The Truth About Full-Time Van Life
And what it’s like to be a homemaker without a permanent home!
After over half a decade
Zach and me in Big Bend National Park, Feb 2023
of living in a van and trying to keep up with the new “vanlife” social media trends, I've decided it's time to return to my roots. I have always wanted to be a writer and travel the world. I just never thought blogging and living in a van was something I would do at almost thirty-five years old. But lately, social media has made me angry with myself, and I've never felt more defeated and unsuccessful. So, I’m trying something that makes me feel more like me — writing. I’ve always wanted to talk about what it’s like to be a housewife who is (essentially) “homeless.” So, I thought it would be fun to start blogging again by chatting about a subject near my heart.
“I want to have the conversations that it feels like no one is having on social media because we are human, too. We are not just another couple who bought a van and decided to travel the world. Zach has a real job. He works 7-7, and some jobs require him to work seven days a week.”
As a child
I always dreamed of traveling the world and becoming a writer. I would spend hours writing; it has always been something that helps soothe my aching soul. If I were sad, I'd write about it. If I were happy, I'd write about that too. A pen and paper is something I’ve always gone back to whenever I felt like I needed to get something off my chest. But for a while, I wanted nothing to do with writing.
I didn't know how I would make a life of travel writing, yet it was something I would daydream about all the time. Living in a van had never crossed my mind back in those years. But I'd spend hours jotting down my plans for a life that allowed me to see the world. I journaled so much as a child that when I moved out of my parent's house after college, I carried all those books of my past with me in a suitcase!
Then, one day, I met a horrible boy who thought these memories and books were worth nothing. He would tell me that they weighed me down and it was childish to hold onto such silly dreams. He made me a bonfire one night in the backyard of the house I was living in and made me burn every one of my books. I used to be so strong-willed, and it makes me sad to think that a 'nobody' in my life could make me do anything, like burn my dreams and childhood memories. This same boy turned into an abusive boyfriend later on. Luckily, after three long, hard years, I escaped him but never really wrote for joy after that. I kind of thought that was the end of my writing days.
As a homemaker living in a van
in 2024, I feel it’s my duty to stay on top of all the trending social media content and try to make a living from sharing our travels. I’ve had this growing sensation inside of me that I haven’t been able to shake, though. I see everyone else on social looking like they're killing it, taking brand deals, making money, and living (what appears to be) the high life. FOMO is real y’all. I’ve been on and off social media for years, back and forth between “We have a story to tell, too” and “Why on earth would anyone care about what we’re doing?” It’s been a real turn-off and creative hindrance for me these past few years. So, instead of trying, I put it off altogether.
While I love making videos (and we still are creating content), recently, I've felt called to start writing again.
A (rare) photo of me hanging outside the van at Mount Rainier, July 2023
For a long time, I wasn't sure what to write about. After I burned all my notebooks in my early twenties, writing was something that gave me anxiety instead of peace.
But with social making me feel the way it has, I thought, “Everyone blogs about their travels; I should too.” And while I love that space and plan on adding adventurous travel blogs into the mix, I don't want to be like everyone else. I want to stay true to myself and our life — this beautiful life we've created. But the big question for a long time was: how?
This morning, I was jotting down some notes and to-do's and found myself writing the words' start blogging again.’ But I didn’t know what about, so I put down my notepad and started my daily chores. And that’s when it dawned on me: I am a homeless homemaker. I laughed a little at the thought, but I figured, why not talk about what it’s like to be a housewife without a permanent home?
While living in a van has become a trendy thing to do, back when we first moved into one, I was called homeless more times than I can count. And we still have people who don’t understand our lifestyle and squawk at the idea of a van being a home. But the truth is, we don’t have a home. There is no homestead for us to return to, no house in the suburbs with a white picket fence. We have nothing but this (roughly) 60 sq. ft. space and a small storage unit with family heirlooms and childhood treasures we couldn’t bring ourselves to throw away.
I am a stay-at-home wife of a traveling welder. I can't have kids, and I love my dogs more than me most days. I take my husband to and from work, clean the house, wash laundry, grocery shop, make dinner, go to bed, and repeat. I've been doing this for over half a decade, just like most wives who stay home and care for the house. Only my house moves, and we spice it up occasionally by deciding not to work for weeks and throwing in some crazy adventure to realize we're broke again and need to find another job ASAP. I’ve cooked more dinners over a fire than I can count, washed laundry in a cold creek, and heated 5-gallon buckets of water to ensure that Zach has a hot shower at the end of his long work day.
Along with the typical chores of a homemaker, my daily tasks include dumping toilets, filling fresh tanks, finding the nearest place to refill our propane so I can cook us dinner, and booking campsites (or finding a boondocking spot with nearby showers). I spend 95% of my days alone in towns where I know no one and have to use my GPS to get around for the first week! I never know where we’ll head next, and most days, I have no idea where we’ll park for the night. And while this might sound absolutely dreadful to some of you, I love every minute of it!
