7 TOP THINGS YOU NEED TO START LIVING IN YOUR CAR

hey guys Mike here with marmalade outdoors and uh this is the video I wanted to make about I've been doing living in my car full-time my SUV who you see here for a little over a year and um I want to make a video of the seven top things you need to get in my opinion when you want to start living in your car SUV for a little disclaimer I do want to say these are just my picks I have a lot more things in my car and things I've added and taken out so this is just kind of a a good way to start to make sure you have the things that are Basics and the number one thing to me and maybe the most important one is a gym membership I'm different because a lot of people live in their car maybe are on the road going places I actually just live in my area where I work and um I am a member of the 24-Hour Fitness I live in Southern California there's they're all over the place I've paid a little extra to have a membership to go to any location they have so when I've gone up to Northern Cal I've used their uh their facilities there but um so a couple things about that um I pay about around 30 a month with the taxes and everything so effectively it's a dollar a day I use a gift I get up really early for one of my two jobs so I get up early go in there um and you know shave and shower and do all that I do periodically work out depending on the time of year I also love the jacuzzi there I don't use the pool much but they have everything so there's a lot of benefits besides just taking a shower and using the facilities I researched a little bit and I was told that Planet Fitness is also a very good one depending on where you live I've never been in one but I know they're very cost effective what I understand is you want to get the black card now remember I'm just from my research I've never done it myself but the black card gets you and at any location in the country so depending where you live or if you're traveling you're on the road that's probably a good one to get I don't think 24-Hour Fitness is everywhere I actually don't even know so it's something I might look into once I get on the road and more mobile but for my area there's tons of 24-hour fitnesses so and actually um because of covid they've actually scaled back our gym anyway and I don't know about the other gyms but there's only two locations in all of San Diego and uh the Southern California location area that are 24-hour fitness and it happens to be the one I live near is and where I stay is open 24 hours so make sure you um join memberships that are 24 hours or at least one near you that's 24 hours the other thing I want to say about gyms in general when they're 24-hour uh gyms specifically is that there's obviously a lot of cars coming and going so that's a good place to stealth camp and add it to your rotation I did a video I'll try to put it here somewhere of 25 good places to to sleep at night and a gym is if not the best one of the top ones it has to be 24 Hour Fitness because of course if it's not the parking clears out and you're the only one left so that's kind of how to kind of hide in plain sight so that's just a pro tip for me all right number two is some way to carry water I have this off Amazon and it's actually pretty foreign it's 4.9 gallons almost 5 gallons uh I bought this on Amazon I have links by the way to a lot of the stuff you're seeing here down below my description box I have I am a Amazon influencer so I have a just like basically it's a page or a store it's all the things that I use whether it's backpacking or car camping the things I purchase or things I like so I think this is 39.99 one thing it came with a bunch of extra things a couple gaskets for the bigger top here um this is so you can put it on the smaller end and I tip you know put it on Sideways and then I fill up my containers obviously it's five gallons some of you people that have smaller cars like a Prius might not want to carry this much if you don't follow them the other part of my life I'm a pretty avid Backpacker and hiker so there's a I'm on a lot of trails and places where I need water so I just find that by filling this up by the way I fill this up at uh grocery stores it's 50 cents a gallon so for 250 I can fill up this whole thing but I just find it's easier to just have to fill it up less often that's my own preference some people just carry one gallon jug and once again you can just go to a store and fill it up for 50 cents okay number three is very very important if you're going to ever be stealthy and for some privacy is Window Coverings I made my own and I'll tell you about it it was very inexpensive you can buy them pre-made for any model they know the measurements or Windows and they can make them but it was like outrageously expensive and or you can get less expensive ones but they're very cheap uh the main thing you want to do is super important especially stealth camping is make them so that they're black out they're you cannot see through them because uh if you're in a public place like I was mentioning like if you were to stealth sleep overnight at a gym where it's busy and there's cars coming around every single headlight that comes through there is going to Blind you or fill your car with light which makes it hard to sleep also you want privacy you're stealthy right so if you have um blinds or window coverage you can see through and you're using your phone or you're watching your iPad on a movie or you're doing things in there people can see right through especially at night so what I did was I bought a large roll as of about 27 this is in my description box in my my uh Amazon store but I bought a 24 inch by 50 foot roll of this stuff a reflectix you can see it's a kind of a bubble it's almost like a thick bubble wrap of like a thermal thing and then I've never seen this done but uh the one thing you don't want is when you put these in your window just to cut them out I just basically took a long time to cut out the shape of every window that I wanted to put these in but you don't want the silver on facing outside because at night you can see right through it and just shiny people can tell you're in there you want blackout remember I said blackout so what I did was I was trying to think of a way to at least try and it worked great was I just got black duct tape and I just put long strips like this until I covered it you can see on the back it kind of goes around the edge there I even made little duct