WE MOVED INTO OUR VAN! | Claire P. Thomas

[Music] uh [Music] hey guys it is officially move-in day jared and i picked up our finished van a couple of weeks ago and we have been spending this time downsizing packing and figuring out exactly what we want to bring with us and what we can fit in this van and let me tell you it has not been easy the last couple of days deciding what we want to bring what we have room for it's been really difficult so we have laid everything out that we're gonna try to fit in the van uh and i guess we'll just see if we make it work if it doesn't then we're gonna have to leave some things behind but regardless we're super excited to get our things in this van and take off on this new adventure so here is everything that we're gonna bring with us all right here is everything we are bringing with us or hopefully bringing with us i should say we don't know for sure if it's gonna fit or not we think it will it's the same size ish alright so we got everything laid out here it's all broken up into categories and we did that so we had an idea of where we needed to put everything so first spot over here is everything in our kitchen slash dining room um you know so anything we would use there we've got laid out here next spot over here is going to be kind of bathroom slash you know toiletry items and then this is kind of like day-to-day stuff that you're not going to use all the time but still is very important over here is where we have all of our clothes shoes stuff that we'll be using pretty often um as well as storage we're going to help make everything more organized throughout the whole process so this is our stuff all right before we load everything up i want to show you guys the storage space that we have to work with so we have lots of storage under our bench seats you can just lift the cushion up and there's lots of open space in there we're actually going to probably have our garbage can in there and then keep some other things in there maybe some kitchen appliances and then you can see lots of space under this one as well and then of course we have lots of lots of storage in our cabinets this is where we'll be keeping our supplements our food and we put these non-stick grippy things in there liners in there so that nothing rolls around and then we're also going to be having everything in containers probably um velcroed in so that nothing rolls around while we're driving and then we also put in a paper towel rack in this little rack for spices and then unfortunately under this cabinet we don't have a lot of space because this is where our water tanks are we have two five gallon water tanks one is clean water one is for the waste water but we did figure out that we could hang some little shelves in there that's where we'll put our soap and our cleaning products and then what's awesome about our conversion is that we put in this wall here so it gave us lots of overhead storage here that goes way back there this is where we will keep um i want to keep our pots and pans up here lots of probably winter clothing and a lot of other things will be able to fit up there which is great and then of course we have our drawer um this will be where our utensils are our cutlery um all of our like kitchen gadgets will fit in there nicely then we have a fridge this fridge is actually a lot bigger than it looks on the outside it's really wide it's as wide as this countertop so i don't know what is that but we're gonna fit all of our food in there it has a little fridge or sorry freezer hopefully enough space to fit a couple pints of ice cream and lots of whipped cream obviously and then we have some cabinets up here this is where we'll put our plates and bowls and some other food items cups and glasses and then we have this exposed shelf uh which we're worried things will kind of fall out of it while we're driving so we're going to attach little hooks here and then a string so that things don't come up come out but this is where we'll put like books i want to have a plant here and then what's great about this space beth and eric um notice that this was very empty space so we have some storage down underneath the bed big open space there if we need to store anything big i kind of want to put like a blow up pedal board under there possibly and then we have our cupboard space we have three cupboards this is where we'll probably also put clothing and i don't know random things and then we have these two big drawers here for clothing as well as my guess and then this isn't a drawer this is our table moving on to the back okay here we have our garage or as i like to call it our dog house for jared when he's not being good so this is great because it's super open we can fit a lot in here we're gonna have some plastic drawers back there i put my shoe rack in here because i gotta have my shoes um this is all of our electrical so unfortunately we can't fit anything in there um but we have this awesome massive drawer which we'll be able to fit a lot in which i'm stoked about um one thing that we actually don't have today is our weights we ordered some dumbbells and kettlebells so we're gonna be storing those back here as well we have a smaller drawer here and then this is another table um and then i think that's it we also have a little bit of storage in the front cab we're gonna get a center console put in um where we can store a lot of little things and then behind the driver and passenger seat we're gonna have um a bunch of storage there as well here we have all of our kitchen stuff we've got our plates and our bowls here our cups and our mugs we're using copper wine glasses