I am a homemaker without a permanent home. Now that has a fun ring to it :)
I want to start using this space
to discuss everything from what it’s like to be a homemaker without a permanent home to tips and tricks, our travels, and favorite hikes. Why we don't and can't have kids + the past struggles we've had with this. Our triumphs and successes, but also our failures and regrets. I want to have the conversations that it feels like no one is having on social media because we are human, too. We are not just another couple who bought a van and decided to travel the world. Zach has a real job. He works 7-7, and some jobs require him to work seven days a week.
Up until recently, I thought my job on social media was to make it look like all we did was have a good time all the time because that’s what it seems like everyone else is doing. And while we love the life we choose to live, that is not the reality of it. I want to talk more about what it's like behind the scenes to live in a van full-time with a husband who has a 7-7 job. And not in 15-30 second video form in a 16:9 rectangle where the haters do nothing but criticize — because apparently, we live in a society where there are absolutely ZERO consequences to our actions anymore. This is absurd to me that people on the internet can be so rude sometimes!
I'm from the in-between generation, where social media was a scary space to be in because my parents thought every new 'friend' I made online was some creeper out there trying to either steal my identity or kidnap me and sell me into sex trafficking. I'm kidding, but only kind of. The ice cream man in our neighborhood used to put drugs in the ice cream. I was instructed never to buy from him and to run away when I saw him. I'm not kidding about that, so it's no wonder my parents were mortified to know I trusted people I met online.
Thinking about how far we’ve come in less than 20 years is mind-blowing! Nowadays, the majority of the friends we meet are online. And, while I do love social media and still plan to use it for social interactions (which is what it was meant for in the first place), it's time to start showing the world the other side of our lives — the messy, chaotic, confusing, funny, scary, happy, and all the in-betweens of life without a permanent home. I don’t want us to be defined as "just another couple who lives in a van." And I surely don’t want to continue down the cycle of posting the same kind of content as everyone else. We may live an extraordinary and unconventional life, but so do many others!
I was reading a book the other day, and the author said something that resonated with me. She said, "By now, we know too well how much unhealth and discontent can come from a life that is lived on a screen. A life where moments are only to be celebrated in a four-by-four square." She talks about how if it's not Instagram-worthy, we either don't take the photo, or if we do, we don't post it. Then, she mentions how 95% of our lives are lived off-screen.
MY MIND WAS BLOWN: 95% of our life is lived off camera, off social media, out of the outside world's influence. For some reason, I had to stop and let this sink in. The people I have called my friends on social media have an entire life off-screen… Is anyone else’s mind blown right about now?
So, I’ve decided I want to start talking about the other 95% of my life. These are the parts that people don’t see or hear about on social media! These thoughts and moments are what make us different from one another. We’re not all the same; we might love the same style of life, but we’re all very different from one another. And that is what makes this community of nomads so unique!
Being a homemaker
without a permanent home can be a quiet and solitary life sometimes. I spend 95% of my day off social media doing tedious chores like dumping toilets and emptying grey tanks. I hardly ever stay in one place long enough to get to know my neighbors. The second I can navigate to the laundromat or grocery store without a GPS, we're leaving and off to a new home for a little while. Now and then, we return to a familiar place, but it’s never the same as it was before. I guess the truth is that I love my solitary days spent in the van. There is some kind of joy and excitement that comes from being a homemaker in a house with a different view out of my windows all the time. It’s a type of euphoria that is hard to describe unless you’ve lived this unstable yet oddly stable life of a full-time nomad.
Our first van & the trip that changed our lives forever, December 2017
This life has brought me joy; it's taught me to live in the uncomfortable moments a little longer and feel all the feelings again. When I was in college, my doctor put me on depression medicines. Those medicines made me spacey; I didn't feel like me, and because of this, ultimately, I felt more depressed. So I stopped taking them, and after my three-year abusive relationship, I built up walls around me that an army of soldiers wouldn't have been able to penetrate. Somehow, Zach was able to weasel his way in. But it took a lot of convincing, ask him.
But over the years of living in a van and soul searching, I've slowly broken down the walls that I thought 'kept me safe' for so long. Not to say living in a van is the only way to do that, but it worked for me. Initially, I was running away. In a fight-or-flight situation, it was my flight out of pain and suffering. It was my flight to a new beginning. I should have known I couldn't escape the skeletons in my closet. But life in a van taught me to live within my means and outside my comfort zone; it has taught me to sit with myself again, with my thoughts. And even though I live a very trendy lifestyle, I am different from everyone else, just as they are all different from me.
I think these are the things we should be talking about as full-time nomads and content creators. These in-between moments, the ones that aren’t social media worthy, are the ones that make us human. They’re the moments that people can relate to and the ones that, for some reason, are so hard to capture on camera. I never want to make anyone feel like they have to do something they don't want to do just to be happy. Living in a van was something I wanted to do. The child in me who wanted nothing more than to become a travel writer is secretly jumping for joy. Still, it took almost thirty-five years to realize that the off-camera, other 95% of my day moments, are the moments I should write about. And writing will, hopefully, fill a void that social media can’t — and maybe that can make me feel like I have a purpose again.
