How To Prepare For Vanlife With A Baby

hi everyone how's it going so this week you have just got adie and i because james is off doing this i haven't gone off and got a job as a painter decorator but just to very briefly explain what i am doing before we decided to build our van cassie we'd actually been backpacking around the world for about five years but before that we were living in the house that i'm standing in now in nottingham and before we left to travel the world we rented the house out and it's been rented out ever since our latest tenants have literally just left so we've come down to give it a lick of pain get it spruced up ready to let out again and hopefully we can finally get out of the uk and head over to europe anyway i'll hand you back over to sarah and adi and i'll catch you soon welcome back so we thought we'd just give you a bit of a run through of the modifications that we did to the van to get ready for aidy joining us and some of the things we bought to make life a little bit easier around here okay are you ready you've got your script sorted do you know what you're saying let's do this okay so one of the most important practicalities that you will need to consider if you are thinking about traveling or living in a van with a baby is where your baby is going to sleep so we made this seating area that i'm currently sitting on into a convertible cut area we got a custom sized mattress and just made a simple front for the cot that just slides in and out so we can make up the cut or take it down to use it as a seat depending on how we want to use the area so this is ade's little area of the van she has a bookshelf here and a mobile that comes down from the ceiling one thing we'll say is that we don't actually use the cot as much as we thought we would because she's left it for around the first month or so but now she just co-sleeps in the bed with us so if you know you are already going to be doing that co-sleeping then you won't need to worry about making a cut area you can just do that and yeah don't bother with any alterations regarding the sleeping part of having a baby in a van our bed is a full double sized bed so there's plenty of space there for all three of us and because there's a water at one side and the wall of the van at the other side we don't need to worry about her rolling off either side of the bed or getting wedged anywhere or anything like that she just sleeps at my side of the bed and yeah that's how we that's how we all sleep of course something you'll absolutely need for traveling in a van with a baby is a car seat this is the one we opted for it's a joey every stage and is suitable for newborn to 12 years old you simply take the inserts out and change it to forward-facing as they grow we don't have eyes isofix points in the van but the car seat does have them as an option so you can use it in another vehicle if you choose to for our purposes in the van it just fixes them with the seat belt but it's dead easy to take in and out fits really well in the middle seat which is the safest place for it and adi finds it really comfortable too another thing that you're going to need to consider is temperature control in the van so we have five ways of controlling the temperature in our fan first one being insulation so we spent ages insulating the van we tried to do a proper good job on it and it took absolutely ages but we think that it really paid off because not only does the van retain heat really well when it's cold it also stays pretty cool in the summer months as well when the sun's beating down on it so it's really worth spending your time doing that stage of your van build if you haven't got to that bit already the second thing that we have is our diesel heater you might be able to hear it ticking away in the background because i do currently have it on at the moment absolute must for not only van life with a baby but van life in the uk in general we use it all the time over winter it's really efficient it warms the space up like i don't know in about 10-15 minutes like virtually no time at all um and it's really cost effective that's the word i was looking for really cost effective on fuel we generally use about between five and eight pounds a week depending on how long we have it on so yeah that is one of your essentials next one is just up behind me here which is our max air fan that is something that we use for numerous things in the van just ventilation in general but especially when we're cooking or showering to make sure that all the steam gets drawn out of the van but in terms of cooling the van down if we open either the window at the back or the roof vent or both and have the fan on it just pulls a really nice cold breeze through so in the summer it makes the van nice and cool another thing that we have in terms of keeping it cool in the van is some reflective window blinds we do have them for the windows in the back in the living area but they are most useful for the cab because there's so much glass in there it gets super hot so if we're parked anywhere for any length of time in the sun it becomes like a little greenhouse in there almost so yeah they've been really really useful for keeping that area nice and cool for rady and then if any of that fails keep in cool we've also got this little 12-volt clip-on fan that we can just attach to anywhere where she is and that makes a nice cool breeze for her um whether she's sleeping or just like chilling out or whatever she's doing anyway and we can put that in the back or in the cab for when we we are traveling specifically in terms of additional safety features we added two things another carbon monoxide detector into the back of the van we already had one in the front which is near the diesel heater but we put another one in the back in the garage which