Two years ago last week (April 22), Tom and I moved into the RV and out of our four-bedroom house with an acre of land and an in-ground pool. How are we doing after two years? Great! When are we planning on moving into a “sticks and bricks” house (as people say who are full-time RVers)? Not anytime soon.
I love living in the RV. I love that it only takes 20 minutes to thoroughly clean the whole thing (both of us working together). I love that everything is so accessible. Things don’t get lost in the RV for two reasons. First, we are careful to put things away where they belong. Second, there aren’t that many places they can be! Cleaning out the closets – something I try to do once a year – doesn’t take nearly the time it did when we lived in the big house. And there are fewer questions about “why did we keep that?”
We don’t miss the stuff we left behind. If anything, we still have too much stuff. We could probably clean out one-third of what we haul in the RV and not really miss it. It is nice to live in an RV with plenty of storage room, so we have the luxury of keeping a few luxuries (things that we rarely use). Tom and I had a discussion today about our tent and sleeping bags. After two years on the road, we haven’t used them. Should we keep them or get rid of them? Normally I would vote for getting rid of them but the place we are going this summer looks like it has some excellent backpacking opportunities, so we will discuss it again at the end of the summer.
We both agree that the space we have is just about right. Any less and I would start feeling claustrophobic or that we were tripping over each other. Tom doesn’t like how tall we are (all that wasted space) but I like that it helps the RV feel more open. Tom misses having a smaller RV. Our old motorhome was only 19 feet long and could go anywhere. But that would not be enough space for living full-time, so the trade-off is worth it.
After two years a few things are starting to break. We lost the bedroom air-conditioner a year ago. Obviously we haven’t missed it very much. We would get it fixed, but we can’t find anyone who is willing to come to us to fix it. They all want us to bring the RV to them. So it will wait until we can get back to Kansas (this RV’s birthplace and repair home) or find someone to come take care of it.
The microwave/convection oven is possessed. It beeps in the middle of the night. It adds minutes to the timer. It changes touchscreens for no good reason. The other day it added 12 minutes to the timer and I forgot to stand vigilant before it, so my pasta was the consistency of cardboard by the time I remembered to get it out. We keep it unplugged unless we are using it and it has been behaving since I threatened to rip it out with my bare hands and throw it in the dumpster.
The vacuum system won’t turn off. We have a hose you plug in to an outlet, which turns on the vacuum cleaner so we can sweep. Tom recently unplugged the hose only to have the system continue to run. Turns out the relay that is supposed to switch on and off is fused. So we just flip the breaker on when we want to vacuum and off when we want to turn it off. Unfortunately the electrical outlets in the bathroom are on the same breaker, but we use the ones in the bedroom or kitchen, which are only a step further. We will get all those things fixed when they bother us enough to make it worth going to Kansas.
After two years, we still love living in the RV. We love the freedom. We love the lack of property taxes. We love the ability to change the views outside the house by changing the location of the house. And we are looking forward to many more adventures in the days and years ahead.