How to Prepare for Living in an RV Full-Time?

The following tips were vital to my husband and I creating a stable, enjoyable life filled with constant travel. While your exact needs may differ, these suggestions should be helpful regardless of your exact plans or preferences.

1. Set a Date

Before you dive into the details of this transition, you first need to set a departure date. I know that might sound a bit overzealous. After all, how do you know how long it will take to prepare for living in a camper full-time?

The truth is, you don’t. But if you don’t give yourself a deadline then there’s no real sense of urgency, and there’s a good chance you’ll still be talking about going on the road this time next year. A departure date makes all your planning more real, and certainly more urgent. And that is a great motivator for making this dream happen.

How much time you’ll need depends on your current lifestyle. For instance, if you own a home, then you first need to decide if you’re going to sell or rent it out, or keep it. If you decide to sell, you’ll have to prepare your house for sale, which can take quite some time depending on how much there is to do.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to set a “final” departure date. It’s often easier to create milestones for yourself. For example, you might want to set a specific date to buy your camper (if you don’t already own one). You can set a date to have your domicile (legal residency) state set up, a date for having your home completely decluttered and purged – you get the idea. The point here is to commit. Set a date, and get to work so you meet it.

More about RV Living : https://www.rvlivingusa.com/

2. Make a To-Do List

Your first to-do list is going to be long, but it helps to write down everything that needs your attention. Your first, simple to-do list might look something like this:

• Research campers
• Research domicile residency
• Start decluttering
• Organize a garage sale
• Research how to earn a mobile income
• Research health care options
• Research where to camp
• Choose a mail service
• Cancel utilities

Every to-do list is going to vary widely because each person’s situation is unique. To start, sit down and make a list of what it will take to uproot yourself and hit the road. As you cross items off your list and learn more about transitioning to full-time RV living, your list will grow longer and more detailed.

3. Simplify

You will need to take daily steps to simplify your life and declutter your home. What you choose to get rid of will depend on your plans. For example, is your goal to travel for a year and then settle back down in a home somewhere? Do you want to put some things in storage in case living on the road doesn’t work out, or would you rather jump in with both feet and only keep what you’re taking with you in your RV?

Only you know the answers to these questions, so think carefully about what you want as you go through the process of decluttering. This level of decluttering can be draining and emotionally intense, especially if you decide to get rid of everything. However, it can also be incredibly liberating to pare down your things to the minimum.

• Schedule Time Daily for Decluttering and Simplifying. Even an hour a day will, day after day, make a big difference.
• Focus on One Small Area at a Time. For example, one drawer, one shelf, or one wall of your closet. Keeping your focus on one small area at a time will help prevent you from feeling overwhelmed. Small areas also make it easier to see progress, which is important for staying motivated.
• Make a Decision. Every time you pick something up, whether it’s a piece of china or a piece of paper, make a decision about it: keep, donate, or pitch. Don’t lay it down to think about later. Always make a decision.
• Take a Picture of Your Donation Pile Before You Take It to the Thrift Store. This is another great way to remind yourself that you are making progress.
• Have a Giveaway Party. Make decluttering fun by hosting a giveaway party. Invite neighbors, friends, family, and colleagues over to take what they like. Mark giveaway items with a green sticker. Use red stickers to mark the items that you’ve decided to keep.
• Consider Renting a Storage Unit. Storage units are expensive, but they can help ease the pressure of the decluttering process, especially if you have a lot of family items you just can’t get rid of. Many full-timers start off renting a storage unit and, over months or years, return to it in the middle of their travels and slowly empty it out. Once you get on the road, you might find that your attachment to these things lessens over time.

Books like “The Joy of Less” can also help guide you through the process of simplifying and decluttering.

4. Outline Your Necessities

You’re going to wrestle with what you’ll need to take with you on the road. I promise that you will need far less than you think you do. And no matter how well you plan and analyze the things you take, you’re probably going to make mistakes; that’s part of the process.

