Self Converted Camper Van - Solo Female Traveling w/ Pets

foreign [Music] so the dinette does come down and turn into a table there's an extra wood piece that kind of fills in this triangle Gap here I have a huge shelf that spans from the very back of my attic to the very back of the van living in a van can be as expensive as you want it to be and as inexpensive relatively as you want it to be hi I'm Holly I travel with my dogs Lisa and Clarence in our home Eloise Van Gogh come take a tour thank you [Music] welcome to my kitchen I have a sink stove combination it's originally from Dometic propane just use a regular like barbecue sized propane tank goes in under the sink the sink has a faucet and an electric pump but I don't use it my water system has never been functional ever since I moved into the van and the drain goes like straight through the van that gray water drains onto the ground so I'm very aware of what I put down my sink and I only use biodegradable materials and I use a lot of like vinegar to clean my dishes rather than using a lot of water part of that again is because I don't have my water system set up and so I try to be minimal with my water usage or mindful with my water usage I have a huge shelf that spans from the very back of my attic to the very back of the van and it's one of my absolute favorite parts of my build I opted for open shelving partially because it makes the space feel a lot bigger being able to like see all the way through back through the walls rather than having Cabinetry here and like cutting off the view and making it a little bit smaller feeling and more claustrophobic I use a 35 liter Yeti Yeti cooler instead of a fridge and I do this for a couple of reasons I don't think that I have the electrical system to power a fridge they were very expensive and when I was starting living in the van four years ago I needed things to fit into my very specific minimal budget the cooler works really well for me I never even buy ice part of that is because of my diet I'm a vegetarian I opened the lid at night I let the cold air come in and then I close it during the day and that's really how I keep my food fresh if my cooler is stocked my shelves are stocked my produce hammock is stocked I can get by with like two or three weeks of food and still eat like pretty fresh and pretty healthy I met my first road person in February of 2011 and that was the first time that I found out you could live this lifestyle on purpose and it really struck a nerve with me at that time and then I spent the next six or seven years daydreaming about being on the road and I'd have moments periodically where I would decide Now's the Time and I would start doing a bunch of research and test driving different vehicles and starting to get rid of all of my stuff and right before I had to make that like real final commitment something in life would happen that would make it inconvenient to live on the road I'd get a job or a partner or something dumb like that eventually I got sick of myself and so I decided that 2018 was the year that it was going to happen I was either going to get a van or I was going to decide that it wasn't that important to me after all and I didn't actually want to do it the dream of living on the road was taking up too much space on my to-do list so I had to like do it or don't um and then I started test driving vans in January of 2018 and I bought this one in August I paid six thousand dollars for it at the time it had 97 000 miles on it and over the course of the next six months I took everything apart put it all back together and I think I hit the road with maybe like ten thousand dollars into the van like between 10 and 12. and we hit the road on January 1st of 2019. [Music] my dogs really like being with me all the time and Lisa has always been a very good road trip dog a really good camping dog and so moving into the van for her was just the best of all of her world she could be with me all the time and we were in the car all the time and camping all the time was everything was perfect um that said living in a small space with dogs even dogs that you adore and love and are wonderful it can be a little challenging sometimes it's always going to be messy there's always going to be dog hair somewhere you have to pay a lot of attention to the weather in ways that you don't necessarily have to if you don't have pets in a van because the van will more or less be the temperature that it is outside but it gets hot a little quicker or it gets colder a little quicker and so that's something you need to keep in mind and if you are going into a coffee shop or to the grocery store or anywhere else you just have to be aware of how long your pet is going to be in the van and what the temperature may or may not be and whether they have the water they need or if they're going to be barking and if someone is going to you know walk by in a parking lot and think that there's a distressed animal inside and there's just a lot of extra things you have to think about that you wouldn't necessarily have to think about if you didn't have a dog in a vehicle like in a vehicle all the time [Music] thank you [Music] welcome to my dinette bed and a board game station pretty excellent little table we have here it actually goes all the way to the back I have two sets of tabletop and two separate legs but I usually leave the back down in this J shape it provides a lot more seating mostly for the dogs to be honest and occasionally for guests I do a lot of my work here I cook here I don't have a lot of counter space otherwise in my kitchen area so this ends up being like kitchen prep space if it's in table mode and not in bed mode I kind of do all kinds of work because having income come from Just One Source really stresses me out so over the last four years I've primarily done freelance writing ghost writing and copywriting for the outdoor industry and for like the B2B tech industry I also edit photos make art do coaching and a handful of other things I will say yes to most gigs if they sound like a good time and a fun way to make some money so the dinette does