tape handles so in the morning when I wake up and I'm sleeping in the car I can just so sometimes I had a hard time getting these out of my last set so I have like just a piece of tape here and I can just pull it and take them right out of the window so yeah that makes blackout I already have tinted windows except for the front seats so everything's already a little dark and this makes it completely dark one of the other things I did was I right right or left so I know which side of the car goes onto um actually on the left I actually put a piece of tape and put left but that's just to kind of help me out this is my back window one I folded it in half but you see that I even put which way it goes up so when I put it in the back of the window I know which way you know it's kind of obvious but not always in the dark so that helps a lot so lastly one of the benefits to reflectives over like black cloth or something is that uh in the winter you know like right now it gets pretty cold at night this helps uh keep your body heat that you're creating inside the car it keeps you a little bit warmer I notice when I get out of the car it's quite a bit colder so that helps it's a little bit more problematic in the summer because it keeps the heat in but one thing it does do is keep the Sun from getting in to heat up the car so it's a kind of it goes both ways I generally will crack my windows I also have a small fan that I put in there uh to aim directly on me that's just a USB run I put I do one of my exterior batteries and just runs all night so it's really easy to use so I do that in the summer too when I'm sleeping okay they're showing my tint right there I have the back door open so you can kind of see through the window let me put in the the window covering just to show you the difference all right now you can see the door still open just black this black I know the reflection is hard but you can imagine at night all those headlights coming in the car and then also if you were using your phone uh you don't want them to know you're in there okay number four I'm gonna have to show you but it's a cooler or some kind of refrigeration I'm going to show you mine uh I don't have any like solar powder or way to save energy so I can run like a Dometic cooler so I just have one with it's a standard ice it's a uh it's just I think it's a Igloo cooler and what I like about it was just one I had but it happens to be the right height instead of having it wider and this way I went taller like you know if you were to be able to put like wine bottles that kind of height and uh let me show you why I like this my car is messy right now so don't judge me but there's my cooler I sleep on the side and I'll show you that in a minute there's my cooler right there and I have a little storage bin below it and it's hard it's not focusing but it makes it the right height if you can see this is the right height right here and uh yeah it's just a very tall cooler what's it say it's the Island Breeze cooler and I can't see the liter size but yeah so that's my cooler it also acts as I said this will be where my where I sleep my head is and I'll show you that in a little bit but uh yeah get some kind of cooler that you uh I think I get ice about every three days I've tried more expensive ones and had to return it though I even though they were they advertised they would last longer and it never did so but every three days I buy a small bag of ice all right number five is some kind of battery to charge your electronic devices like your phone and your iPads you may want to there's the new uh little small crock pots they use all that kind of stuff coffee makers um I've kept everything minimal and because I'm a Backpacker I already had these kind of batteries we use them on trail to charge up our devices so we have uh mapping and GPS and uh build us to text people and things like that so um I have this is from Amazon and once again it's in my description box below this is by Nightcore and it's a 20 000 milliamp battery it will charge an iPhone up probably about five or six times uh this is more compact than what you normally see with people on the road I just had it so that's why I'm using it uh eventually I want to get one of these jackeries or I'll put it here somewhere I want to get a jackery I really think they make a great product they're very expensive so until I really find the need where I need that much battery this has been fine and I told you two jobs so one of my jobs is driving and when I drive I literally just plug this battery in so at night when I'm sleeping I charge my phone and what other devices I want to do on this in the morning and I really don't use much of it but in the morning I plug this in while I'm driving so it's just charging this up I don't need to go into a Starbucks or into a restaurant or somewhere to charge it up it the car charges it up so it's very simple system to do it I purposely keep it simple and this one's by Nightcore it's a 20 000 milliamp and it's 99 it's a little pricey but it's because this is made for backpacking it's a lighter than normal batteries because it's got an expensive graphite case on it to lighten the weight because in backpacking of course this is on my back so I don't want to carry a big heavy battery so this is uh more expensive than you probably need you could probably buy a less expensive brand and save money if you want to start small like this but I love this all right number six is a good comfortable and in the winter warm sleep setup I'm going to show you mine in a minute here now one of my problems is with a vehicle is I'm six foot three so that's not crazy tall but you'd be surprised how many vehicles I do not fit in and I'll show you where I lay in one of the issues is when you're when you have a car is whether you have a place even if most people are shorter than me so even if you have enough room are there ridges and weird uh undulations this is a fairly new car and I actually believe it or not knew I was going to be uh well actually I was already starting to to try this test was sleeping in my car and living in my car for a while uh because I want to eventually want to get a van but I want to make sure I liked it so I was already in the middle of it when I got rid of my old car and got this one so one of the things I looked at which I doubt hardly anybody buying a new car does but was is when everything's flat the back seats are flat is it pretty smooth and flat remember an