Solo Female Vanlife - Full Time Remote Work W/ Clever Office Space

hi my name is elisa this is savannah my home on wheels let me show you around [Music] so first we have my kitchen um i just wanted to keep my kitchen kind of in one area because i wanted to keep it as open feeling as possible so i just went with having a kitchen on this side only and there's no cooktops or anything permanently attached i just have a camp stove that i pull out and use with my pan or single pan or pot keep things really simple because i didn't want to over purchase or over pack i wanted to start small and like leave room to grow so that was kind of my idea on having a minimalist approach and even with that approach i feel like i have tons of storage so all of this up here is pantry storage there's these two cabinets up top which we just piece by piece custom built on the transits they have really curved walls and ceilings so we we had to take peach piece by piece and cut it to the angles of both the ceiling and the wall but i think they turned out really great they're really sturdy and as you can see there's tons of storage space in my buckets and more than i actually need so um that turned out great here i have i loved the kind of farmhouse sink look keeping things feeling like a tiny home i really wanted to feel like i was in a home and not a metal box a vehicle so this was actually cheaper than a lot of the rv sinks you'll see out there this was i think 50 or 60 on amazon and it's a bathroom sink so we just under mount it under the butcher block countertop so that it kind of had that extra look and mounting it underneath also gave me a couple extra inches of sink depth so that was really nice i have a water filter here i think it's called the pure life water filter so i just fill this up with whatever sink water i have so i don't really have to worry too much about where i get my water for drinking purposes and it just drains down into here and i have my fresh water flow right there i have all of my water storage underneath so i think this is kind of unusual the way that i've done it here i have my fresh and my gray i have a 14 gallon fresh water tank in the front and a 7 gallon gray water tank in the back there's a knob that i can use to keep it closed because or for the great water keep the gray water closed so that it doesn't drain until i'm ready to drain it in an appropriate place whenever i'm ready to fill it up i undo this strap here and pull out the whole drawer i don't have to fill it up very often so it's not that much of a hassle for some reason i just felt like it would be really a lot simpler to keep all my water storage in one place and not have to run pipes from the back to the front and all that kind of thing so keeping things together so here is my tiny fridge well first the art on the tiny fridge i have started my collection of polaroids with all of my favorite people from home and some favorites that i've met on the road so we've got a lot of good memories just hanging out here on the fridge to distract me from how tiny my fridge is but i have the dometic crx65 i believe and it's not too bad really i can make it work it has a freezer up here which i'm not currently using i was about to take it out because you can just remove this whole piece and then you have a lot more storage so it can be done especially for one person to maximize my space i added this section over here which is a vertical pantry essentially so that pulls out further than that normally but um yeah it's a lot of extra storage for spices and jars things like that to kind of keep things tucked away and i didn't want to put a ton of heavy stuff up top so this is more lightweight stuff and then i've got like heavier cans of beans and sauce and stuff like that down here and then again trying to make the best of my space here i made a skinny drawer for skinny things like my plates and my silverware some utensils and then all the big stuff can go down here so there's a ton of space that i can access down here um and that's all i really need i have my always pan that i really love that i use for everything has a strainer basket and a steamer basket so i really just have the other pot for macaroni [Music] i knew i had skills that i wanted to do something different with so i was a wedding photographer for five years with my best friend those were good times and you know when she wanted to shift and start doing different things i wanted to shift and start doing different things as well so the opportunity just kind of arose i went to a conference or a small workshop in bowen island so just outside of vancouver and it was for photographers videographers influencers kind of anyone with a creative mind and the desire to create content and the desire to work with brands who wanted to do good so all of that was like the perfect storm for me there were people from all over the world that came some really incredible people that wanted to do good and were doing good the instructors that we had were amazing and i just remember walking away from that conference thinking my life really can be whatever i want it to be i can do whatever i want to do just feeling really empowered and inspired and fortunately i kind of had the foresight to do a little solo road trip after that conference so i had flown into seattle rented a car driven to canada went to the conference and kind of opened myself up then in a way that i hadn't really before to try and meet new friends who wanted to do these things that i wanted to do go camping and shoot photos and do