Van Life Essentials: I Bought My Favorite Things for Living in a Van on Amazon

one of the most valuable things i own is a try leveler this is made by camco you just simply drive up on it one two three levels uh you can get about four inches four and a half inches i've and you think look at these things this is junk but it is not these are superb these were i have a one ton van loaded fairly heavy uh you try and get close you can see how potted this is i park in the desert on rocks uh in the forest and i've had these for three years now and when i'm done like in the desert i'll have to um i'll have to chip pull the rocks out they get embedded they are super tough incredibly they are very cheap uh these are now 13 on amazon i'm gonna put a link to everything you see here uh in the description go to the description now let me let me full confession uh disclosure that they are uh affiliate links i will make a little bit of money on anything you buy with that link if you go to look at this and buy something else i'll still make a little bit of money it won't cost you anything but you'll be supporting me uh and i just think that's a really good deal so i have two of these i always carry i drive up on them easily on the front wheel i can look down and actually see them when i go up on them but this is the way to go and for 13 it's just an incredible deal now the next thing i'm going to recommend is a zodiab water pump i have found this to be tremendously helpful it's an excellent water pump it uses it uses uh d batteries uh you've probably seen the me you i've demonstrated this numerous times before you don't need me to tell you anymore about it but i really highly recommend this um it's gone up let me see what was this i think it was up to 30 bucks um i think it's up to 30 bucks it went up but uh it's still this is gonna be one something you really love to have now when it gets hot you're gonna really want a fan and this is a road pro fan you can buy these at almost any truck stop uh i think they're on sale really often once a month or so they go on sale they're 12 volt you just plug them in they will also have a d battery you can run them on d batteries back here i've been very happy with these road pro fans but you can get this uh from amazon uh it's expensive on amazon it's 40 bucks on amazon but you can get it on sale at truck stops for less really highly recommend these they're tough they're durable they don't draw much i've just been really really happy with that when it's cold on the other hand i'm going to really recommend a pair of these these are uh they're down booties these are not down these are a um uh uh down alternative uh they're baffin the company name is baffin i bought them from amazon i love love these things i just can't tell you your floor is always going to be cold on every van i've ever been in the floor has been cold and these have just held up they've got a really tough skid you can walk on these outside you know you're not going to go for a hike in them you'll tear them up but just a quick trip outside no problem here's why i love these now everyone has slippers you can go to walmart and verify buy a five dollar pair of slippers these are like 40. uh here's what's the difference these don't make my feet sweat and i don't understand that but my feet do not sweat in these any pair of slippers i've ever owned i wear them my feet sweat my feet are then wet they're cold even with the slippers on they're cold and as soon as i take this the slippers off they're really cold because now my feet are wet so i just i can't recommend these enough if it's cold out this is really what i think you should really want to have something else i recommend is an arizona map this is a benchmark atlas now it's the whole state let me show you the back here you can see the whole state of arizona is broken down by squares and pages and uh it's very good detail let's take a look at this page right here on this page you see everything is color-coded uh blue is state land purple is military land green green right here is national forest this is a city and i just really love these something else i really highly recommend i i have loved myself this is a wilson sleek and it uh it's a it's a amplifier it amplifies cell signals so i use this all the time uh on my cell phone if i'm at a marginal just outside of where i can get a good signal this amplifies it greatly i've seen it go often from uh from one bar to five bars or i've even seen it go from no bars nobody around me is getting any signal and i'll use this and i will get two three four completely usable bars of 4g this is a tremendous tool you use it's it's a cradle the the phone sits inside here this is set for my myfi jetpack which fits here perfectly you can put different arms on it so if you have a big fat smartphone you can get bigger arms it will fit in there and it comes with a little four inch magnetic antenna which screws in that works surprisingly well really well but there's a better way to make it work and that and i have a video on this you'll see all this stuff in another video this is a directional antenna and my goodness this works so well it uh you have to buy the cable that's a great bike see how big and heavy that cable is and it it screws into here and it comes out and you have to have it get a couple of adapters and now it will screw i'm not going to take the time to do it but it will screw into here it's going to be some money uh wilson electronics uh changed their names i don't know why uh and now they're this is called the weboost on amazon it's expensive it's 180 bucks this is about 60 the cable is probably going to be 30 or 40 you need at least one adapter i'll put all this in the links in