air mattress is which I'm going to show you will absorb some of the unevenness unevenness but it had to be fairly level so let me show you my setup all right so let's show it to you here I have the Bronco sport 2022 and there it is right here I'm going to show you what mattresses it is I have a memory foam pillow that I'll put there in a minute let me show you the label of the mattress so it's 72 inches long I'm 75 inches but I don't care about my toes hanging off this is an exped it's a Dura 5r which is the r value which is the warmth which means the layers of warm uh layers inside this air mattress and it's a medium length and wide so I have a it's like 25.6 inches wide and 72 inches long so you get the pillow so there you go and right now it's uh still the end of February it's been cold at night so let me show you kind of what I use to stay warm so right now I have an old see the summit sleeping bag I use I kind of use it just like a blanket or a quilt I use that and I also have this very small light down like blanket so I can use them I usually use them in tandem at night right now when it's cold but I can use one or the other if it's not so cold I tend to just use it as blankets and not get completely wrapped inside the sleeping bag but yeah that's my uh so just a little messy in here but that shows you my sleep system all right number seven is well pretty important one and a tricky one you need a physical mailing address and what do I mean by this that means where this gets tricky is sometimes when you get a PO Box the places that I'm going to mention in a minute know it's a PO box and not an actual address so it's very important in my research I found out that uh if you want to open a bank account or register to vote Insurance driver's license or even to get a passport and many other things you need a physical address so I'm lucky enough right now I have somebody that's letting me use their address as my address and it's to a house so uh that works out one of the negatives is I live um where I say live you know I'm in my car but where I sleep at night and where I work and things like that is a good 20 30 minutes away from this address so uh these are things you have to think about trying to find something that's centralized to where you are or uh and I have spent a long time going to get packages and mail on things that are important I have to go get it so it's something to think about if you are thinking about living on the road maybe you have a relative or a loved one or a friend that will let you use your their address for for your mail and so you can do some of these other things so don't call me out on this because it's just in my research I found out that you can supposedly pay for a mailbox through ups and how they do it I guess is you use their address as an actual physical address and your box number as as like an apartment number basically but to people that you're applying to or let's say to get a license or whatever you're doing or a passport it appears to be like an apartment complex for a while I did pay for and they're not cheap by the way and I'm gonna go over the prices in a minute but I paid for one a few years back when I first was going on the Pacific Crest Trail and I gave up my apartment I didn't have an address and I didn't have anybody's address to use and it was about um ninety dollars for every um I think it was every three months and it was one of those small like Postal Annex or Mailbox etc it's one of those places I can't remember the name of it's one of those little small ones you see in strip malls and they were allowed me to use their their address um as as my physical address and then uh my box number is my apartment number so it works for almost everything there was something that I don't know if it was something to the government but it came back that we know this is not an address it shows that it's a postal annex so I would do your research and make sure that uh maybe whether you go there in person or email or call them and find out if you if how they do their addresses but uh yeah so what I understand with I don't know because the research I did from the video I learned about the UPS was a while ago and he said it was a good it was kind of expensive it was about 120 or something for every three so three months so that's quarterly so think about that so that's 120 times four so you know hopefully you know somebody uh but you do this is something you need to think about actually the last part of that that I forgot to tell you was that also when I order a lot of things in Amazon like most people so instead of having to drive uh over 30 minutes out of the way to pick up the packages at my the house that I'm using for an address I use their locker system I think the one I use is for a Ross Dress Celeste is right right near where I live so that's super easy if it's not too big of an item just use their locker system they send the package there and it's much easier all right I hope that was informative uh remember there's a lot other things you can choose besides these these are just seven that I thought were really good ones to start with let me know what ones you think are good besides that I have a lot of other things in my car besides that but these are seven good things to get when you're starting out uh and remember go to my description box below there's ways to support the channel there's ways if you want one of these items like the uh 4.9 gallon water container that's in there and just go to my Amazon influencer page and it's all right in there it doesn't cost you any extra you just get the item normal price and I get a little Kickback from for sending you there so check it out if you want I am on the quest to get the 10 000 subscribers so please subscribe you guys uh the stats show that only about five or ten percent are actually subscribers that watch my video so please subscribe it's free and then hit that notification Bell in the upper right so you'll be notified every time I have another video out and uh that's all I got I'm gonna get out here it's getting cold it's getting windy hope you enjoyed it we'll see you later bye

Channel: Marmalade Outdoors

Views: 220,030

Keywords: Living in your car, Living in your suv, 7 things you need to start living in your car, What do I need to live in my car, Gear to live in your car, Things you need to live in your car

Id: ELx0EVdkvg8

Length: 17min 52sec (1072 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 24 2023