Clothing

How much clothing you take will depend on where you expect to travel. Most full-time RVers follow the weather, meaning they head north or west during the summer, and south during the winter. Constantly living in a mild climate means you will need few thick and heavy clothes.
For example, my wardrobe had to fit in a tiny closet. When we hit the road, I took:

• Five t-shirts
• Two pairs of jeans
• Two pairs of shorts
• One pair of pajamas
• Two button-up denim shirts
• One sweatshirt
• One wool sweater
• One long-sleeved thermal
• One raincoat
• One denim jacket
And that’s it. As scanty as that might seem, I found that I didn’t need more clothing than this. You might be able to get by with a small wardrobe or, if you have the space, you might want to take more with you.

The trick to putting together a workable RV wardrobe is to choose clothes that all look good together (so you can easily mix and match), and to choose clothes that you can easily layer if the need arises. Chances are, you only wear 20% (or less) of the clothes you have in your closet. Choose the pieces that you wear the most, and purge the rest.

Kitchen Tools and Dishes

Take a look at the tools you use most in your kitchen. Which of these items can’t you live without? Which will you have room for in your camper? You might be surprised at what you find you need (and what you don’t) when you start living in your RV. For example, I foolishly brought along our blender when we left, assuming I’d continue to make smoothies as I did at home. I didn’t use it once and ended up donating it a couple months later.

On the flip side, we bought a Crock-Pot a month into our trip because our camper didn’t have an oven, and we ended up using it three to four nights a week. We could plug it in outside and let it simmer all day. It was, surprisingly, one of our most useful kitchen tools, even though we’d rarely used one at home.

We met a full-time couple in Texas who brought along their bread machine, and used it daily. For them, freshly baked bread was a necessity, and their bread machine was worth the space. Another full-timer relied entirely on his InstaPot pressure cooker for fast, hot meals. So, your choices on what to take will be as individual as you are!

Remember, pulling a camper means it’s going to shake constantly when you’re driving. This shaking is equivalent to a constant, 3.4-magnitude earthquake. We took two glass plates and two glass bowls, for reheating food in the microwave, and we protected these with dish towels when we moved to a new spot. All of our other dishes were enameled steel “camp plates,” which we loved.

On the other hand, we met plenty of full-timers who had only glass dishes and cups, because this felt more like home for them. They packed them all up every time they moved and felt it was worth the effort.

Decorations

Campers have few spots for knickknacks and decorations, but RVs can also be notoriously sterile looking. You’re going to want to take some things to make your little home cozy and inviting. For example, use rugs to add color and soften up your space. Plants can also add life and vibrancy to your home, and help purify the air. I had two hanging plants in our minuscule camper, and they made the RV feel cozy.

We hated not having any art on the walls, so we ended up decoupaging small printouts of our favorite pieces right on the walls. You can also use 3M Command Strips to hang up prints or photos or invest in a digital picture frame. Remember, though, the shaking that a camper goes through while traveling can be intense, especially on bad roads. Quakehold is useful for securing things (like artwork and small plants) so they stay put.

You’ll also want to think about your outdoor space. Most full-timers spend a lot of time outside, and the “patio” is often the first thing to set up when you move to a new spot. Will you want a hammock? Folding chairs? A grill? Solar patio lights? A lightweight outdoor rug? We spent far more time on our patio than we did inside, and the outdoor furniture and decorations we had were worth the effort to take down and put up each time we moved.

5. Join RVing Clubs

There are several organizations that will help make living in an RV full-time easier. In addition to the great discounts on campgrounds, these clubs give you access to a wealth of valuable, insider information from people who are already living on the road. We learned a lot from forums before we left, so it’s well worth the investment to join a few months before your departure date.

• Escapees RV Club: We joined Escapees and found it to be well worth the $40 annual membership fee. You get great discounts at over 1,000 campgrounds (up to 50% off), a top-notch forum board, a job board exclusively for RVers, and access to their mail service. We used their mail service exclusively and never once had a problem. You can find more information about using a mail service here.

