Van Life Reset: Reducing friction for happy travels

[Music] it's time for a reset on this van what do I mean by reset well I mean getting rid of those things that cause friction and I got this idea listening to a podcast and I don't even remember what podcast it was but the person was saying find things every day that cause friction and fix them and good place to start is in this fan and even though we've been driving it for seven years there are still little things that I could have fixed a long time ago but I didn't so today I'm going to tackle those things that have been giving us friction in the van and the first one is the microwave everyone uses their microwave for storage I keep my plates in here and then I had a bunch of other stuff and every time I wanted to use it I'd have to take it all out and I thought why have I not put this into a basket so all I have to do is remove the basket when I want to use the oven and I keep my kind of storage my um you know leftover containers in here these are all my bags I keep uh an assortment of bags Ziploc and other kinds in there along with this lid to go on top of stuff that goes in the microwave and now it's going to be so easy just to pop it back inside next up I needed a new rug the other one was great I really liked it it was the right width wasn't quite long enough uh but it started to get kind of frayed along the edges and so I wanted to get a new one that proved to be problematic because Amazon no longer sold that one and it's not always easy to figure out something that matches something that you had once before but I think I found something it's not as wide but it is longer so um here's the mat that I found this is actually a supposed to be used in a bathroom and absorbs moisture really well and so I think this will work and it's nice and long one of the problems I had before was that the bathroom door had to clear and this thing will not move around and any reset should include INE cleaning out all the cupboards so I took everything out cleaned and vacuumed and then took out everything that wasn't essential in the van so my drawer is cleaned out top and bottom I'm still really liking this acrylic shelf that I had made that's worked out really well and down below I organized this I bought these little containers and then put some spices that I be more likely to use in the van I found my I found my strainer that I had lost forever and uh that's nice and neat so I'm happy about that I still have some space I cleaned out this cupboard and I've already started putting food in there because we're going to be hitting the road in a week and restock my plastic bags that I keep up there those are five gallon bags by the way the only place I've ever been able to find these five gallon bags that fit on this thing is online so I have to order them from Amazon I also decided to remove the Lagoon table that I had here I don't know how it happens but I have lost the flip up table that goes on the end of my countertop and I've turned the house upside down looking for it I got a substitute I didn't want to spend a lot of money and have something made so I went over to HomeGoods and I found this little cutting board for 12 bucks and I'm going to see if I can attach the hardware to this CU I I did know where the hardware was but I have no idea where that piece of stone has gone it looks just like the one that's on the other end of the countertop and believe me I have looked everywhere except where it is my friend gave me these little plastic razor blades I had never heard of these but it's great for getting off this little bit right here that is sticky and voila it is f oh I'm so glad I like it it's wider than the other one it's shallower so it's easier to scoot by the table is up so you can get out and uh even though it doesn't match it's still pretty good solution I'm sure a lot of people think why' you take out your Lagoon table well I'm just not a fan of them because they're they always have to be moved they're always in the way of something at least with a flip up table you know it it goes right back against the wall and is out of the way now storage is an issue in every van and one of the things it's always bug me is the handles on your pots and pans they you know those long handles they're hard to store especially in this little tiny cupboard makes everything else more difficult so I wanted something that would stack and would solve that problem and I think I found it in this set these are pots and pans it comes this one came as an 11 piece set obviously I don't need 11 pieces but I'm taking the ones that I think will be most useful in the van and they will work on induction as well as gas what I like about it is the handles are removable so this set comes with two handles like this and they're pretty easy to use it also comes with lids I'm only going to take one lid you just pull this lever down and this pops open this will be our kind of larger pot but this I probably will mostly use for our salads cuz we have a lot of salads and then this just pops on like that and locks in place so that's that and then it has a smaller fry pan like that and finally a larger one like this and it even comes with uh two plastic lids and it all Stacks neatly together I put the plastic lid on the bottom keep that from getting scratched and then that and I have my thing here