come down and turn into a table there's an extra wood piece that kind of fills in this triangle Gap here the benches on either side are storage this first one here has like mostly dog paraphernalia in the back over here I have more of my outdoor gear all of my backpacking gear hiking poles Etc and some tools on the other side my electrical setup is in this back corner here it is an octopus it is not pretty but it functions the giant shelf kind of transitions from a kitchen and bathroom space and into more books and art and incense and materials and that sort of thing I have an affirmation deck that I made a few months ago that I have all the supplies for back there for when I sell decks this side is mostly books and journals and my tarot decks affirmation decks Oracle decks Etc this shelf was one of the more recent additions to the van I really haven't made that many changes to it in the four and a half years that I've owned it and honestly I bought the van and built the van expecting it to last me a year because when I was doing all of my research for Van life vanners van builds Etc most of the people that I was seeing at the time in 2018 era were living in their Vans for about a year and then usually a year in something would happen and they would decide that they needed a new van or they would take their build all the way apart and rebuild it and so that's kind of what I had in my mind when I bought and built this van was it just needs to last me a year and then I really haven't made any changes to it except by adding the Shelf because I have too many books which is a personal addiction and I'm not mad about it I don't plan on making any major alterations because I didn't enjoy the build process enough to really want to like engineer a different way of being but if I could start over and I started with a blank van that didn't have a kitchen cabinet and a bed set up the way that it is I would have made the bed a little taller because it is very low right now I love the headspace obviously this is more than tall enough for me to stand in but I think it would have been nice to have the bed a little taller and have more functional storage rather than just bins that you've dropped stuff into [Music] thank you so when I bought the van it didn't have a solar setup I installed a 100 watt solar panel on the roof before I installed my beautiful tongue and groove ceiling and when I bought the van it had two old like AGM batteries that worked for the first maybe a year and a half two years and then they started dying so I replaced them with a 100 amp hour lithium battery and I also have that hooked up to my alternator so I've got those two ways of charging the battery and then I also have Shore power if I ever need it I've used it maybe two times both of the times where so I could use power tools in the van and build it [Music] all right [Music] this is the front of the van this is where most of the accessible storage is found I have a seat back organizer on the passenger seat that holds mostly like van mechanic records and a couple of like first aid type things on the back of the driver's seat I have uh shoe organizers that go on the back of like closet doors and occasionally I put shoes there but I also put tools and dog stuff and anything else that needs to go somewhere but doesn't fit in my giant shelf or anywhere else I call this area the attic the over the cab area this has all of my finished sketchbooks it's got my warm weather clothes it's got my sleeping bag and some other backpacking things I store some food up here it's kind of like a catch-all pantry mud room area on the passenger side of the van for probably half the length of the van I have this netting pulled up here that is just glued into my I-beam where the high top and the original metal top meat and then I have hooks in the ceiling that hold it up and that is my entire closet all of my clothes go there in some kind of organized chaos living in a van can be as expensive as you want it to be and as inexpensive relatively as you want it to be and so you don't need to have something that's new and fancy and you know you have a loan on or anything I am a huge proponent of doing everything as debt free as you possibly can because I find that that gives me a lot of ease a lot of peace of mind a lot of confidence I think that you can still find good quality Vans for a lower cost I think so much of shopping for any kind of rig regardless of budget but especially in tight budget situations is test driving I think that you need to put your body in the space that you think your body wants to be in you have to be in the driver's seat you have to be in the house part of the van you have to see how it fits how it feels I test drove so many Vans I put myself in so many Vans even ones I knew I couldn't afford I went to a Sprinter dealership and like drove a brand new Sprinter I don't know why they let me do that but they did and I'm glad that I did and I don't regret getting this one I'm really glad that I have this one it's an old Ford and that's really great because like mechanics and Podunk can fix old Fords they're very Plug and Play I am not a mechanic but I tell you what I know so much more about mechanic anything now than I knew four and a half years ago when I bought it just because you can fix so much of this on your own [Music] thank you all for watching if you'd like to follow my journey see my dogs see what else we get up to you can come follow me I'm Holly C Priestly everywhere h-o-l-l-y-c-p-r-i-e-s-t-l-e-y I have a podcast called deliberate living you should check that out see you guys on the road bye [Music] thank you

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 40,284

Keywords: tiny house, tiny house on wheels, living big in a tiny house, tiny house england, tiny house uk, tiny house movement, tiny home, small house, small spaces, small house design, alternative living, architecture, affordable home, off the grid, small space living, tiny house life, tiny home uk, diy tiny house, diy home

Id: 8MpZkvRYwIk

Length: 13min 41sec (821 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023