Trailer Tour of a Thrifty Solo Woman's Casita Home on the Road!

lived in wisconsin all of my life until i was about 25 years of age i went to college i was doing what everybody told me i had to do which was you know go to school do well and then get a job and then eventually you know find the perfect person settle down and raise a family but that never really agreed with me um i i just i went to school and i did good at school because i had to but i just didn't really feel it inside when i was 25 years old my first year out of college i took a trip like a road trip down to south carolina which is the first time i'd been out of wisconsin in a very long time and i just fell in love with it like it was so different from wisconsin it was you know right along the ocean and the trees were different and the air felt different it was all these different people and i'm like wow this is great i want to move down to south carolina so at 25 i spent over a thousand dollars rented a u-haul moved all of my stuff down to south carolina and i lived down there an apartment and for the first year or so it was great like everything was new and different and then i started getting that same feeling again like man i kind of want to try something different and u-hauls are really expensive so uh and that combined with my whole like lack of passion about what i was doing for my career kind of kind of led me to try look at other things i am a i still am actually a certified veterinary technician that's what i went to college for so uh three years into living in south carolina when i was starting to get tired of the location and really tired of the job and at that point i knew like just finding another job wasn't going to do it i was going to burn out again it was just inevitable uh so that's when i started looking at other ways of living and other thing things i could do to make money and i stumbled across rving and i'm like oh that sounds great um luckily i'd always been kind of a saver and i'd saved most of the money i made doing the as a vet tech and i bought my trailer and my truck without any debt and i hit the road in september of 2012. and of course you have a casita and you've been pleased with your casita yes this is a 17-foot casita spirit deluxe it's what's called a molded fiberglass trailer it's got two halves that are held together with just the belly band in the center and at 17 years old and i'm really happy with it because it doesn't leak the way that most normal trailers do that the slab sided trailers they're called because there aren't as many seams on it like there's nothing puncturing the roof there's no seams to leak um and it's it's held up really well over time i spent nine thousand dollars on it when i bought it at 13 years old which probably sounds like a lot but these trailers hold their value really well that's because they just last forever pretty much so yeah i bought that i've been really happy with it so when you started telling people that you were gonna abandon the the world you knew and and live on wheels so what was people's reaction um i i got a variety of reactions um most of my friends thought it was cool like they thought i was just a little bit crazy probably but they're like yeah you do that good for you um my family of course wasn't quite so pleased mostly what they were concerned about was my safety because i was going to be hitting the road as a single person uh and they were worried that i was going to meet up with all these bad people and get into trouble which kind of brings us to to one of the the big the big things about rving as i do being a young single person is uh safety how do you stay safe on the road and people ask me all the time well aren't you worried as the same thing my parents asked me aren't you worried about getting on the road and getting in trouble and the way i look at it some bad things can happen no matter where you are but i tell people that my biggest defense against that sort of thing happening is is just common sense uh for instance when i'm pulling into a campground if the campground looks run down and there's nobody else there i you know i just like this doesn't look right i move on um i don't stay overnight in walmart or truck stop parking lots if it's not well lit um i actually look for places that have security cameras because i know security cameras keep other people honest and like when i'm going hiking or stuff like that out by myself i'll tell my neighbors hey i'm i'm going to be hiking out to here i plan to be back at this point you know if if i don't show up you know send somebody to look for me and that that policy of just you know listening to my gut feeling and common sense has really served me well i've been traveling for three years now and i i've never been in a situation where i felt like i was in danger so you think most of the fear is unfounded quite a bit of it yeah and i mean there's i mean there is a chance that something could happen and uh if if you want to feel better about it i mean you can carry like mace or bear spray you can have a dog that helps a lot you could have like a motor home instead of a trailer and that way you can get right from your living quarters and drive off without needing to get out of the trailer that makes some people feel safer and of course there there's a guns you could have a gun but if you do that you'll have to follow the gun rules because they vary from state to state while you're traveling but yeah i i haven't felt any more unsafe on the road than i did living stationary probably another uh reason everyone threw at you you shouldn't do this is money i mean you're a young person you don't have obviously you don't have a pension social security uh you need to make money and you need just not only just to live today but to be thinking about your older age so how are you handling income and thinking in terms of your older age yeah that's a very good question because i was a veterinary technician that was not a job that i could take on the road with me so it wasn't like i had a career where i could just do it from my computer and it didn't matter where i was so i i hit the road as a work camper actually i discovered it online there's a couple different places like yeah coolworks.com and work camper news that have job listings specifically for people who travel with trailers and my first year on the road my entire income like 100 of what i made it was entirely worth camping so what i did is i worked for amazon.com camper force i'm sure you've heard of it during the fall and during