is just near the water heater so both appliances basically have their own dedicated carbon monoxide detector the other thing that we did is just on the 240 volt sockets that we have down on the floor area here we just put some of those little plugs in to make sure that she can't stick her fingers in there and that's about it i guess the only other thing is making sure the cupboard doors can't be opened if there's anything in there that you wouldn't want your baby or your toddler to be getting their hands on i was a pretty sturdy anyway because when we're driving obviously we don't want stuff flinging open and everything flying out the contents being all over the van so we actually have quite sturdy locks on them anyway that i sometimes struggle to open so yeah ages definitely not going to be getting in there and getting any cleaning supplies out or anything like that another important aspect of living in a van with a baby is bath time so how you're gonna wash them we have our shower that we use but that's not really practical for a.d um so we just wash her in the sink and we have one of these foam support things to just put in the bottom there to make sure that it's a little bit more comfortable for her and but yeah we just use the tap like a little miniature shower for her it does take two of us because one of us has to hold her well the other one washes her but that works fine for us because there is both of us here another thing that we have that we'll probably use more over in europe where it's warmer is like a collapsible bathtub so we'll use that outside hopefully more and the aim of having that is that if we've been on the beach and she's all sandy and stuff we can bath her outside rather than clogging up the grey tank with any sand another thing we get asked about a lot is whether we have a pram or a push chair no we don't we just have a baby carrier basically we decided before she was born that we weren't going to bother not that we were adverse to getting one it just felt like we don't really spend that much time in places where it would be useful and we're normally walking in areas where you wouldn't be able to use a pram or a push chair anyway so yeah we just have one of these baby bjorn carriers she's used it from a from a newborn ever since she was a tiny little baby and it's been absolutely fine brilliant love it don't need a pram or a pushchair in our opinion if you are going to be living in a van with a baby another thing people quite often want to know about is storage so obviously having a baby comes with more things there's now three of us in the van it's just an inevitable thing that there's going to be more stuff basically what we did before she came along was had a massive clear out so anything that we weren't using on a day-to-day basis or that wasn't essential for emergency purposes we got rid of so that included any extra clothing or accessories anything that was in the kitchen and yeah just just anything that we that we didn't need and we really paired all that stuff down to make space for her things so she has a dedicated cupboard where her clothes and her toys are she's not allowed any more things that don't fit in that cupboard jay and i are pretty minimalistic anyway so that just translates into into parenthood quite naturally for us to be honest um but yeah anything that she needs we feel fits in that cupboard so she has more than enough clothes more than enough toys but yeah that is quite different to living in a house i suppose where you have an endless amount of space to put stuff she just has that cupboard and that's how it is hair changing stuff so nappies wipes changing mat things like that that all stays in her changing bag that we take out of this on a on a day-to-day basis so we don't store nappies and stuff in two different areas in the van that's just um in that bag and we keep that just in the toilet area in the shower room move that out obviously when we need to use it but that's just where it stays so there's stuff's on hand to to get out of there in terms of organization the cupboard tidiers and packing cubes are really helpful for keeping our stuff separated so that we know what's where we can access things really easily we also created some extra storage in the garage area so we put one of the cargo nets fixed up underneath the bed so we keep light things in that like nappies and wipes and stuff and that generally keeps those out of the way we also have these nifty little devices in the wardrobes that basically double the amount of hanging space that we have so they fit over coat angler so you can hang another coat hanger on there and that's really helpful for putting her jackets and coats and things in there if you are still at the stage of building your van as well make sure that you be sure to include in your design some overhead cab storage because that creates a really nice area that you can put loads of stuff in there we use it for all different kinds of things all our coats and towels extra bedding things like that so yeah definitely definitely recommend that okay that is pretty much it in terms of the modifications that we did and additional bits and bobs that we've bought i'll put links to everything that we have spoken about down in the description below if you've got any questions please get in touch in the comments and we will give any more information about anything that you want to know like the video if you enjoyed it and want to see more content like this don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already and we will catch you next week won't we cheers guys bye [Music] you

Channel: The Whole World or Nothing

Views: 6,307

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Id: L6XuU0xUfhA

Length: 11min 19sec (679 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 20 2022