my pot holder and I put my bowls I have two size well actually I only have three bowls but I got two larger bowls and then I still have a small one and then the lid goes on the top and it all goes back inside like this and I still have some extra space here and then this is where I keep the handles and by the way this is still my absolutely favorite pot of all time it's a milk milk pot and uh I love this thing I use it every single day both at home and on the road so I have one for each place I do not take my dishes in and out and then the handles go in here my milk pot lid and I don't know what I'll I'll probably still put uh chips and things in here that's usually what I do so they don't get all crunched a couple more things that I've purchased uh one I wanted a dedicated butter dish for the van and then we bought a new filter because they've come out with a a better filter so I'm sure if you're an rver you use the Camco filter and this is the one that is suppos to have an added filtration system in it so we have a new one of those and I bought a Ninja blender this is uh rechargeable I everything I've ever gotten from Ninja has been great and so I thought I'd give this a try I like to have smoothies on the on the go and this is really nice and small and I've already used it it works really well so we'll see how that goes and it's even smaller than my other one that I've taken before on trips so the bathroom in this rig of course is very small um and John has been wanting the something to store on the wall like I have and so I got another one of these um toilet tree organizers and got one for him so we both have one you can just stick it on to basically any smooth surface and these are very smooth walls and there you go the other thing I also bought because if I want to take any cleaning kind of solutions and things sometimes the containers are way too big and I want something smaller and I don't need to carry that much so I thought I'd give it a a try with these flasks I know I guess people use them for wine and stuff but I thought I'd put cleaners in this and see how that works it's a smaller amount and it will you know save space as you use it so I bought some of those I also want to mention I'm not suggesting you buy any of this stuff I'm just sharing what I have found hopefully these things will work and uh might even give you an idea for something in your rig maybe using it in a different way so that's why I share these okay now for the big item and I know I know a lot of you will say you're nuts you guys are selling your rig why are you why are you doing this but we still probably will be spending another you know between 30 and 60 days on this bed here and over the years we've noticed that had that the foam isn't quite as dense as it used to be and uh so I once in a while John would complain so I thought well I'm going to look into getting this thing somehow repaired so that there's more foam in there and I called up R uh beach cities RV and they're great they're a great resource and they said oh we take our thing our vans to a spot in you know around the corner from them and they gave me the name and I went over there and we now have an extra inch of really good high quality foam in this uh sofa [Music] so and I we did not touch the ottoman part just the just the sofa and it is clearly uh plumper than it used to be and so uh we'll let you know as you know maybe even the next video after we've spent a week on this thing uh we will let you know how it's worked out but it was um the cost was $475 I had no idea how the bed was attached to the frame and whether it was going to be a problem getting it out and then what is it going to look like when it's done anyway you have all those concerns because you don't want to ruin anything at this you know while you're doing these fixes and I was really surprised because the top actually has a zipper around the bottom the bottom piece has these clips that go in in so you don't have to destroy any of the fabric or anything like that the process for doing that cuz you might think oh it's going to take forever and blah I have to leave my van and we didn't we just um drove drove the van down and he removed the seat the hardest part was um I think for him just getting into some of the tight spots to get the screws out but it's just you know four screws on each on each one of these pieces so eight screws took it out and then 2 days later I went back and they put it back together so it was a very seamless process and maybe the best part about having those seats removed is it gave me an opportunity to clean underneath there so now that the sofa is out got a chance to clean it it's been uh 7 years of dust [Music] what kind of Grease is that this is high performance grease from park tools let me see the front of it you use it on the dropper post but I don't know you think that that'll be okay does it works on the bearings and everything on a bicycle works on cuz we've had one of these fail before we don't want it to fail again on our trip it looks like good stuff it is absolutely see where it squeaks yeah can you see where it squeaks [Music] yeah squeaks down here found the squeaky spot he squeaking inside there so okay well maybe that'll fix it up good enough I made two improvements to the outside of the van I finally fixed my utility door I don't know if you remember