know like fold towels over the top once it's full so yeah reusable bags have just become like an absolute like essential in our lives like obviously grocery shopping and stuff taking stuff around but even like the laundry and using produce bags as my toiletry bag like who would have thought number six is one you've probably heard before and that is a fan so obviously we live in Australia and we're heading north so it's just getting hotter and hotter as we go so we decided to get a fan my parents actually bought this for us for Christmas sir thank you mom and dad but this one is not one that you have to hook up to power which is the big difference here because every video I watched I like you need a fan and it's like a plug in one and we're like no so we got this one I chose it out nice and together it's for us it's rechargeable so yeah basically we could recharge it during the day when we've got solar or when we're summer weather we've got power and then when it gets hot we can just use it we generally when we have used it it's generally overnight because it's like during the day you know you can bear with it but overnight it's just harder so we put it at the end of the bed put it on and it blows on us and then it's happy days so yes it is big but I actually store this either in the wardrobe or the shower and this has just become an essential not only because it's a fan but because it's rechargeable and it actually is also a light so that serves a dual purpose as well moving on at number seven is a little sewing kit so I bought this from Woolworths it's nothing special but you know living in a van living on a very tight budget you can't afford to just bind your clothes all the time yes we go to op shops but sometimes you just need to fix your own clothes I think three times now we've had to sew up a different item of clothing because it just is ripped or whatever so having this little portable sewing kit with it can with a bunch of different threads we've put some extra fabric in there pins and everything it's just come in such handy especially if you're on a tight budget and can't afford to be buying at clothes all the time the last item in the category of just random crap he's actually trays now this one I definitely haven't seen anyone talk about so we obviously don't have a bed a permanent set up bed but this would be especially handy for if you do so I have to here because Brett and I preferred different types of praise now these are sorry handy if you want to eat something real quick without setting up a table or you don't have a table using it to just like do some laptop work writing stuff down even reading I sometimes I sit there sit over there put this up over my lap put a cup of tea and my book and I just sit there and read and I'm happy as so I've my trades like this really helpful Brett uses his everyday I probably use mine a couple of times a week it's just really handy Brett's is a lap one so it's got though I don't know what you call but I like sits on your lap and then it's actually got a slot for a tablet so yeah he's uses it to eat he uses it to like police tablet in there so I'll props it up to watch staff everything so Brett likes that kind of tray I however like this kind of tray so this tray is a wooden tray it has legs so yeah this fits both perfectly in the width of our captures but also in the beds down I can just sit it on there and if we want to watch like a movie I can just put the laptop on there and we can both easily said if we're having a super lazy day we can eat off it like anything like that and the main reason I really wanted this one in particular is that we can take this to like the beach or take it somewhere and we can have like a little picnic like this one is just like a miniature table and you can take it absolutely anywhere and it's just when we were staying in the Victorian Coast I took it down to the beach and like had like our drinks radio I don't even know our phones on it so it wasn't on the sand and yeah it was just great so both of these are from Kmart I think this was like $9 and this was like $15 or something these trays are definitely essentials for us and that brings us to the last category which is outdoor stuff now it's very windy outside so I'm not going to go outside and talk but what I'll do is I'll explain it here and show you some clips on top of that number one is chairs a lot of people I watch on the in life for some reason don't have outdoor chairs I couldn't live without an outdoor chair I much prefer being outside the being in here so we just have two camping chairs I suppose you call them at that fold up really easily and go into a little storage slot that we have outdoors and you having channels outside just makes life it basically doubles the amount of space you have to like chill out so we can beat out of each other's way and we can be outside and not stuck in here all the time the last item I've left for number 10 because it is the more expensive one and that is shade now we have a vintage Caravan and it does have an old awning on it but getting that out is a big big pain in the butt so we actually bought a gazebo which we when we're traveling we store it actually in here and when we're parked up we just put it up or leave it outside of we're only somewhere for a night so the gazebo has it was something like 150 bucks I think and yeah again it just kind of like doubles the amount of space you have another option is if you do have an actual van or you can put this on your car is an awning for your car brett has one and sometimes we put that up instead of the gazebo kind of depends depends on the space we're in but yet having outdoor shade just doubles your space so that sums up the list of 10 van life essentials that I have come across over the past two and a half months if you like this video please give it a thumbs up and let me know down below if you'd like to see a part two of this video or if you have any other videos van life related or not that you want to see through me my Instagram is a back al drip if you want to check that out for daily updates and stuff other than that I'll see you guys in the next one [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: beceldrup

Views: 25,711

Keywords: beceldrup, Tasmanian, YouTuber, Vlog, Vlogger, Australian, Tasmania, Australia, Life, fashion, style, Van, Caravan, Travel, Vegan, Plant, Based, essentials, van life, money, save, budget, how to, space saver, tiny house, small house, storage, caravan, everday, kitchen, pantry, tour, vlog, vlogger, travel

Id: chIh1VHuXck

Length: 12min 22sec (742 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 12 2019