fun outdoor things and so i made some good friends there went on a solo road trip down the washington oregon coast after that and just had the best time so it was after that i went home and started looking at pants i mean pretty much immediately the hardest part was telling my friends and my family that this was something that i wanted to do and i think i was so nervous about it that it didn't do a great job in in hindsight but i'm really lucky because they all support me especially now that they get it they see it and um i was lucky enough to have to be able to live with my parents while we did the build all of from january 2020 through september 2020 so it ended up being the best quarantine project i could have asked for okay so over here is what i call my home office um i work remotely i run my own business so i work a lot for my van which is why you can see i have my imac up here i use it for designing websites and editing photos so it was important to me because i knew that i did my best work with my big screen so we made it work i have this seat right here that i use as my seat when i'm working and then i pull out this additional butcher block i just purchased i think an eight foot piece butcher block typically comes in and put this piece on a hundred pound slides i don't remember exactly they're strong and you just pull this out all the way and it kind of locks me into my desk position and then i unbungie strap my computer and it pulls down to about here and i can kind of just work here like normal pop my feet up on the cushion and be cozy for as long as i need it's also great having this because it's extra countertop space so whenever i'm cooking i'll usually pull this out and have my cooktop up here and i'll cut like chop everything and prep over here and then when it's done i just tuck it away so i can kind of maintain the open floor plan and i really like that part of my build for sure i liked the idea of having drawers as many as i could get because it's easier for me to organize that way and if i was going to not go crazy in a small space i wanted to keep things organized so we tried to maximize as much space as possible kind of in this hallway with these drawers so the drawers go back i think two feet under my bed so underneath the bed is kind of a u-shaped storage and then i have these they're on magnets that are kind of tough but i have like all my cosmetics in the top drawer and my electronic stuff office things in second and then it gets down into clothes so i have all these boxes that help to keep things organized thank you marie condo and more clothes and then i have just some heavier art supplies and notebooks and things like that in the very bottom so i wanted to have a bench i like the idea of having a space that flowed in different seating areas had the option of seating multiple people if i have anyone over i can just move the computer up and over here and have a nice long bench i can also sit here and chill kind of spread out look out my door and enjoy my life and underneath is a ton of storage so i have a ton of storage under here for some more kitchen appliances i have the like ninja blender things things that i don't use very often my electric kettle and then here's my camp stove i don't know if you can see that i use anytime i need to cook so plenty of storage in there which is really really nice i also knew that i wanted to have a fixed bed because i am not lazy i like to just drink coffee in the morning instead of make my bed yeah i wanted to keep things simple for myself so that i could always feel good in this space um that's kind of why i went with color palette i went with i wanted it to feel open and calming and just really feel at home here since it's just me living in here i knew i could do whatever i wanted and i really just kind of had fun with that so i have almost a full-size bed it's not super big but we push out these here on the foot and the headboard so it is a total of six feet i'm 5'7 and my toes touch a little bit but i kind of like it now it kind of gives me a feeling of coziness and safety somehow i also wanted my bed to go this way if i could because for some reason i didn't like the idea of my head not having support behind it i don't know if that's a feng shui thing or not but i didn't like the idea of my head being open to the back doors or open to the space so this setup is perfect for me i even kind of have an upholstered headboard up here so again really sticking to that like tiny home homey feel i also wanted to have a little fun with decorating so we put together this little shelf up here with just some fun pieces some books just random things like my camera and a fake plant because i haven't been able to keep one alive in here yet normally i'm really great but not right now i also wanted to have some open storage up here for clothes that i wasn't going to need to access every day so these are my real clothes not my workout clothes or athleisure clothes so i have some fancier stuff up here in these bins that are just from amazon i think we built the shelf and i found the appropriately sized boxes and just kind of used them wherever i could so it worked out really great we also had some fun with my ceiling uh i didn't want to do any dark wood i wanted to keep as much height as i could possibly have so what we did it's probably a little unusual my dad and i did this whole build ourselves and i was pretty adamant about trying to squeeze in every inch of space that we could so for all of my walls and my ceiling we use quarter inch plywood