the description um but if if if it's absolutely critical you get connected if you have a job if you're working if you run websites websites like i do this is the answer a lot of people want to cook with electricity and you just simply can't unless you have a lot of solar not many of us do if you have 500 watts of solar four batteries you can cook with electricity you can use a microwave an induction oven possibly a hot plate but not for very long but the only practical way to cook with solar is one of these this is a road pro stove oven and uh boy it works well i you know it looks like a toy done you look at this thing and i guess just a toy it's 12 volt i'll show you here in a minute and it's got a it's got a container receptacle here you put this in you plug it in um you can buy these and use these they fit perfectly uh personally i just line this with aluminum foil and then throw it away so i don't it's cheaper i use heavy duty aluminum foil a couple linings and that's what i do but some people want to spend the money on these it works surprisingly well i have baked brownies i've baked cookies i've made cornbread i've made meatloaf i've made i tell you what's great is chili dogs you're driving down the road you plug this into your car while you're on the route and uh put a can of chili in here and a couple of hot dogs and you got great chili dogs it'll warm that up 30 45 minutes because it uses a uh a 12-volt plug just a standard old cigarette lighter plug it has a very limited draw you know you these are fused usually at five or ten amps so it draws next to nothing if you have solar i have enough solar i can just run this off my solar but even if you don't and you're just driving you're driving you say you're going to drive an hour you uh put your food in here plug this in and by the time you get to your location you've got a cooked meal so this is an extremely handy practical device i i just can't recommend this enough i've been very very pleased with these it's road pro you can get it at amazon i'll put a link in most you can get nearly every truck stop and they go on sale often at truck stops so i really like this so talking about cooking another thing i really like is a coleman camp stove these day coleman has been making these for decades and i really like them uh but and it's small enough that you probably can find room for it and you can honestly bake in here almost anything you can bake in your of you can bake or cook in your oven you can cook in here it's like 40 bucks on amazon well i'll go ahead and do some of it for you so you can get at least get an idea and i it'll take me a minute to get it all assembled but look how simple that is and then that sits on top of the stove the burner directly and there's a lid and i'm not going to try and put the lid on it'll take me a few minutes to get it done and it has a door and a it has a door and a thermometer uh that's the top i would normally have that up on top but i'm not gonna take the time now but i really like these uh and they're cheap and uh practical and you have an oven and you and it folds away nicely when you don't need it again this is not essential if you don't have the money don't bother with this but if you or space but if you do these are nice a lot of us are just using uh you know one gallon jugs milk milk jugs that we're recycling for water and some people get the big five gallon six gallon jugs the reliance jugs i tell you this is the one i like and it used to be you could get it anywhere this has actually got water in it so it's a little heavy uh but i this is by far my preferred water method uh why because five gallons of water is 40 pounds and three gallons of water is three-eighths 24 pounds you can pick this up if you have an rv and you gotta pour this in holding uh five holding 40 pounds like this is not much fun it's a whole lot easier uh with a smaller container this is easier to find a home for in your car or in your van if you have a van it'll go under your bed uh it'll tuck into corners it'll it's easily tucked away and i used to be you could find these anywhere but now i have been looking in stores and not have i haven't seen one in a long long time so uh you really almost have to get these from amazon uh fourteen dollars from amazon again i'll have a link in the description one of the things i really like most vans are pretty tall i like a step uh and that is this is one of the best i've ever tried it folds down to nothing it's about 14 dollars just like that and i they're nearly indestructible i've driven over them and had them survive not usually usually when i drive over them to destroy but i have had it happen uh and so you know that's just really strong really easy to handle uh again that's about uh they really vary uh i'm sure there's only one chinese company that makes them all and they really vary from like 10 bucks to 15 bucks one more thing i want to show you that i dearly love and that is my adco windshield cover uh if you have a van adco has been making they're made specifically made for vans but for rvs but most rvs class c's have a van nose so they say they're for uh rvs but really any van can use them i've just got a standard 2001 chevy express fan and you can get an adco cover windshield cover for nearly any rig let me show you let me turn you around because it's over here and i'm trying to hide out of the wind let me get that for you so this is the ancho atco windshield cover uh it's designed for each van you can see some of the older models are generic this is a 2001 chevy and this one is not generic it's designed only for the 2001 chevy you can see they have a cutout here for the mirror so it's actually designed with this v in it so that you close up