• Good Sam Club: With Good Sam, you get 10% off at over 2,100 campgrounds. Another huge perk is their gas discount; at Pilot or Flying J gas stations, you get five to eight cents off per gallon. That alone can quickly pay for the $27 annual membership fee. You also get up to 30% off at CampingWorld, and many other perks.
• Passport America: With Passport America, you can save up to 50% at nearly 1,900 campgrounds in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The annual fee is $44.
• Harvest Hosts: We didn’t know about Harvest Hosts when we were on the road, but I sure wish we did. Harvest Hosts put you in touch with farms, attractions, and wineries that will allow you to stay on their land for free, for one night, as long as you’re self-contained. This means they don’t provide hookups or restrooms. On the upside, you get a unique, beautiful, quiet place to camp, for free. The annual membership fee is $44.

Before you join any club, pay close attention to the fine print. Many campgrounds won’t give club discounts on weekends or holidays. And, you should look at which campgrounds are part of each club’s network. Randomly pick some that are on routes that you would like to travel.

 Are these places that you would realistically want to stay? What amenities do they offer? (Don’t dismiss how much you’ll appreciate any campground having a washer and dryer on the premises!)

These are four of the most popular RV clubs, but there are dozens, if not a hundred or more, out there. You can find a comprehensive list of RV clubs here.

Truths about full time RV Living

As most of you know, our lives took a turn for the smaller a year and a half ago. We left our apartments, drove halfway across the country and moved into our new home: an RV. From that point on, we’ve been full time RV living, and nineteen feet of less-than luxurious living space has been all ours.

To see this blog post in video-format, watch below! It’s way more entertaining than reading it!

But we aren’t alone in this downsizing movement. RVs are becoming popular again, and YouTube is flooded with people living and working right from their mobile homes.

However, many of these YouTubers tend to gloss over some of the big negatives of living in a home the size of most people’s back porches.
Do you want to know the truth about what it means to live in an RV? We aren’t holding anything back, so read on to learn what we think are the ten biggest challenges of living together in a tiny space.

1. Every bit of space needs to have multiple purposes.

Throughout our RV we have one table, and it has to work for a ton of different purposes, which means that coffee and laptops and groceries are usually on the table at the same time, among other random items, which gets old fast.

In other words, our office is our kitchen table, dining room table, where we relax, is our kitchen, and is our flat space where we put everything that doesn’t have an obvious home.

Every day that passes where we haven’t fried a computer by spilling coffee on it is certainly a success worth celebrating.
Part of the reason our table is so cluttered is the fact that we both make an income online… so office equipment is a must.

Related Article : https://www.rvlivingusa.com/

2. Minimal natural light.

Our RV is extremely dark, even in the middle of the day. Not only does it contain tiny windows, but we also keep it in an rv garage to protect it from bad weather conditions.
Seasonal Affective Disorder is a really big challenge in our lives (we don’t actually have this… but you know how it is), and we had to buy extra high-quality lights just to make ourselves feel alive! The good news is these lights don’t take much power (we’re off grid and rely on solar power, so power isn’t always in abundance) so we can keep them on without guilt.

3. Cooking is a challenge.

Minimal counter top space means that meals need to be simple because there just isn’t room to make anything else. For that reason, we are big fans of the one pot meals!
We spend a lot of time foraging for wild food and doing food-related projects such as canning… so it’s really challenging not have a space to work.

4. Scant storage space.

Our closet is about two feet wide- and we have to share it between us. Worst of all, Jesse’s bulky menswear takes up over 75% of that closet space! It’s not a girl’s dream come true, I can tell you that.
I really don’t have much space to store my winter wardrobe! Clothing items end up all over the trailer when they’re not in use.

5. Sleep interruptions.

If you find yourself restless and awake in the middle of the night you’re kind of out of luck, as there isn’t enough space in an RV to hang out respectfully while someone else is resting.
Sometimes one of us will take a trip into town to try to get to work some work done, but that puts us at the mercy of outside internet service, which tends to be unreliable.

6. No privacy!

Get ready for your partner to know about all your daily habits…even in the bathroom. I think we can all use our imaginations here.

7. No place to put all our possessions.

No basement, no large closets and no real garage space means we often are limited in where we can store our homestead tools.
Though it’s tempting to build extra outbuildings to store critical belongings, we are waiting until we have our house setup so that we only have to do the hard work of laying a foundation once rather than a different time for each building.

We do have a tiny cabin attached to the end of our RV garage which gives us some extra storage space, but this was primarily built to keep our RV warm in winter… not for space to put our things.

