How Fulltime RV Families Live Differently

The cruising family over at SailingTotem recently posted an article detailing How Cruisers Live Differently. This is our take on the same topics from a fulltime RVing family perspective.

Groceries

Suburbia

• Stop by the store on the way home from work, or jump in and drive up to the grocery store as needed. Do this once a week or less on average.
• Buy during sales or in bulk to save money. Build a bigger pantry and add a second freezer in the basement or garage to add food storage capacity.
• Have one or two stores that you always frequent. Know the layouts. Recognize the checkouts and baggers. Know the cycle of sales.
• Have a garden. Do seasonal canning.
• Shop at Farmer’s Markets.

RV

• With each new stop, evaluate the availability of a grocery store using campground review apps and Googlemaps. Sometimes a good store is outside the park entrance. Sometimes it’s an hour away.
• Compare your on-hand inventory against the length of your expected stay. Evaluate risk of running out against time investment of going for replenishments.
• Buy 3-5 days worth of groceries because that’s all you can store.
• Regularly shop at a different store chain with a different layout and price points.
• Collect frequent shopper cards as a hobby.
• Shop Walmart often because it’s ubiquitous, consistent, and can be combined with an overnight stay.
• Usually be in the wrong location, in the wrong season, or on the wrong day to shop at Farmer’s Markets.

Garbage

Suburbia

• Have several smaller trashcans throughout the house that get emptied into a bigger garbage can in the garage or outdoors.
• Take your outdoor garbage can to the curb on a specific day of the week.
• Have regular cleanup days for bigger items or yard waste.

RV

• Have one main trashcan in the kitchen and one small trash can or bag in the bathroom.
• Consolidate these as needed.
• Consult each RV park’s map/rules about garbage. Most have per-loop dumpsters. Some pick it up from your campsite. Some have garbage cans on each site or shared between sites.
• Unbox large items at the store and throw away the packaging before taking it ‘home’.
• If boondocking, store trash until you can get rid of it at a rest area, public park, Walmart parking lot or other acceptable and legal place to do so.

Laundry

Suburbia

• Do laundry as needed using your own facilities.

RV

• Do laundry constantly in your (small) RV washer/dryer, if your RV has them and if you have water and sewer hookups where you are camped.
• As you route plan, evaluate the state of your laundry against the facilities at or near the campground you are considering.
• Negotiate shared campground laundry facilities (is it OK to remove someone else’s clothes from a dryer if you need it and they aren’t there?).
• Stop buying white anything, as it won’t stay white.
• Learn that laundromats are great places to meet people and have great conversations.
• Find out that laundromats can also be depressing.
• Learn that laundry can take 1/4 time when you can use multiple washers and dryers at the same time.
• Keep all the quarters you get in change anywhere, plus “buy” more each week.
• Realize that clothes don’t need to be washed nearly as often as you used to think.

Home Maintenance

Suburbia

• Think you can DIY or hire out as needed.
• End up DIY’ing because you bought as much house as your income allows (or even a bit more house because hey, the bank said you could) which means you don’t have enough money to hire anyone else to do anything.
• Be under constant pressure (or HOA agreement) to keep your yard a certain way, your house a certain way, etc.

RV

• Learn that you are living in an unit designed for occasional camping so usually have things that need to be caulked, reattached, tightened up, painted, or fixed.
• Find out that when you call the dealer for service work (even warranty work) they say to drop it off and they’ll have it done in 3-4 weeks.
• Read that the campground “doesn’t allow RV repairs”.
• Either learn to DIY or call a mobile RV tech in the area.
• Have no lawn to mow, no garage to paint, no cement to break up.

Personal Care

Suburbia

• Find and book regular appointments with barbers, hair stylists, manicurists.

RV

• Don’t (usually) suffer for the lack of choices for barbers, hair stylists or manicurists.
• Find places that take walk-ins
• Roll the dice with each new appointment. Use apps like Yelp to get reviews. Get a decent haircut once in a while. Wear hats afterwards otherwise.
• Decide to learn to cut your own hair.

Staying in Touch/Internet

Suburbia

• Use your unlimited minutes and unlimited (or virtually unlimited) data plan as needed without a second thought.

RV

• Hope against hope that the advertised RV park wifi works.
• Fall back to using your own device when it doesn’t.
• Manage and monitor your limited-bandwidth connection closely.
• Learn to say “Turn YouTube Off!” the same way your parents used to say “Turn those lights off!”
• Learn to have one parent check in at the campground office while the other is checking bars of cell signal on different devices.
• Each month pay the (&)*& overage fees. Again.

Kid Wrangling

Suburbia

• Keep a well-organized calendar on Google, shared by parents and available on all devices.
• Plan ‘play-dates’, homeschool field trips, and community events with other parents.

RV

• Learn to recognize other ‘bunkhouse’ RVs for potential playmates.
• Count bikes. More than two, make note of the site number.
• Prefer sites near to the play structures.
• Send kids out to explore on their own (and then take a “nap”).
• Send them with a family radio and the campground map.

Adult Socializing/Leisure Time

Suburbia

• Know the school, sports, church, vacation, and work schedule months in advance.
• Plan weekend events. Find time between gradutation parties, weddings, anniversaries, work parties, holidays, and other vacations.
• Realize you have about 3 totally free summer weekends.
• Have two of those ruined by bad weather.

RV

• Drag your chair over to the neighbor’s campfire.
• Share a meal with neighbors, coordinated an hour before.
• Enjoy the quiet, empty campground on a sunny and clear Monday after all the soggy weekenders leave.

Clothes

Suburbia

• Seasonal wardrobes.
• Walk-in closets.
• Holiday sweaters.
• Clothes for when you weigh a bit more or a bit less.
• Out of style clothes you are waiting to come back “in-style”.
• Wear clothes once, then put in laundry.

RV

• Layers/Layers/Layers.
• Wear the same thing for days in a row (hey, I didn’t sweat in it).
• Realize you have photos of yourself in front of many national monuments and landmarks, and you are wearing the same thing in all the photos.
• Develop a personal uniform / capsule wardrobe.

Work/Life

Suburbia

• Work a consistent 8-5, 5 day a week, 40 hour workweek.
• Plan all outings, explorations, errands or visits on the weekend.

RV

• Learn to recognize days of the week by flow of RV traffic (out = Sunday, in = Friday).
• Get up and go to bed with the sun.
• Work long hours when the work is there.
• Take days off in the middle of the week to explore/hike/bike.
• Work on weekends to make up for it.
• Think of weekends as mainly that time when other people won’t be answering phone calls or emails.
• Be OK with choosing to work weekends, but frustrated when clients ask you to.
• Learn to ignore the “that guy goes camping and all he does is sit on his laptop” stares/comments.

Homeschool

Suburbia

• Have lots of books.
• Have dedicated space.
• Make use of community progams, homeschooling groups, co-ops.
• Be fairly organized and scheduled.
• Make use of online video.

RV

• Worry that the books you want to carry will put you overweight.
• Start out with a fairly detailed plan, and let that unravel as you travel longer.
• Realize that National Park Junior Ranger Programs are a pretty decent curriculum.
• Realize ‘unschooling’ isn’t such a bad idea after all.
• Evaluate the bandwidth requirements of any online classes that look interesting.
• Care less about grade levels, state curriculums, or the entire government-run school system the longer you travel.

How About You?

What’s your post-suburbia life like? Give us a glimpse in the comments below.