Why we want to live full-time in an RV

We’re selling (almost) everything we own, trading three vehicles in for one big truck, and acquiring an RV to use as our permanent, mobile house. With three young kids and two dogs. That sounds a bit crazy, doesn’t it? Why are we doing this? So we can go on the vacation of a lifetime by making life the vacation.

We’ve been living our lives pretty much by the book. We met, got married, bought a starter house, had a kid, upgraded to a bigger house in a great neighborhood, got some dogs, had some more kids. By all accounts, we have been living the American Dream™. But it’s not our dream.

A Dream Vacation?

Erin and I both love to travel. We dream about traveling all the time. There are hundreds of places we want to visit in this country alone, but so little time. When you both work full time and have all of the daily and weekly obligations that go along with suburban living, it’s so hard to break free. Time is marching on and we’re seeing it fly by through the haze of our daily routines. The “Holiday Paradox” is something we all experience as we get older – regular days melt away and vacations feel fast and furious yet are full of great memories.

We have talked about living in an RV since the very beginning of our relationship, but it was always in the context of “once the kids are out of the house.” Recently we changed our perspective on this plan. Why wait? Why sit around and watch time fly by over the next 16 years? Why not travel and experience this wonderful continent with our children and give them as many incredible memories as we can before they head out on their own?

It’s not all going to be amazing vistas and beautiful sunsets though. This is going to take a lot of work, and it will definitely be worth it. There are a lot of things that we need to account for on the road that are pretty much the same as sedentary life. We all still need to eat, sleep, and educate our children.

A Working Vacation!

Eating may have its challenges, but RV’s have kitchens and we’re all pretty good at putting food in our mouths. Once we’re out on the road, expect to see some more about shopping for food when you have a glorified dorm fridge, preparing meals with very little counter space, and cooking with an oven the size of a shoe box.

We’re all pretty good at sleeping too, even the littlest one. There will be some challenges with sleeping space though, depending heavily on the floor plan we end up with, of course. We want all of our children to have a comfortable, personal space to call their own and this will definitely involve their beds.

How about education? This is probably the thing we get asked about the most when sharing our plans with friends and family. Luckily, Erin’s a teacher and has already started putting together a ton of materials and resources, which she’ll cover later on this blog. We’ve got a rising 3rd grader, a preschooler, and one still several years away from school, so expect to see a wide variety of topics and techniques.

There is also the fact that there are going to be five humans and two dogs in a space around 300 square feet. That’s going to be tight, and it’s going to cause issues pretty frequently. We won’t have a lot of storage space for clothes, linens, kitchen gear, tools, entertainment, etc.

I Thought You Said Vacation?

All of the above sounds like a lot of extra work. Why not just stay where we are and have individual bedrooms, a big kitchen, and public education? Because we can take it all with us. Instead of trying to carve time out of our busy lives to go to one of our 58 National Parks, visit family across the country, or spend a week at the beach, we can just take our house wherever we want to go and stay there as long as we want. There are RV parks everywhere, and there are plenty of other places to set up for a couple nights or a couple weeks at a time as well.

Erin and I are definitely excited, even knowing that we have a long road ahead just to get on the road. Imagine being a kid though. You don’t have to wait for Thanksgiving break, winter break, spring break, or the next summer before you can check out somewhere new. We’re going to be moving several times a month and exploring new areas several times a week. How awesome is that? We would have loved to travel all the time when we were younger, so now our kids get to benefit from us making up for that!