Campervan tips

hi Mike here I've owned my camper van Rambler for behind me here for about two years now and put on about 25,000 miles on it so I've learned a lot of things about how to make it more comfortable inside and more pleasant to use I picked up a great deal of tips from people on the Facebook page most camper van most RVs have a Facebook group associated with them and I've learned a lot of things from there some from YouTube and some from just my own experiences I'm going to share with you 13 tips that I've picked up over the last couple of years and at the end I'll share with you something I've learned about the Ford Transit van itself which kind of surprised me and you might find interesting first we're going to talk about the window shades after using them for a while I decided I didn't want to use the ones provided by the RV manufacturer Coachman in the end because um the fabric had to be stretched over the windows at the front and the back and there was a bit of a pain to attach it with these sort of velcro strap things so uh for the front I bought some reversible Weather Tech Shades and I'll put a link to them in the description below so they work really well I can put them in One Direction in the winter to keep the warmth in another Direction in the summer to keep the heat out um but the question was where do I keep this rolled up when I'm driving and not using it and originally I had it behind the driver's seat but I saw on a video video that somebody had put it rolled up by the side door H held together with bungee cords and I thought that was great so that's where I keep it now it doesn't take up any other space in the van there's nothing else that would go where I keep it now and of course with a small camper van space is at a premium for the rear Shades again I didn't want to use the ones provided by Coachman and I was keeping them in an overhead storage bin so I got some from vanmade gear and they are really nice uh they have more insulation than the than the ones that came with the van and I can store them on the window itself because they just roll up they're just attached by a magnetic strip onto uh sort of um piece of tape magnetic tape that you put at the top and the bottom of the window so that worked out really well now like a lot of people I have actually put up a curtain divider between the cab and the rear Li living area so sometimes if I'm just uh doing a a quick overnight stop at a truck stop for instance I may not bother putting up the uh the shades around the front windshields I may just draw the curtain um I tried various ways of holding up the curtain I first tried a tension rod but that didn't work so well then I moved on to what I used now which is hooks over the piece of wood but that had a tendency to stop pulling the wood away from the wall a little bit it um I went back to the RV manufacturer and part of what they did for work that I wanted to have them done was they put in some extra nailing in there um but even so I still felt it might come away with a weight so what I use is a 2-in adhesive hook and loop from go hook and I've got that in the middle and you can see that that sort of adheres to the carpet on the covered above the cab and that holds up the mdle really well um it does leave a slight Gap but that doesn't bother me cuz I'm sleeping right at the back I've got a uh van essential cover over the fantastic fan um that helps again with insulation I sunight drive on cold days and uh it also helps with keeping the light out if I'm using the van trying to sleep when there's a bit of light outside so that works really well and I just keep that stashed behind the driver's seat in a little cubby hole there the shower floor has a wooden lip it's not very tall and I used to find even with a shower curtain that I was spelling water into the hallway when I was taking a shower or just using the shower and the sink to wash my hair so what I found was uh a pool noodle works really well so you just take a big plastic piece of the middle out you cut the P pool noodle to size uh make sure you've got a slit down it and uh then it fits over quite nicely and that has raised the height quite considerably so I get far less if any Splash over the side now and I can just keep the pool noodle behind the stash it behind the toilet works really well I have an induction cooker and uh I don't want the glass top of it to break uh there's a cupboard above the cooker if something fell out it might drop onto it and smash it um you obviously shouldn't keep anything heavy that high up but even so I still wanted it to be protected so I just found a cheap cutting board that fitted across the cooktop and uh basically gives me extra worktop space um I don't use the induction cooker that often but it's really easy to get to and I just have these little sort of plastic knobs attached to the bottom of the cover just to keep it raised a little bit so it's not in contact with the actual induction top itself the sink cover is pretty heavy and when I take it off I always have a question as to where shall I put it just down on the floor perhaps one of the rvers who has a 3D printer in our Facebook group made this little plastic uh hook and that goes on the back of the sink and the sink cover attaches to it very nicely so this generous person made them available for just a nominal charge and uh so this works really well maybe you can and figure out something that's similar to this I found when I opened the drawer below the sink it needed quite a large tug and I was a bit concerned about how much pressure I was putting on it and it would come out open with quite a jerk so I just keep my thumb attached not attached I keep my thumb pressed against the um cabinet above it and then use my fingers to pull it and I get much more control over that and I use that te with the other drawers in the kitchen area as well um I don't think it puts any less pressure on it but uh it's much more controllable and doesn't jerk open so rapidly this next tip is really one of the coolest ones because it doesn't require any work or any purchasing um it's where to keep tissues I usually travel with two boxes one that's open and one that's spare and uh you know I kind of keep them in an overhead cabinet somewhere but uh lo and behold somebody figured out that they fit very nicely between the two windows and so that is where I keep them now and no storage space used whatsoever this is brilliant in the morning when I turned the bed back into the couch I have to put the Lagoon table back and uh I was always sort of filling about with the height to make sure that it was set at the right height sometimes I get it wrong and have to make adjustments and all I did to solve that problem was use a uh a marker pen on the um leg of the Lagoon table and uh marked off where that marker should m match and uh now I instantly always get it set to the right height no worries about guessing where it should go I travel with a couple of pillows and I also use them as day cushions on the couch and I didn't really want my head when I was sleeping to be going up against the pillowcase that I used during the day in case it it got messy somehow um so my simple solution was to use two pillowcases an inner one that I use when I'm sleeping and then when I get up in the morning I slip on the other one and that's the one for day use so I found that after using the sofa for a year or so it didn't always come up and I had to lean over at the back to give it a little tug to get it to come up um but uh I found that if I just press my knee on to the front that usually unblocks it and it means I don't have to stretch out to the back I wanted to figure out where I could keep some things at night while I'm in bed uh just like where to put the phone or the remote control for the TV that kind of thing and there was nowhere actually in this van to put it um some people have put shelves sort of uh shelf thing hanging down from the upper shelf but uh I didn't want to do that because that was too far for me to reach so I just got a little um shelf thing that Clips over the bottom of the window frame so there are a lot of different ways to use the overhead shelves and uh I was stuffing clothes in one of them but um I found that a shelf divider which a lot of people use worked out really well and uh this is the one I got and I put it up in two shelves and uh works really well so when closing the side do to the van uh sometimes it feels like I've got to slam it to make sure it shuts properly and um I've learned that there's a much better technique it latches on the uh the back of the door rather than the front and all you got to do as you're pulling the door closed is push inwards on the back of it and then you can close it at a much slower speed there's no real slam and it works great now you can't do that when you're inside the van although I have heard of somebody who put some kind of strap on it so that when they're closing the door inside they can pull the back of the door in to latch it that way so uh this worked out really well and I feel much better about closing the van door without slamming it each time so that's it hope you found them useful if you like this video hit the like button consider subscribing to the channel I do occasional videos on IVs and um quite a few videos on my favorite sport of orienteering so uh that's it for now oh [Music]

Channel: Mike the rambler

Views: 1,098

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Id: mYt1sRjfHV4

Length: 10min 35sec (635 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 08 2024