the summers i would pick a different national park every year so i did badlands my first year zion the second year and then yellowstone this past year and between those things i make you know that's the majority of my income still even now but after my first year on the road i started realizing hey i've got this blog i've been running it for a little while now and i i wrote a little e-book and i make some money off of that and last year the split ended up being about 70 percent were camping income and 30 percent online income through my blog in my book good so and then as you go along you'll pick up more audience and write more books you're in the process now writing another book yes my first book is solo full-time rving on a budget a lot of keywords in there and it's it's basically the book that i would have wanted myself when i hit the road so i just kind of wrote a book for an earlier version of myself which worked out well because there are a lot of other people in a similar situation as me my second book is going to be more philosophy oriented but i i don't have a working title for that one yet still a little bit sometimes the title's hard yeah that's true i struggle with that too so tell the audience where they can go and get your book uh well they can get my book through my blog at interstellarorchard.com it's spelled exactly as you know regular spelling and there's there's a lot of information on there i've got a lot of free information too about for instance like my income and tax stuff and what i do for my internet and what i do for health insurance and you know all of that and there's also a link in there that leads to my book so you can find it there so you if i remember you have your entire budget for each year broken down on your website yes i do yep every year even the last year that i was living stationary to kind of give a a sense of what it was before versus what it is now and i i do spend a little bit less on the road than i did living stationary not not as much as some people but yeah i l live a little bit cheaper and i i don't earn as much work camping as i did as a veterinary technician but for me it was worth it because i i'm so much happier now i feel much more fulfilled and i'm still able to save up enough more to you know put towards an ira for retirement oh you are so that's how you're taking care of retirement of course you're paying social security as you go along and uh you are putting money away into an ira for your retirement yes that's correct yeah a certain percentage of my money goes to my ira and then i also have a separate emergency fund which covers like for instance my fridge keeled over and died at the end of last year that cost me over eighteen hundred dollars or yeah eighteen hundred dollars to fix it um so having that emergency fund uh gives me a lot of peace of mind that if something goes wrong while i'm traveling i'll have the money to deal with it right yeah an emergency fund's just essential uh that's one thing i tell people don't go out with at least some money on the side yeah i absolutely recommend it especially if you're uh if you're buying like a an older vehicle or an older trailer it's just inevitable that things are going to go wrong and it just helps so much having that money a lot of people get overwhelmed with the number of steps that there can be to going online because you gotta you gotta figure out how you're gonna do the income and then there's so many different things that you could travel in and then there's well where how am i gonna get my mail you know where am i going to live and i i found that just by doing just one step at a time just worry about the most important step for right now and the rest just takes care of itself as you go right yeah yeah there is a solution for every problem and absolutely i like to call that uh analysis paralysis people get focused in on all the little problems and then they just spin their wheels and never go anywhere but you just made you know you thought about it logically you planned you took care of every contingency that you possibly could and you did it just yep and i'm happier than i've ever been good that's the goal yep that's the goal well thank you for uh this telling us about your sharing your life with us uh would you mind if we took a look at your casino people probably some people may never have seen one sure yeah come inside let's take a look all right let's do that let's go inside um talking about my rig and how i managed to make this lifestyle work for me first i'm going to talk about my tow vehicle this is my 2001 dodge dakota it is a midsize pickup truck but it has a v8 engine in it it's a 4.7 liter v8 and it it does a really good job it's got a tow capacity of just over 6 000 pounds and it's worked really well as a tow vehicle i can take take my trailer over mountains i never have a problem with it which is great and here's my casita molded fiberglass trailer 17 feet you can see i've got a special hitch on the front here it's a weight distribution and sway control hitch cost me about six hundred dollars but i think it's one of the best things for trailer towing that i ever bought because i could take my hand off the wheel when semis pass me and i don't move like it's it's fantastic i really love that single propane burner it does have an ac unit kind of up in the front along the side there so when i have shore power i do have air conditioning which is great and then coming around the side here one thing i really loved about the casitas is all the windows they have it makes the space inside feel much more open even though i don't have like a ton of room so i really like that um in here it's my shore power plug my water heater which i also had to replace recently and my little battery goes in there and coming out for my battery this is my renergie 100 watt portable suitcase kit i ordered it from amazon it was 250 dollars when i bought it and i do not have a generator so that provides all of my power and it's worked really well for me so far i've been really happy with it and i expected that i was gonna have to spend a thousand dollars or more on solar and then this kit came out and i'm like 250 dollars yeah and it's it's worked out really well for me i've been really pleased with um coming around the back here um spare tire rear window again i love the number of windows my water tank that's the fill for my water tank in there i got 15 gallons fresh water capacity and that's pretty much the size of my gray and my black tanks as well but i have managed to go 20 days