8. All that dirt.

The amount of filth we track in his incredible, especially since it gets concentrated in such a tiny space. This means we usually sweep our RV twice a day.

We also use a wall mounted shot vac to keep our floors clean when we have our generator running.

9. General wear and tear.

Things in RVs aren’t necessarily designed for 24/7 use and tend to be fragile and expensive to replace.
After one year of living we are finding ourselves fixing tons of things throughout the RV, from fans to our water systems and even the seat cushions underneath our table!

10. Messy charging station.

We already have no space to live, but we still have to keep the laptops charged, camera batteries, cell phones and other electrical accessories. We have a swamp of cords under our kitchen table which wouldn’t normally be a huge deal, but it really encroaches on our already tiny space!

Important things you need to know about RV Living

Thinking of moving into an RV? If so, there are nine basic things you need to know before you make the leap from standard living to motorhome or camper living. You are going to need to do a great deal of research to make sure that doing this will be beneficial to you. For some people, it is great, but this is not true for everybody.

This article will provide the type of basic information you will need to help you find out whether changing the way you live will be the right thing for you to do.

Things you should know before deciding to live full time in an RV.

Research RV Living Before You Try It

You may be dreaming of living year round in a recreational vehicle, but you need to understand that doing this can change your life in many ways, not all of which may be pleasant for you.

This is why you need to do some research before you make your move.
Is Full Time RV Living the Best Choice for You? is a good resource, so you might want to take a look at it. In the meantime, below is some information that will give you an overview of this lifestyle.

Possessions

You must decide whether your possessions or your desire to live a simpler, less burdensome life is more important. Most people who become full-timers sell their homes and all but one of their vehicles (the one that either tows their travel unit or is towed by it).

They also shed themselves of furniture, artwork, anything that takes up a lot of space (such as hobby materials, holiday decorations, boxes of family photos, libraries, magazines, newspapers or collectibles), pets, unless they are very small, bulky electronics, excess clothing (especially bulky items), duplicate household goods (such as second sets of dishes and silverware), decorator items, heavy cleaning equipment (such as full-sized vacuum cleaners), duplicate tools and recreational equipment (such as kayaks, skis and clunky sports equipment).

Some people find it difficult to make the transition all at once, so they put their belongings in storage units they can rent by the month.
Those who are lucky enough to be able to place their belongings at the homes of family members or good friends buy storage sheds. In the long run, this is less expensive than renting a unit and is often more secure.

A one-time purchase of a shed will pay for itself in a year or so, and it can be sold later in the event people decide either to return to living in a house or sell off their belongings because they feel their new lifestyle works for them.

Storing items makes people feel more secure and gives them an "out" if they change their minds. This also allows them keep their most valued items in a way that doesn't crowd them.

Your Coach

When you live in a limited amount of space, comfort and privacy are important.

Therefore you must make sure that the unit you use for full-time living is big enough to serve your purposes and has everything you will need to keep yourself comfortable. Otherwise, you will be miserable.
Coaches are rated for living and traveling in various types of weather. It is best to choose an all-weather unit to ensure that it will hold up to temperature differences and be comfortable no matter its location.
If you join RV Consumer Group, you will be able to access books and magazines which provide this and other important information for any specific make, model and year of motor home or camper. It costs a good bit to do this, but can save you money and problems in the long run.

Setting Up a Home Base

Many people set up home bases by

• renting campsites on a long term basis,
• purchasing a deeded RV lot or
• purchasing and developing properly zoned land.
Doing this gives them a permanent address and provides a sense of security they might not otherwise be able to have. However, having a home base is not always necessary.

Some folks just rent as they go. I this situation, you generally pay nothing but a nightly, weekly or monthly fee. Although this sounds simple, it can get pricey because campgrounds always charge more for visitors who don't stay for long periods of time.

On the other hand, people who choose this route can often camp inexpensively or even free in a number of places. What Is the Maximum Amount of Time Allowed for Campground Stays? and How to Live Rent Free in Your RV provide more information about this.

Most RV parks are geared to adults, so children don't normally do well in them. | Source

Children

It is probably not a good idea to full time with children because RV parks are not the safest places for them and rarely offer child-friendly amenities.