but I had black tape holding it closed because I never installed this properly but thanks to the help of my neighbor we were able to grind this down to get it to the right size and then I also put some foam around here to keep it from rattling or anything and now it stays closed do you remember our old trasharoo it was faded it had holes in it it was disgusting we've had it probably three or so Years anyway I bought a new one this is not the trasharoo brand it's a different brand hamal and it is bigger so hopefully that will even be better it seemed a little bit easier to install than the last one I like ice and I found several years ago an ice cube tray that I really really like I love love this thing because you can push this and pop the ice out but our new refrigerator freezer is smaller than the one we have right now if you watch keep your Daydreams then you would have seen them show this ice maker this um ice container the ice tray sits up here and then when you want when it's frozen then you turn it over and then you push down and the ice cubes fall down it's actually easier just to give this a Twist like you would have traditional ice cube tray like that and they all fall in nice size ice cubes has a little um scoop now my fridge here is not tall enough to take two cuz they it comes with two of these but this one will not hold two so I will only use one but I want you to see the the difference in size so it's quite a bit smaller so I think this is going to work out really well there are a few more things that I have gotten for this trip but those can wait until we're on the road next week and uh and then I will also have been able to test out some of these things things and let you know how they're working there are actually two chapters to this video that was the first one but the second one was kind of an unexpected trip that we made down to the adventure van Expo in San Juan Capistrano and I thought I'd throw this in at the end of the video to share some of the highlights I like to keep up on the latest van gear so at the last minute we decided to attend a local van Expo in San Juan Capistrano we were particularly interested in learning about the newest suspension and lift options for the Ford Transit but the favorite product I saw was from our own backyard solar panels that tilt or even track the sun it's a tracking solar panel 400 watts and the company is robotos robotos sounds like a something you buy at Del Taco but this thing weighs you said 140 140 pounds and it'll go down and it sits six inches off of the of the top of the Vans flush to the top of the rack you don't yeah have you put any of these on a Transit it fits on the transit inside the factory rails oh and then this this one is uh only tracks in One Direction basically okay yeah it's just a little easier to integrate for different systems you can put it over top of a rooftop fan there's less stuff underneath it you can even do like gear storage and stuff under there if you want to uh much lighter uh you know it's obviously a simpler mechanism so we can offer it for a lot cheaper oh that's cool but it's still gives you huge benefits um oh yeah uh from a flat power flat panel system usually install it with this facing forward and back or side to side really is up to you it can be any any direction if you have a campsite that you no typically go to and you know there is a there is a better you know there's an optimal way to or the panel to maximize the energy you have like on off that's basically all it matters to to the to the user but you definitely have options to do other things you want if you want to put it in a special position different modes um it has all the safety features like if you forget to bring it down and you start moving uh it detects vehicle motion and it brings it down if the wind is too high it detects um the wind it brings it down yeah and it shows you the angles of the panels on the interface as well so it's all GPS based it's not based on um like Optical sens so with that I'm going to keep packing keep getting our stuff ready the house in order all of that stuff because we're going to be hitting the road in just a few days um and we're going to be heading first up to Washington to see family and then across the country we have several interesting spots planned to stop and friends to catch up with so I'm so looking forward to that we will also be cutting up through Canada uh Ontario Quebec and who knows just depending on when our new van is ready we'll decide what else we want to throw into this trip and then hopefully hopefully sometime this summer we will have a new van and be very excited about it and so begins our next adventure thanks for watching wait Jennifer Jennifer and John and we met them in Baker City how many years ago is that six five six yeah a long time ago yeah we camp next to them and she's showing me this product called a I think it's called the bug Snappy so you catch the bug slide it but but you can do it the it outside can't can't you do one hand okay one hand okay one hand there it outside every camper should have one but that takes all the fun out of zapping them I want to see Sparks Fly

Channel: From She to Me

Views: 7,355

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Id: uzuoRp8xQqs

Length: 20min 23sec (1223 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 02 2024