My Honest Opinions on Van Life

To put it very lightly, the last 3 years of van life have taught me a lot. It has taught me that there is nothing like the freedom of waking up wherever you like on any given morning. But everyone already knows about that part. There's a lot that goes into van life that no one see's. There is a big gap in the Instagram vs reality of van life and I want to use this post to show some of the tiring parts, the gross parts and the hidden difficulties with living full time in a van.

I was always interested in van life. I would draw up 3D designs for custom vans while I was meant to be studying for my final school exams. I think it drew me in because of the freedom to have all your belongings with you where ever you go. No matter if that is at a competition, a few hours up the coast, or on the other side of the country. It felt like camping everyday.

July 2022 came around and I was full to the brim with optimism and ready to start this adventure. The first night, I decided to park on a hill with a decent view and was hopeful to see a nice sunrise in the morning. 6 hours later I was woken up by a garbage truck slowly making its way towards me, tossing bins around and making quite the racket. Once the truck had passed I attempted to go back to sleep, only to be woken up once again by the odd car speeding past the van and rocking my whole bed side to side. Reality had hit.

The next few weeks were spent trying to figure out the best spots to park for a good enough sleep so I could function each day. Out the front of random peoples houses, on the road in industrial areas, shopping center car parks, I tried it all. And the same process happened whenever I would move to a different area. This was undeniably the toughest part. Once i found a few spots that were ok then I could start to get on with my life.

After 3 years, this has obviously gotten a lot easier to deal with and a little more sustainable for long term, full time living. Having said this, if I was to go back to van life, there would definitely be some things I would want to change about the setup to make it a little more comfortable and really see the benefits.

The first thing would be more space efficient storage. The van got messy quickly, and so having space for not only all your possessions, but also allowing room to expand is a pretty essential part of the fit out to keep everything from flying around the van while moving place to place.

The second thing would be a semi permanent kitchen setup. To be perfectly honest, takeaway is the first option most of the time, but most of that comes down to how much time goes into setting up to cook, cooking, and then attempting to clean everything without a sink.

And the last major thing to consider, bigger is not always better. And take into account that I am 6 foot 3 when I say this, but I would definitely get a smaller van. It seemed like a smart decision to go big initially, but after a month of driving around the sprinter, it got old. And yes it was my house, but it was also my car and if we don't count sleeping, then I spent way more time driving it than just hanging out in it.

So who is van life for?

Well I'll start but saying if you want to explore a place, area or country, you'd be hard pressed to find a better way to do it. It is inevitable that you find yourself parking in new spots all the time and it's so easy to explore that I found myself going to stay in new places, just because I could. If you want a challenge, way to grow, want to be more independent, then van life is great. There is never a dull moment, and sometimes that means there are times where all you want to do is chill, but you can't because there's a garbage truck outside. But then you learn not to park on the street on bin day and you learn from it.

There is so much that goes into it and lots of little things that I've learnt along the way, and if you're thinking of doing van life yourself, then I'll say that amongst the challenges I’ve had, there is countless great memories and If I could go back and do it all again, I wouldn't change a thing... But damn I can't wait to live in a house again.

See ya next week...