Also, too many bodies make for major discomfort, and more than two people living in even the largest unit definitely creates a problem. Children living in a coach translates to clothes, medications, special foods, special equipment and toys.

People do full time with youngsters on board, but it is not the most enjoyable way to live. Traveling is one thing, but day to day living is quite another.

Pets

Many people enjoy keeping animals with them in their coaches, but the truth is that this also can create problems.

They require special equipment, toys, medications and food. Some parks do not allow them or require residents who own them to camp in special areas and pay extra fees. There also are usually size and type requirements.

Furthermore, some pets can smell up an RV, dirty it, damage upholstery and cabinetry and leave hair, ticks and fleas everywhere. If they annoy other campers in any way or their masters do not pick up their waste matter, parks will terminate the lot rental, eject the perpetrators and will refuse to give refunds.

The most successful pet situations I have seen are those where people keep very small dogs, wash and groom them regularly and take them out only to do their business.

People who travel with multiple animals, large dogs, pigs (yes, pigs!) and horses cannot possibly hope to do well with full timing.
Think carefully before including pets in your full time RV living plans.

Communicating

Keeping in touch for personal or business matters is important, but is easily managed these days. One only needs a cell phone, a laptop with wireless capabilities and sometimes a mail forwarding service.
Mail forwarding services are inexpensive (as little as $10 per month plus postage), safe and convenient. When you use them, you automatically become a legal resident of the state where the service is located. Therefore, it is important to choose one such as Florida or Texas where fees and taxes are much less costly than places such as New York or California.

Signing up is very easy:

1. Choose the service you wish to use.
2. Submit a formal change of address to your local Post Office.

The Post Office then sends all of your incoming mail to the service instead of to your old address, and the service keeps it until you call to tell them where to send it.

Mail forwarding services can generally be started or stopped as needed, but each company has its own rules, so it is wise to find out what they are prior to signing up. The best and most reasonable one I know of is offered by The Good Sam Club, but you may have to join in order to access this benefit.

There is always a delay when using this method, and it costs a bit to do because you must pay postage fees in addition to the monthly cost. However, if you have no home base or do have not made arrangements with someone you trust to handle your mail for you, it is the only way you can access your mail.

Insurance

Arranging for insurance coverage is much the same for full-timers as it is for everybody else. However, people without home bases must make sure that they carry health insurance policies that will cover them completely no matter their location.

HMOs and other limited service area policies will not provide coverage unless these folks happen to be in the same area as their mail forwarding services.

For those who travel a great deal, it is a good idea to purchase emergency coverage that will not pay medical costs, but will, under the appropriate circumstances, provide regional medical referrals and oversight as well as a means of getting travelers and their vehicles back to their home bases at no cost. Good Sam Club sells one that costs around $110 per year and covers all travelers.

Auto insurance policies generally cover travel units, but not all do, so ask before you buy.

Making a Major Lifestyle Change Can Be Difficult

Not everybody adapts well to living in a travel unit because, just as with anything else, this lifestyle has both good and bad points. Why People Stop Living Full Time in RVs shows you the flip side of this lifestyle.

Once you learn the 9 things you need to know about RV living, you will have the information you need so that you can make an informed decision.

Full-Time RV Living Tips

Let’s face it, being a nomad in today’s society isn’t really “normal.” Wherever you are, you’ve likely set down roots, and it takes time and effort to pull those up and create another, drastically different life for yourself.

What will you need on the road? What stuff should you get rid of, and what should you keep just in case the dream doesn’t work out? Preparing for life on the road isn’t easy, but I promise that all the work is worth it. You just have to take it one step at a time.

Here are the best tips that helped myself and others transition from a stationary life to a life on the road.
How to Prepare for Living in an RV Full-Time

The following tips were vital to my husband and I creating a stable, enjoyable life filled with constant travel. While your exact needs may differ, these suggestions should be helpful regardless of your exact plans or preferences.
1. Set a Date

Before you dive into the details of this transition, you first need to set a departure date. I know that might sound a bit overzealous. After all, how do you know how long it will take to prepare for living in a camper full-time?