uh we've got our thermoses and water bottles we're using hydroflask we've got our cut board cutting boards and food scale lots of storage here we've got reusable ziploc baggies some reusable grocery bags and we have our dish drying mat because obviously we don't have a dishwasher so we're going to be hand washing all of our dishes and letting them air dry we've got our egg container for when we get fresh eggs from farmer's market we don't want them to break obviously um ice tray some mixing bowls all of our utensils and cutlery here we've got our under the kitchen cleaning stuff soap brushes some baggies and sponges our spices we're gonna put other food in these containers and then here is our desk things so this little box is awesome because it all comes apart so we've got our pens and scissors and tape lots of like cords and things like that are all in here nice and secure and then up here we have our coffee station you guys know i love my coffee so we've got a kettle here for boiling water we're actually going to be using an espresso machine which we've never had before but it's really small and compact so we're excited to have espresso in that so we have all of our supplements in these containers that we found at target so these will be nice because they're squared so we'll be able to fit more of them and then we'll be able to fit a few months worth of supplements at once so that we don't have to worry about shipping our supplements to random places and then over here we have our kitchen appliances we're using the dash air fryer this has like seven different uh uses it's a toaster it's a convention oven it's a air fryer it's all the things so we're super excited about that and then his skillet that we just plug in and heats up and then we're using this um induction stove is what it's called so we don't have a stove embedded into our countertops so we're just going to be plugging this in and it heats food super quickly we're using a cast iron skillet and we've got a couple pots and pans here and then we found this at ikea it's a collapsible strainer so that's awesome save some space and of course the mini waffle maker which i am obsessed with this is my favorite way to cook eggs and of course waffles and so many other amazing things and then moving on to our laundry and bathroom situation over here um we've got our towels and our laundry soap this is actually believe it or not a mini laundry machine that jared found on some laundry website thelaundryalternative.com i believe and you actually hand prank this thing it holds five pounds of laundry and you just pour this open crank it for five minutes and lay everything out to dry we have a clothes line in here which we'll be using um and we will be going to laundry mats of course but this will just be for when we are in the middle of nowhere and we don't have access to a laundry mat but this is awesome because it stretches really wide i believe it goes like 15 feet or something like that and then you just clip your clothes to it to dry everything then we've got laundry bags here for when we do go to the laundromat got a couple of those and then we actually have some extra sheets um so that if we do get our sheets dirty and we don't have access to a laundry mat we'll be able to wear or wear clean sheets our bed will wear clean sheets and then um we've got a little vacuum i didn't know that it was charged um mini vacuum we have a little steamer for wrinkly clothes and i'm bringing my hair straightener which i highly doubt that i will use that often but just in case hairbrush all the bathroom things our soap conditioner lotion toothbrushes toothpaste deodorant all of that and then over here we've got just a bunch of decor things our plants um and all the cute things that are gonna really make this place feel like a home so now i will let jared take it away with our workout stuff our adventure stuff and all the rest all right guys so i'm going to break down our workout equipment so obviously we work out a little bit so it was very important to us so we brought a yoga mat because that is something this year back in january claire and i both talked about doing yoga and getting better at being flexible through both sides now we've got our jump ropes we have dumbbells so we do have more dumbbells coming i don't know what you guys thinking when you slip 12 pound dumbbells lift a lot more so we have more dumbbells and kettlebells coming we have a weight vest when we don't want to go on walks and make a little harder we have our whiteboard for live workouts because we plan on doing a ton of live workouts and showing you guys what we do on a day-to-day basis so we've got that uh we've got my favorite piece of equipment never played in a while um on top of that one of the things we we brought to just in case so we plan on going to gyms a lot we're in shower gyms but just in case we have a portable shower this is actually solar powered so it'll be super convenient um literally just needs sun and that's it so we can take showers anywhere moving on to our it's called the survival stuff so here we have things like our backpack for hiking we have a solar powered battery pack that's charging right now um we have our what is this these are our hammock problems hammocks there you go we got hammocks on the go binoculars a little fun stuff and then also stuff for kind of like downtown because being on the road one of the biggest things the leftovers told us is you will have downtime there's gonna be things that you're not doing like paying a mortgage paying for little things like that paying bills so we've got cards little mini beer pawn set um