without dumping my tanks so the 15 gallons is working well wow that is amazing yeah i i don't drink the water out of that tank i just use that one for you know dishes and you know cleaning and that sort of thing and then i have gallon just like regular plastic gallon jugs that i fill up with water for drinking and cooking and uh it's worked really well i mean i do have a shower well i'll show you that when we get inside the big tour yeah i've got a fancy awning that i have never ever used once when when you get ready to go on the road people are always like oh you have to make sure that your rv has this or that or you need to make sure you buy this the special dishware and i kind of got suckered into it with the awning everybody who was full time he said oh you need to have an awning and i've never used it and i guess the moral of the story is um what works for one person doesn't work for everybody so when you're looking at an rv just think about what you would want like just imagine yourself like sitting outside like well if you position the trailer so that the sun's behind it you've got shade you don't really need an awning but for some people they do so it's just a very individualized thing all right heading on to the inside now okay so this is the inside of my casita it's got a standing height of six feet one inch so if you're taller person might not be the best option for you but it works pretty well for me no you've got tons and tons of room yeah like i'm i'm five five and a half so i've i got plenty plenty of room because i'm a smaller person i'm just gonna direct you into the little bathroom here quickly so you can take a peek in there let me turn on the light so you can see kinda so it does have a shower and a toilet in it it is fully self contained i have never used the shower myself i prefer to just do like sponge baths and then i'll pay to go in town to take a real shower because i love using a lot of hot water and i only have a a small tank so i don't use the shower but it's there it's huge yeah it's got quite a bit of space actually it works really well for me um behind to your right that is my closet and my ac so there's where all my clothes go and right below that is my ac unit kind of a weird placement but it works ac is at the bottom yep and you do have you ever used it yeah i use the ac quite a bit when i'm work camping over the summer um you can't just leave when it starts getting hot so like especially when i was in the badlands for instance the badlands gets quite warm in the summer so yeah i could get close to 100 degrees and you definitely would need need that now looking at my cabinet complex here this is storage i put pots and pans up there also my carbon monoxide tester because i use a mr buddy propane heater and i want to make sure i don't accidentally affixiate myself next one down is my microwave yes that is the original 17 year old microwave and i kind of keep wishing that this appliance will die so i can get like something nicer but i can't bring myself to get rid of it before it actually dies but you use it if you're in a park which is yep in the summer you spend most every summer in hooked up yeah i spend a lot of time on hookups so for me it really like the microwave is a good thing to have and here's my fridge brand new it's four cubic feet so it's it's a decent size i don't know if you can see inside there freezers on top fridge stuff on the bottom plenty of space i never fill it up with food single person yeah yeah it works out quite well but you have it yep i have it and you can't really do without it most of us can't yeah most of us can't that's right my sink is here underneath this pretty standard yeah standard sink um storage space that's where i keep my food up in there it's pretty full my pantry this is my two burner stove under here it's got the little lovers that pop out oh that is very slick yeah then i've got some extra preparing space there yes so that works pretty well um this model the spear deluxe it's actually got this can be a dinette this currently is a dinette both can be dinettes both can be beds they're they're interchangeable so the top comes off of the table it fits on a little lip down there and you can have a second bed so i actually traveled with my best friend for a little while in this trailer and this was the only layout that would allow us to have two beds so we could have separate sleeping quarters but normally i leave it as you see it here um the back dinette the four-person dinette i leave as a it's a full-size bed almost it's like an inch off but it's pretty much a full-size bed and uh this is just my dinette where i do my computer stuff and then all along the edge here this is all storage that is a lot of storage yeah and i get quite a bit of stuff up there so kind of gives you an idea i've got a pretty pretty good amount of storage there yeah that's a lot that really adds up it's a small space but oh yeah you can see i still have room like i could put more stuff in here if i wanted to certainly not crap yeah and you got stuff stored under the bed yes when i was traveling with a cat briefly that's where the litter box went was underneath the bed here right now it's my mr buddy propane heater that's what i do for my heat since i don't have a furnace i've got the little buddy here it's about 65 on walmart and that heats up the casita really nicely like that works really well for me i've also got like a baskets with clothes in the back this is my tool kit um my important documents that i carry with me you know like uh tax stuff money stuff paycheck stubs that sort of thing uh underneath here is more storage uh i got like in a basket that's where my cleaning supplies are the door's tougher all my pro flex that i'm gonna use for fixing redoing my caulk that's getting old it's an older trailer yeah maintenance yep yep but cocking isn't too hard no that's within everyone's reach yeah and i've been really happy with my little home what a super place yeah very comfortable life yeah so thank you all for joining me and i hope you liked this tour of my casita thank you becky thank you bob we'll see you all the next video bye

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 586,535

Keywords: live, living, van, car, RV, Casita, Travel Trailer, hitch, equalizer, solar, Renogy, kit, suitcase, 100 watts, interstellarorchard, blog, save, future, full-time, nomad, Scamp, young, woman, portable, shower, tow, vehicle

Id: gvmHQPX3IPc

Length: 20min 38sec (1238 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 20 2016