It’s been a week. A whole week since I started vanlife. One week of living in a van. A few things have changed, a few more still need to change. But here’s where we stand as of now; not bad actually!
(Okay, so I’m late posting, but I wrote this after 1 week!)
Do I smell?
Don’t get me wrong; I could do with a shower, and I’d appreciate more frequent access to a toilet. But these things will come in time. I have found a camp shower under the bed. One of those black bags that you fill with water, it heats in the sun, then you can have a warm shower. Although, not really suitable for use in a town.
The town does make finding a toilet easier though. Most grocery stores, libraries, and cafes (if they’re open) will have a customer restroom. It’s a bit weird to be going to the supermarket twice a day, but what can you do? I do have a small shovel, so if I wind up in the backcountry I’ll just have to get digging!
How do I eat? and get online?
I managed to fish the camp stove out from underneath the bed, which was quite a feat! I want to test that outside the van though, and I feel I should probably wait until I’m not in a town for that.
I’ve contacted my friend who had looked after the van about my missing things and she’s being very reasonable so far about paying me back for them. It’s a great relief; I really didn’t want to have that relationship go south.
I’ve ordered a solar generator, so I will soon have a way of powering my electronics while in the van. Which will mean less time sat in libraries. I don’t mind the peaceful atmosphere and the smell of books, but the chairs are definitely not comfortable. I reckon they’re designed to stop people from drifting off to sleep.
PSA: Brake checking is a terrible idea!
I’m arranging for my van to go to a garage and have the brakes looked at. That’ll be good; because then I’ll be safe to drive around more. I’m sticking to flat areas right now, but there are small hills even here. It makes me nervous every time I have to go downhill.
Even on flat ground driving isn’t much fun right now. I drive slowly, and I leave a gap to the car in front, but the cars behind get frustrated and pull around and sit in the space I’d carefully left. No one has brake checked me yet though.
Vanlife home improvement
In other news, I’m looking at replacing a board in the kitchen area. It separates the kitchen from the driver’s seat, but the guy who converted the van used MDF!
For those not in the know, MDF stands for Medium Density Fiberboard. It’s basically wood fiber that’s been compressed into a board, kinda like cardboard. It’s not waterproof in any way, it will in fact absorb water and swells up when it does.
To sum it up, MDF is not a suitable material for outdoors or for kitchens, unless you’re going to seal the surface. And I still don’t recommend it for the outdoors. So it was a terrible idea to use it in the kitchen of a van, which is basically outdoors adjacent.
The board is swollen at the top and bottom where it’s gotten wet, and the mould really went to town on it. I can’t scrub it to get rid of the mould either, can you imagine trying to scrub cardboard?
Conclusion
This is going okay. I can do this. It’s not without its difficulties, but that’s kinda like homeownership isn’t it? There’s a whole list of home/van improvements that I need to tackle. Some I can do myself, others, like the brakes, I’m just going to pay to have done properly.
Next update on my mental health and how my life is going will be up in a month!