The truth is, you don’t. But if you don’t give yourself a deadline then there’s no real sense of urgency, and there’s a good chance you’ll still be talking about going on the road this time next year. A departure date makes all your planning more real, and certainly more urgent. And that is a great motivator for making this dream happen.

How much time you’ll need depends on your current lifestyle. For instance, if you own a home, then you first need to decide if you’re going to sell or rent it out, or keep it. If you decide to sell, you’ll have to prepare your house for sale, which can take quite some time depending on how much there is to do.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to set a “final” departure date. It’s often easier to create milestones for yourself. For example, you might want to set a specific date to buy your camper (if you don’t already own one). You can set a date to have your domicile (legal residency) state set up, a date for having your home completely decluttered and purged – you get the idea. The point here is to commit. Set a date, and get to work so you meet it.
2. Make a To-Do List

Your first to-do list is going to be long, but it helps to write down everything that needs your attention. Your first, simple to-do list might look something like this:

    Research campers
    Research domicile residency
    Start decluttering
    Organize a garage sale
    Research how to earn a mobile income
    Research health care options
    Research where to camp
    Choose a mail service
    Cancel utilities

Every to-do list is going to vary widely because each person’s situation is unique. To start, sit down and make a list of what it will take to uproot yourself and hit the road. As you cross items off your list and learn more about transitioning to full-time RV living, your list will grow longer and more detailed.
3. Simplify

You will need to take daily steps to simplify your life and declutter your home. What you choose to get rid of will depend on your plans. For example, is your goal to travel for a year and then settle back down in a home somewhere? Do you want to put some things in storage in case living on the road doesn’t work out, or would you rather jump in with both feet and only keep what you’re taking with you in your RV?

Only you know the answers to these questions, so think carefully about what you want as you go through the process of decluttering. This level of decluttering can be draining and emotionally intense, especially if you decide to get rid of everything. However, it can also be incredibly liberating to pare down your things to the minimum.

    Schedule Time Daily for Decluttering and Simplifying. Even an hour a day will, day after day, make a big difference.
    Focus on One Small Area at a Time. For example, one drawer, one shelf, or one wall of your closet. Keeping your focus on one small area at a time will help prevent you from feeling overwhelmed. Small areas also make it easier to see progress, which is important for staying motivated.
    Make a Decision. Every time you pick something up, whether it’s a piece of china or a piece of paper, make a decision about it: keep, donate, or pitch. Don’t lay it down to think about later. Always make a decision.
    Take a Picture of Your Donation Pile Before You Take It to the Thrift Store. This is another great way to remind yourself that you are making progress.
    Have a Giveaway Party. Make decluttering fun by hosting a giveaway party. Invite neighbors, friends, family, and colleagues over to take what they like. Mark giveaway items with a green sticker. Use red stickers to mark the items that you’ve decided to keep.
    Consider Renting a Storage Unit. Storage units are expensive, but they can help ease the pressure of the decluttering process, especially if you have a lot of family items you just can’t get rid of. Many full-timers start off renting a storage unit and, over months or years, return to it in the middle of their travels and slowly empty it out. Once you get on the road, you might find that your attachment to these things lessens over time.

Books like “The Joy of Less” can also help guide you through the process of simplifying and decluttering.

4. Outline Your Necessities

You’re going to wrestle with what you’ll need to take with you on the road. I promise that you will need far less than you think you do. And no matter how well you plan and analyze the things you take, you’re probably going to make mistakes; that’s part of the process.

Clothing
How much clothing you take will depend on where you expect to travel. Most full-time RVers follow the weather, meaning they head north or west during the summer, and south during the winter. Constantly living in a mild climate means you will need few thick and heavy clothes.

For example, my wardrobe had to fit in a tiny closet. When we hit the road, I took:

    Five t-shirts
    Two pairs of jeans
    Two pairs of shorts
    One pair of pajamas
    Two button-up denim shirts
    One sweatshirt
    One wool sweater
    One long-sleeved thermal
    One raincoat
    One denim jacket

And that’s it. As scanty as that might seem, I found that I didn’t need more clothing than this. You might be able to get by with a small wardrobe or, if you have the space, you might want to take more with you.

