July, 2018

When we first thought of trying out RV living, we knew there were going to be a lot of things we were going to have to learn.  We had never towed something that large and knew that would be a whole new experience on its own. 

Added to that was the fact that we were going to be driving to a lot of places, most of which we have never been to, and all of them we’d never been to pulling 30 feet of camper behind us! 

But, hey, why not?  It’s all an adventure.  So we did it anyway and I’m going to share the top nine things we’ve learned in our first nine days.

1. RV’ers are an overall friendly group of people. 

We haven’t been doing this very long and already we’ve had lots of interesting conversations with people.  We’ve talked about places we’ve been, where we grew up, where we should go, etc. 

Sadly, there are some places where you can’t even smile and say hello to people anymore without getting a weird look, but an RV park doesn’t seem to be one of those places. 

We smile and say hello to people all the time and they usually do the same.  That’s the way it should be!

2. Something really is always broken. 

When we were doing research on RV living, I came across a blog post that mentioned that there’s always something broken on your RV. 

Well, we’ve already experienced that.  It was the day after we left the dealership (of course) and we were already a couple states away so we couldn’t just drive back and have them fix it. 

We’ve replaced our bathroom door handle, fixed a drawer that bottomed out on us, and fixed the pull handle on our grey tank.  

3. Your battery doesn’t power your outlets. 

Sorry, teenagers, but if we’re boondocking without our generator, no charged cell phones for you!  Lucky for them, we decided to buy a generator so we should always be able to use our outlets, but it came as a bit of a surprise that we wouldn’t be able to do so with just our battery (some RV’s might be different, though!)

4. You really do want to deodorize your toilet after your black tank is dumped. 

Oh my, there’s a lovely smell that comes out of your toilet if you don’t use the deodorizer.  You’re told about an assortment of cleaners, accessories, filters, etc. at the dealership.  It can all make your head spin, especially if you’ve never done anything even remotely close to RV living, like us. 

But, trust me, you don’t want to forget to buy toilet deodorizer. And these other things, too! 

Interested in using Tailwind to get more exposure on Pinterest? Use this link for $15 off!

5. Since we’re on the topic, make sure your toilet bowl is empty before driving. 

Does it sound like we learned this the hard way?  Yes we did.  When you flush, some water goes back into the bowl, like you would think it would.

  Well, when you forget to minimize the amount of water that’s in the bowl and go driving for six hours, you can end up with a wet floor. 

Luckily it’s all just water, but it’s still a good lesson to have learned.

Need help downsizing for RV Living? Check out this guest post I did for The Penny Pinching Globetrotter!

6. Boondockers Welcome is awesome! 

We’ve signed up for a few discount and other RV programs, but haven’t been able to take advantage of them much.

We did use Boondockers Welcome for our first two nights away from the dealership, though, and we loved it! 

You just pay an annual fee and you can search for places to stay in areas you will be in.  You can stay anywhere from one to five nights, depending on the host, and some of them even have hookups. 

We’ve met a few very interesting people just through this program and so far we think it’s great! (Update – I’ve done a review on Boondockers Welcome – we still love it!)

7. Plastic organizational bins are definitely your friend. 

Our camper actually has a lot of storage space, which was a high priority on our list.  However, a lot of them are somewhat standard cabinets like you have at your house. 

But, your house doesn’t go bouncing down the road several times a week, so things generally stay put.  With RV living, objects definitely may have shifted during “flight.” 

So we’ve joked that we should be buying stock in plastic organizational bins.  We’ve got them in all shapes and sizes and we’re still on the lookout for more.

Want to get our weekly newsletter and a FREE list of CONVERSATION STARTERS for your next road trip? Subscribe here! I promise not to pop into your inbox every day!

8. You really can bake in the oven! 

I love baking and cooking, so having an oven that could fit a 9×13 pan in it was a must-have. 

I really wanted brownies one day so I bought a box of brownie mix to test the oven.  Well, I was home alone making dinner and decided I would try. 

I remembered what they told me at the dealership about how to turn the oven on.  Well, I mostly remembered. 

So I did what all the RV’ing housewives from the 1950’s would do: I looked up a how-to video on YouTube. 

After the video, I still didn’t know what the pilot looked like so I just kept reading about ovens and reached a blog post telling about the potential horrors of using an RV oven and how people often give up and just use it as storage.  It mentioned using unglazed tiles in it to distribute the heat. 

To my dismay, I didn’t have any tiles just lying around so I decided to skip the baking for that night.  Of course when Dave gets home I tell him about what I read, pull up the blog post, and read the very next comment someone had written.

It said they just use a piece of foil to distribute the heat.  That was something I did have! 

I don’t know what future oven endeavors I will have, but I can say that my first effort was a delicious pan of brownies!

9. We really can do this!

 We had no idea what we were getting in to when we decided to embark on our RV living adventure.  Sure, we’d done our research, but we had very little experience with any of what we were about to undertake. 

Luckily we both have the “go for it” spirit in us and knew that we could figure it out.  So far, I think we’re doing a decent job.

I just continue to look forward to all of the wonderful things we’ll see and do while pulling our little house along with us.

Have you ever lived in an RV? Or want to? Let me know in the comments!

And I would love it if you shared this post. Thank you so much for your support!