Smallwheels

For me that is the secondary reason for doing it. The primary reason is to always have a home where there is no landlord who can tell me what to do or perhaps even kick me out. Twice I've been kicked out of places because the landlords needed the space for relatives. At other times I've had bad neighbors and wanted to move but was locked into a lease and it would have been prohibitively expensive to move.

I'm not against having an apartment. If I were earning a ton of money and needed a fixed location I would go that route again. The difference being I wouldn't fill it with much more than is already in the van and I would keep this van or another so that in a pinch I could move into it if necessary.

A more attractive alternative for me would be to have a medium sized RV and find a campground near the city I needed to be in and work from that location. The thing is, doing that in any big city is more expensive than renting an apartment. RV park rent can be cheap in many small towns. In the Helena Montana area I was surprised at the high rates charged. One place wanted $370 per month with water and electricity and required proof that you were buying propane for heating your RV. Otherwise they would charge $5 per day on top of the $370 per month. This is because they think the residents would be using small electric heaters.

I can recommend this lifestyle for a single person. It is easy to remain hidden from the attention of others in just a small minivan. A couple doing this could succeed with a bigger van.

I've seen many people living in cars and SUVs since beginning my lifestyle. When I see many of them who don't look like they're on a road trip it is easy to see that they didn't plan their situation. They seem like they were forced into this situation because they are not in vans. They are doing a very bad job of staying out of sight because their windows are not blacked out. They have things piled up in the seats and it is all visible. They don't look like they are keeping themselves clean and presentable.

The problem with most of them is a problem I have to a degree. They are keeping too much stuff. If they intend to stay in any city they need to get a storage unit to hold their excess stuff. I emptied my storage unit last week. To the last day of having it I was still getting rid of things by donating, selling, and trashing items. I just decided that the trade-off of losing the money on some things was not as important as being free of the storage unit fee.

I have a plan to get rid of all of my photos and family photos by just photographing them and keeping digital copies. My personal yearbooks will be photographed and then trashed or sent to the original schools for them to keep. My cousin wants my family history photos.

I still have a few kitchen items that I probably won't use and could give away. I'm almost down to having only things I use daily with me. I allowed myself one box of mementos. I think I'll implement the six month method for keeping possessions. If any item hasn't been used in the last six months then it can be given away.

For those who say they couldn't do it I totally understand. Every day of letting go of some item for little to no money, that I felt was worth money, was difficult. My inner cheapskate and greed created strong feelings of loss. Those feelings do pass quickly. Items I use weren't let go.

Learn from my experience; almost everything you own and value will be valued much lower by others should you ever need to sell things. That is just the way it is. It makes me wonder why I spend so much money on new items when they are valued so low as used items, even though they might function perfectly and look brand new.

Since I've been working on letting go of things for a few years the process has been repeated again and again. I now know how it is to let something go. Starting with appliances and furniture was easier. I had family attachments to them because my parents bought those things. Since they weren't used by me it was easy to sell them. What wasn't easy at first was accepting the low prices I was getting, and I'm really good at marketing and writing sales copy. Over time it became easier to sell things and to give things away. There were always feelings of loss at first, but then with those things out of the way, and out of sight, the feelings subsided. From there it always seemed that every time I looked at my things laying around I always felt that more should go. That feeling persists still.

As far as sleeping in a van, get rid of the rear seats and just get a good mattress pad or cot or something comfortable and live in a temperate area that doesn't require air conditioning or too much heat. I just got a job in Montana and will stay until the end of fall. After that I'm headed south to a warmer more suitable climate. I can survive in the van in low temperatures around freezing. I've done it with a small heater. I just don't want to do it when the temperatures go even lower. The odor of burning propane is not that pleasant.

Since my main employable skill is driving, I can get a job doing that just about anywhere. That makes it easy for me to relocate. For those of you with corporate positions or other jobs that hold you in place the traveling part of living in a van is out of the question, but living in a van or RV would be doable. It would give the same sense of freedom. I just like having fewer attachments to things and fewer things to cause attachments. That is why simple living is so attractive to me.