a little fun thing we got books to read um little things to keep us occupied so on top of that we have survival stuff breaking down more of that so saw for breaking down trees if we need to make a fire battery backups in case the car breaks down heaven forbid it may happen i'm sure it will um and then we have more stuff so going into the day-to-day stuff with the van we will need to charge it occasionally if we're in a spot where there's no sun for a couple days that's why we'll use this to charge it at a campsite [Music] but after that really you know everything else is just kind of our day-to-day stuff like our vacuum and things like that what about the toilet ah well the toilet this is our just in case so originally we had a toilet installed by beth and eric in the van and we couldn't thank them enough for that because it was amazing but we started thinking about everything that we were taking and that space was super valuable to us so we decided that we took it out of there and we're gonna use that for storage which as you can see that's probably a good idea so that'll be back up just in case and on top of that we got a little digger which it works as a spoon too we've already tested this out so you can dig this you can dig in the ground and get you a nice hole to take number two in or you can use it to eat food don't do that after you dig for poop though so i'm pretty excited about that all right we are super excited about these guys we found these on amazon and they hang behind the driver and passenger seat and this is just where we're gonna keep all of our really miscellaneous items we've got a light some batteries first aid kits sunglasses business cards and this one we have our locks for the lockers when we go to gyms batteries paintbrushes uh film just random things that we really don't have a specific place for and i think that it is super important we've we've come to find out as newly van lifers that we have to be very creative with our storage and so these will be great for that and then over here is just all of the clothes that we are taking i found these awesome little containers that fit perfectly in the above cabinets in the van so that is great for me i can fit all of my shirts and socks and even my pants fit in there jared um on the other hand his clothes are a little bit bigger so his aren't gonna fit in the above storage but mine will fit in there we've got lots of shoes it was really hard for me to choose which shoes to bring probably that's the hardest thing i've had to decide during this whole experience but we have it narrowed down of course we've got hiking boots we've got training shoes running shoes slippers and then our sandals and then we've got all the containers to put everything in we even have a little hold up table over here i think it's four feet long um some more containers and oh my gosh there's a white claw in there is it empty all right let's put everything in the van just like that put all our snacks back there snacks snack pack you know i like snack pack why can't you just give me a snack pack it's our snack pack wow i gotta take a look at this let me see what you got going on here look at oh that looks awesome all right we are going to load up these plastic drawers with our warmer weather clothes and the clothes that we just won't wear very often um hence our nicer clothes um because we're likely to just wear athletic clothes honestly though majority of the time so i'm putting in all of my jackets and jared wants to put in his nice button-down shirts that he will wear on like date nights and things like that is that going to fit i might need to i might need to take some out of there we'll make it fit right that's right that's what life is all about it's about making things fit yes all right we're gonna put this in the back of the van it fits perfectly oh shoot watch out so this fits back in there which i will get in a second yeah all right we actually managed to pack in quite a bit more clothing into these and i'm gonna try to fit it back there if jared didn't have cowboy boots hanging off the side of the rack i'd probably be able to get it back there easier but i'm probably gonna have to move some shoes around we got this we can make it work it's gonna fit you guys look at this yes it fits look now we gotta redo all the shoes but that's okay because cause look let's check her out it works heck yeah i'm just gonna come over here and count how many jerseys he thinks he's bringing one two three fifteen i have over four plus are you bringing that one too no that's not gonna work and you thought i brought too many shoes all right we'll talk about i'll get rid of one or two but i'm not getting rid of all of those you don't have to get rid of them you just save them for later you're nuts that's only 13. 15. 