Lessons From My First Week Of Vanlife

It has been one full week now since my wife and I embarked on our van-life adventure. It has been pleasant, and wonderful, and not without its fair share of learning moments. Here are some things we’ve had to learn or adapt to as we move towards sustainable living. Some of these things will be specific to nomads and van dwellers, but some of these lessons might prove useful to anyone.

Multitasking isn’t a thing. But mindfulness is.

Without modern conveniences such as automatic dishwashers, microwaves, or clothes washers and dryers, the basic tasks of cooking and cleaning that many take for granted as occurring at the push of a button now must be done by hand.

At first, this may seem like a major downside to van-life or off grid living. But it is in fact something that we expected to be a good thing. And it has proven to be.

Instead of pushing a button on a dishwasher and going about to the next task in a life focused on hustle, we are focused on washing the dishes as we do them, and nothing else. Every task is like this. It adds a level of mindfulness to everything one does. There’s no TV in the background to distract from cleaning, so cleaning becomes an act of self care and care for your partner instead of a chore.

My wife and I each fall into our roles, and stay out of each other’s way, and everything gets done… mindfully.

This is something we anticipated would happen, and we’re happy it’s working out to be the case. This is one of the reasons we started this van life adventure.

Check the weather, and check it again. Then roll with it.

We spend more time outdoors now. We cook outdoors. All of our physical exercise has to be done outdoors. Since our van doesn’t have a high roof, we can’t stand upright in it, and it’s a little cramped. So the whole outdoors is part of our home now.

But sometimes the weather doesn’t cooperate with our plans. Maybe we are planning on a lot of cooking, but there’s a major dust storm that would make the food dirty. Maybe it’s too cold or wet to dry laundry.

These fluctuations in weather mean that we have to stay flexible with our plans, and how we provide for ourselves and serve our clients.

There’s always stuff to do, but if I have planned to make some video exercise resources for a client and the weather doesn’t cooperate, then I need to have other things I can easily pivot towards doing.

Checking the weather and being proactive with how you plan your day, your chores, your work, and your recreation is MUCH more important than when living in a conventional apartment or house.

Checking the weather regularly also becomes a matter of safety. It has gotten quite cold some nights, so we need to be able to make sure we and our cats are all warm. We also have to prepare to have water available if the water freezes where we are staying.

As a result, we have to make sure that we are also attentive to mindfully filling backup water jugs when we can. This is part of the mindfulness of point number 1 above, and it’s part of my point number 3 below.

If it’s important, make it redundant.

There are some things that we anticipated being so much of a necessity that we planned on redundant ways to provide them. And this has proven to be very useful.

We’re at a campground with water, a toilet, and a shower available. But we also keep our own jugs full. We have about 22 gallons of water jugs we can keep full in the van. And on days where the water has frozen on site, it’s been useful.

We need electricity to work. So we have the electric hookups at the campsite as well as a battery backup that can be charged by solar, household outlet, or 12v car adapter. For most of our electric needs, this is sufficient.

But with the cold nights, we also need to power a space heater. So we run an electric space heater off of the campsite electric and have lots of cozy blankets as well to keep everyone warm.

For internet access, which we also need for work, we have our mobile phones which run on T-Mobile. We also use Visible (which runs on Verizon’s network) for our mobile internet. We’ve found that having both is good, since sometimes the signal on one network is good, but the other isn’t. The campsite also has wifi which we can use as a backup if we need to.

Redundancy is important. Doing it in as space efficient of a manner as possible is also important.

Move often, move dynamically.

We’re fortunate that since we’re personal trainers, our job calls on us to move in a variety of ways frequently.

But we still have to be aware of the tendency, especially on days of inclement weather, of sitting in a cramped van all day long.

It’s easy for joints to get stiff, and flexibility to deteriorate when sitting for extended periods of time. This is even more the case when the area you are sitting in doesn’t have enough headroom to stand up fully.

We always recommend our clients get up and walk frequently. Sitting is terrible for your health. As a van lifer it’s extra easy to spend more time than you should in a seated position.

Even inside the van, we try to move around a lot. Sometimes we stretch out. Sometimes we sit upright. Sometimes we sit on the floor, sometimes in the front seat. It’s important to keep it varied.

It’s also important to stay on top of whatever movement practices you have, and to be aware of movement patterns and forms of exercise that AREN’T present in your favorite practice so you can address those elsewhere.

Be patient.

Finally, we’ve learned that patience is more important than ever.

We have to be patient with ourselves when we can’t work as fast as we’re used to due to the slower pace of living mentioned above or due to slow internet, or just due to learning new skills.

We have to be patient with each other as we wait for one person to finish a task in a space or with tools that we may want to use for one of our own tasks. Fortunately my wife and I have a great relationship and this hasn’t been too much of a challenge. But it’s something we still have to be very mindful of.

And we have to be patient with life itself. There’s a lot that we can’t influence that we’re getting used to having no power over. Truly, feelings of power and influence are only illusory in nature anyway, but that’s a topic for another blog post.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I hope you have a day full of mindfulness and abundance.