and around the mirror but it just has [Music] a little here's a magnet you can hear it hear it grab here i just pulled away it has a little thing that goes on here for both sides and then it slips over the door goes on and goes down there now one of the things i recommend for you is more magnets i'm a big fan of magnets these are ceramic you know somebody a lot of you're going to write in and say oh no don't buy ceramic magnets buy the super super duper whooper exotic metals i really despise those things i i don't i won't buy one known one these are far preferable to my mind i like ceramic magnets and and if you need to with a real wind you can just pull it down i'll even use a couple of them that's a lot of magnetism and uh and like use there's three and that will uh hold it down all the better what i'll really try and do is put them up there now in this side is the we're on the leeward side of the wind so there's not much wind here but uh i love this thing and what you can't well maybe you can see if i open the door well you can't because i gotta open that take that off there it's a little stretch you can't really tell i know but uh the sun shines through this it's not completely dark so in other words during the day you're completely private but also uh you get some light in there and i really like that some people a lot of a lot of people nearly everyone uses reflectix on the inside of the window i think these are a thousand times better the heat never gets inside with this here the heat never the heat's kept out it never gets inside the van with reflectix the heat goes through the windshield and you're trying to keep it contained at the windshield it's in the van you've already let it in and so it's going to get around that reflectix and flow around and could get into the van this will keep you much your fan much much cooler and give you some light whereas the reflectix just makes your rig dark and who wants to be in the middle of the day in dark so i just really love these things i've held them they hold up really well against the wind they hold up really well against uh the sun the uv rays from the sun that's very destructive they vary from the cheapest one is 35 i think the most expensive one i saw was 60. they're really pretty cheap you can buy them for any model of van since in the 1980s but they're really common and really easy and just i'll have an ad a link to the adco page on my on my um in the description and i just think this is one of those things you're going to want to get now also one more thing about to do deal with heat is you gotta get your windows open and get ventilation but what are you gonna do about the bugs well it's winter so i don't have my um i don't have i couldn't find my uh my windscreens that i've made so i'm just going to describe it for you i think you'll understand so what i do and i have just went down to home depot and bought standard fiberglass screen netting and you cut it about two inches wide from the window and this you know an outline and then you put duct tape around the outside because otherwise it'll unravel and it'll scratch you and so you duct tape around the whole outside and then how do you mount it so you've got of course you've got the rope window rolled down how do you mount it with just that's why i have these so i'll have it up here i'll just put one here because you just got a piece of duct tape bent over and these go right through duct tape uh one here one here i've got like 30 of them that i keep around and i do the whole window on this side and that side now that works super well and it gives you a lot of ventilation what uh you don't get uh is um no seems come right through and some places i'm at where their no seams are really bad so i'm gonna recommend you buy both kinds of netting just a regular standard mosquito netting and no cm netting so when the no seems come out you'll still be okay you won't be swamped and eaten by the mesquite uh but the no seam netting is so fine it really kind of blocks the ventilation so you don't want to always use it so i i would just recommend you have both i will put up a link to no cm netting in the description so another thing you could buy that is not essential at all here at christmastime or any year round is one of my t-shirts yes i'm selling t-shirts of course i am everyone is aren't they you can get them at amazon.com they are print on demand you order it they print it and they ship it to you so it's ordered through amazon you pay through amazon you if you have a return you get it you don't like it it goes back to amazon 100 amazon product to find my t-shirts go to amazon in the search bar type in jeep rv living and you'll go to my store my little store there and you'll see multiple designs uh i i have a blog post about them and a uh a video about them you can go to either place look uh look for t my t-shirts and you can find them there just go to amazon type in cheap rv living you'll see all the colors all the sizes and all the designs multiple designs this is just the one thank you for watching i really appreciate your viewership it means a lot to me and like like us on youtube and subscribe to the channel and tell your friends on social media that uh there is a different way to live and i want to tell you all about it my stuff's flapping because it's windy okay see you later [Music]

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 207,534

Keywords: live, living, car, van, RV, nomad, gypsy, camper, camp, boondock, travel, Roadpro, fan, 12 volt, oven, SureFire, Fenix, Reliance, Tri-Levelers, Adco, Windshield, Cover, Gear, List, Coleman, Full-time

Id: GlV89O4U0P0

Length: 19min 5sec (1145 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 21 2016