versus you know the standard half-inch pieces that people put up and for the ceiling we you know there's the ribs that go across the ceiling of a transit most people put supports on the exterior and they drill into the ribs we put support pieces on the inside of the ribs and drilled them up from there so i have plenty of head space here i think i've had a six foot three friend stand up and he can he can stand up just fine in here so i feel like we did a good job there and just kind of liked having a beachy vibe so had some fun putting a more decorative piece of plywood that we stripped into pieces and nail gunned up [Music] so when i was at the beginning of my journey i had found some people that i followed on social media who i really resonated with the way that they did things so there's already so much information out there so many people who are willing or who have talked about why they made the choices they made in their instagram posts all over the place so really kind of gathering that info first and i was fortunate enough when i did that solo road trip after the conference i saw that one of those girls kristen of where the road forks was in the same area i was and we almost met up it didn't quite work out but when i started to get into my build process she was really open to me for some of those like specific questions um and that was really nice of her we're friends now i'm gonna actually see her on saturday but it's just about burying your head and doing the research i could say that a million times i think but doing the research doing the research planning thinking about the way you live now how you want to live and how you can create that in a small space and then you can decide if that's something you can accomplish on your own or if you want to outsource for some of that because there's also a million builders out there who are really great and the resources are out there for them as well so anyone can do it at this point now so do it this is the garage part of my build this is kind of one of the things whenever you do your own build you sit in the van at the end of the day and kind of look around and go i think this would be a good idea random ideas that just pop into your head so i had a shower this was my shower curtain that i chopped up into curtains and to use the bottom half of it i just strung them up on a little curtain rod back here mostly just for fun and because i like things to look neat so anyways i know it's silly but i kind of like it [Music] and there's a ton of space back here i've got some camping gear my mr buddy heater for when it's colder i've got two things of extra water that i keep around just in case so it's not very often that i ever have to fill up water and those are a lot easier to take in if i'm not finding a good place and i just want to go inside to walmart i can easily put those in a cart and roll them in and out got my cowboy boots my longboard my hobbies uh and this was another thing that was a trying to utilize space was putting up these shoe racks on the back doors they curve in a lot this area on the doors so it was kind of unused space and the perfect way to create space for these bulky items which i don't wear all these shoes but i could bring them with me because they fit this was one of those other things when you just have your brain in the build where i thought it'd be nice to have something as my bedside table so this is just a bedside caddy or something like that i found it on amazon it normally hooks over the base of your bed so i just hooked it over my bed support and have some things that i like to grab at night i can throw my water in there if i want and it keeps my other area really open since i have my desktop and my home office setup i needed a fairly powerful electrical setup i have two lithium battleborn batteries and 500 watts of solar on top 2000 watt inverter and i'm gonna give my dad all the credit for the electrical setup because he's a mechanical engineer and he had fun with that and i did not so um that's all i know there's a lot more that i want to do in van life i want to go down california and long board down the beach walks and learn how to surf and maybe go down to baja or there's just so many things on the unofficial list where i can't imagine not continuing on the way that i am now with the incredible people that i've met and leaving all that behind so the future looks like a lot more hiking a lot more photography a lot more campfires probably on the beach maybe not in the forest and just a lot more of the everyday highs and lows that come along with living this type of life so thank you for watching and touring my tiny little home savannah loved having you here if you want to find more you can follow me on instagram at home dot on earth or on my website at home on earth dot com where i share a lot of my outdoor photography work and also you can find me on elise reneemade.com where i share my branding and design work for photographers and wedding industry creatives so see you there [Music] you

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 534,843

Keywords: tiny house, tiny house on wheels, living big in a tiny house, 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, diy tiny house, diy home, van life, van life build, van tour, solo female traveler, diy van build, van tour 2021, tiny house tour, living big in a tiny house 2021, solo female van life, solo female van tour, women living in vans

Id: ySRVkIOFlh8

Length: 21min 33sec (1293 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 05 2021