The trick to putting together a workable RV wardrobe is to choose clothes that all look good together (so you can easily mix and match), and to choose clothes that you can easily layer if the need arises. Chances are, you only wear 20% (or less) of the clothes you have in your closet. Choose the pieces that you wear the most, and purge the rest.

Kitchen Tools and Dishes
Take a look at the tools you use most in your kitchen. Which of these items can’t you live without? Which will you have room for in your camper? You might be surprised at what you find you need (and what you don’t) when you start living in your RV. For example, I foolishly brought along our blender when we left, assuming I’d continue to make smoothies as I did at home. I didn’t use it once and ended up donating it a couple months later.

On the flip side, we bought a Crock-Pot a month into our trip because our camper didn’t have an oven, and we ended up using it three to four nights a week. We could plug it in outside and let it simmer all day. It was, surprisingly, one of our most useful kitchen tools, even though we’d rarely used one at home.

We met a full-time couple in Texas who brought along their bread machine, and used it daily. For them, freshly baked bread was a necessity, and their bread machine was worth the space. Another full-timer relied entirely on his InstaPot pressure cooker for fast, hot meals. So, your choices on what to take will be as individual as you are!

Remember, pulling a camper means it’s going to shake constantly when you’re driving. This shaking is equivalent to a constant, 3.4-magnitude earthquake. We took two glass plates and two glass bowls, for reheating food in the microwave, and we protected these with dish towels when we moved to a new spot. All of our other dishes were enameled steel “camp plates,” which we loved.

On the other hand, we met plenty of full-timers who had only glass dishes and cups, because this felt more like home for them. They packed them all up every time they moved and felt it was worth the effort.

Decorations
Campers have few spots for knickknacks and decorations, but RVs can also be notoriously sterile looking. You’re going to want to take some things to make your little home cozy and inviting. For example, use rugs to add color and soften up your space. Plants can also add life and vibrancy to your home, and help purify the air. I had two hanging plants in our minuscule camper, and they made the RV feel cozy.

We hated not having any art on the walls, so we ended up decoupaging small printouts of our favorite pieces right on the walls. You can also use 3M Command Strips to hang up prints or photos or invest in a digital picture frame. Remember, though, the shaking that a camper goes through while traveling can be intense, especially on bad roads. Quakehold is useful for securing things (like artwork and small plants) so they stay put.

You’ll also want to think about your outdoor space. Most full-timers spend a lot of time outside, and the “patio” is often the first thing to set up when you move to a new spot. Will you want a hammock? Folding chairs? A grill? Solar patio lights? A lightweight outdoor rug? We spent far more time on our patio than we did inside, and the outdoor furniture and decorations we had were worth the effort to take down and put up each time we moved.
5. Join RVing Clubs

There are several organizations that will help make living in an RV full-time easier. In addition to the great discounts on campgrounds, these clubs give you access to a wealth of valuable, insider information from people who are already living on the road. We learned a lot from forums before we left, so it’s well worth the investment to join a few months before your departure date.

    Escapees RV Club: We joined Escapees and found it to be well worth the $40 annual membership fee. You get great discounts at over 1,000 campgrounds (up to 50% off), a top-notch forum board, a job board exclusively for RVers, and access to their mail service. We used their mail service exclusively and never once had a problem. You can find more information about using a mail service here.
    Good Sam Club: With Good Sam, you get 10% off at over 2,100 campgrounds. Another huge perk is their gas discount; at Pilot or Flying J gas stations, you get five to eight cents off per gallon. That alone can quickly pay for the $27 annual membership fee. You also get up to 30% off at CampingWorld, and many other perks.
    Passport America: With Passport America, you can save up to 50% at nearly 1,900 campgrounds in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The annual fee is $44.
    Harvest Hosts: We didn’t know about Harvest Hosts when we were on the road, but I sure wish we did. Harvest Hosts put you in touch with farms, attractions, and wineries that will allow you to stay on their land for free, for one night, as long as you’re self-contained. This means they don’t provide hookups or restrooms. On the upside, you get a unique, beautiful, quiet place to camp, for free. The annual membership fee is $44.