16 plus the one you're wearing oh my gosh 16. we're gonna have to talk about this okay all right time for my stuff i'm lucky because my clothes are a little bit smaller than jared so i can fit more and then i'll put my makeup bag in there as well makeup and hair stuff and then i'm going to put the rest of my things up in these cabinets do my tank tops please fit in my i'll put these in here sports bras and what else is in here swimsuits look at that perfect fit and then my leggings and shorts this is all my athletic clothes pretty much that i'll wear every day and then socks and belts and other random little things there sweet alright so moving to the top storage space um the first thing we're throwing up here is some paints so this is eggshell white paint this is for in case you're getting like little nicks or i don't know something happens to our walls we love the way the walls look right now so we want to keep it looking good next thing i think we should do is let's throw our towels in there we have so much room up there perfect then miscellaneous stuff is kind of our office supplies after we're talking about earlier let's see i think we can get this right back there like so that's perfect and then all of this will go right here will it fit oh my gosh that is literally a perfect fit yes all right next thing so we've got tool kit and then my beard grooming stuff and stuff for hair because i do do my hair unfortunately that's it the vacuum is going on first though because i feel like this is something we'll use pretty long oh my gosh it's like we planned it nice i didn't think that was gonna fit yeah and then i quickly wanted to talk about this awesome mirror that we just made last night i'm obsessed with pennies i have a penny ring that i've been wearing for years now and we wanted a copper mirror to match our copper sink and we had a hard time finding one that was the perfect size so we found a gold mirror and we hot glued these pennies to it and we love how it came out so cute sweet okay we'll probably have to secure that down so it doesn't wobble but that fit very well unexpectedly all right and then we got our cups we're gonna put up their cups and mugs we're using mason jars as our main cup um because if it breaks it's not a big deal but then i also have some really cute mugs my really good friend thomas actually made these and then we have a couple of cute mugs i love this one and i love each other so cute um and then the mason jar lids and then a couple like um little sauce bowls or whatever keep those up in here hopefully this gets to whoa look at that wow we are we are on a roll okay let's see if i can get these up here too and then in the drawer i'm so stoked about this you guys because i found this utensil drawer at target and this part i don't know if you can see but it actually extends so it came in really really close and you can extend it out like that and so it fits perfectly like it could not fit anymore perfectly we already tested this one out so i'm going to put all of these directly in this drawer and see how it just literally takes up the entire space and we have everything we need in here we've got our wine screw our can opener our whisk bottle opener our jiggers what that is called for mixing drinks are measuring spoons spatulas spoons knives straws metal straws of course and [Music] vitamins [Music] this is pretty big so we don't want to leave it out on our countertop so we're going to actually put it in [Music] here under the cushion and then we'll put our trash can right here which will fit perfect yeah so it'll be nice because we can just cover cover it and then when we need to throw something away we're gonna probably attach a handle here so we just raise this up this up and toss our garbage away like so easy yeah [Music] good shot plus all right let's let's give an update okay here we are pretty much all the kitchen stuff is put away we've got some bathroom stuff all the decor is going to come last and all the clothes so we are doing really good so far i would say all right we got these little spice containers at world market we're gonna put them up here oh my gosh that is so cute it's a little extra space so we could probably fit one of these guys up there and then the rest of our spices which we still have to buy more we'll go down here i cannot believe that we managed to fit everything in this van all that's left to do is the decor so i'm about to put all these plants in place um not sure where they're all gonna go yet but i'm just gonna kind of wing it right now i'm super excited about these these are our little planter boxes we're going to have these here in the window seal and plant little herbs so we're gonna have some rosemary we found rosemary already we still have to find some basil and mint we might just plant them from the seeds or find them small like this little rosemary girl over here um but we're gonna have herbs here in the windowsill and then i'm going to have little succulents stuck kind of random places we'll take velcro or sticky stuff and stick them on in here like so and then um i'm going to have a hanging plant probably off the back and i really want to have a hanging plant off of here i think this one will actually be our best bet this guy this is like my longest surviving plant i've ever had i've had this for a few years now and i haven't killed it yet oh that fits perfectly awesome okay sweet so that's gonna stay there and then i said earlier but we're going to attach a line here like a little string so that things don't fall out while we're driving um but i'm gonna get to work and get some of our decorations up oops oh that reminds me look how cute this welcome sign is probably gonna hang it right here so i'm gonna get to decorating and and then that's it we are officially moved into our van cannot believe it starting to really feel like a home ten hours later and as you can see it's dark but we are finally done we did it we are officially moved in to the van and i still have some decorating to do but for the most part we are ready to go and we cannot wait to show you guys our first big adventure can't wait so stay tuned and thank you guys so much for watching see you guys soon bye you

Channel: Claire P. Thomas

Views: 92,671

Keywords: Van Life, Travel fitness, Claire P. Thomas, Claire Thomas, van converison, sprinter van, #vanlife, tiny home

Id: Ue_C2pRh1K8

Length: 28min 37sec (1717 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 05 2020