10 Things We Learned Living in Our RV
Living in an RV can be such a daunting life change, but it comes with such rewarding experiences! To try your best in avoiding mistakes, it is a good idea to do your research. So I’m hoping that is how you found me! I am going to share our top ten mistakes that we made in a few months whilst adjusting to this new lifestyle. My family were always tent campers, so I was walking into RV life with zero knowledge on how to live on wheels. While these can be frustrating mistakes in the moment, they more often than not turn into wonderful stories and something we can laugh about later.
Securing Items
This may seem like a no-brainer, but this is something everyone will forget about at least once. Our biggest mistake was the refrigerator. The first trip out of town after bringing the RV home, we didn’t secure the fridge well enough. You’ll notice I said ‘enough’, because in my defense, we did try. While we were first transitioning to RV life, a friend of mine told me her family’s horror story of a curdled milk and orange juice mixture all over the floor of their -brand new- RV. She said that it was so horrible to clean up! So, in response to that, we purchased a baby proofing strap (like one you’d use to secure a cabinet) to put on the french doors of the fridge. In RVs, you commonly have a freezer on top, with a one door fridge on the bottom. In that case, this should have worked. When we arrived at our first ever site, and after getting all set up and leveled outside, I headed in to turn on the AC. Yet when I opened the door, all I saw were egg yolks all over my kitchen floor! I was in shock, how could this happen? It was everywhere, in vents in the floor, underneath carpeting, and it had run underneath our baseboard. It caused a very stressful afternoon as we worked as quickly as possible to clean the mess. Thank goodness my parents happened to be nearby visiting the beach. They offered to help and went to go get things I didn’t know I needed until now - like a mop!
So, please make sure your messy items are completely secure. Jiggle the handles on things and test it! We are so traumatized by this that we started using two bungee cords on the fridge handles to make sure it cannot be opened at all.
Part of the wreckage, it even oozed into that air vent on the left!
Size Matters
Going into this lifestyle, we were mostly concerned about the space. We knew it had to be way smaller than our home, yes, but we didn’t want to live in a van! We opted for a larger unit, so life would feel somewhat normal as we transitioned into this. To be honest it has felt like home since day one! We like to compare the rig to an apartment. However, the sheer size imposes an issue when traveling or finding a spot literally anywhere. Our fifth wheel is 42 feet long, has 4 slide outs and requires 50 amps to run everything without having to pay attention to power usage. That’s a lot of camper! We can’t stay at smaller/older parks most of the time because they will usually only accommodate the average 30 feet rigs. Also, the campsites we can stay at will usually cost more. Towing is another complication. My husband, in my own (surely unbiased) opinion, is an expert driver. He always says to make yourself think and behave like a semi-truck driver. Watch your turns/tail-swings, planning stops at rest areas that can accommodate your size, and of course stopping distance. You’ve got a lot of weight behind you! If you’re up for the challenge, then size won’t matter.
Communication While Parking
It’s a funny joke among RVers that carries a not so funny undertone. Fighting will happen while parking the rig. Yelling is a big factor, as some things can come across more aggressively as (maybe) intended, which can lead to hurt feelings or more fighting. My husband and I knew we did not want to be shouting at each other from across the campsite if he was getting too close to a tree! It can also be a bit hard to hear over the diesel engine of the truck. To solve this, we decided to purchase walkie-talkies before we left to pick up the RV. They were a game changer. No more yelling, and it makes it easier to give instructions to the driver without walking over to him. We use them for light checks before leaving a site as well! Having a partner makes time frames better, as you can get the set up or breakdown of a site done within an hour. He does all of the outside clean up (this includes water, sewer, and electric hook ups) getting them all disconnected, packed up, and stored away. We also have decorations, outdoor furniture and the grill to put away. He basically just makes sure the basement of the camper is all nice and neat! I always take care of the inside. Getting the pictures off of the walls, securing that refrigerator door(!!!), locking the sliding doors (especially the glass shower door), closing vents, shutting off fans and putting all the loose items on the counters into bins on the floor. I’ll also finish dishes that were left over so the sink is free to host the cat’s watering bowl or a vase of flowers. Basically just making sure everything is in tip top shape and picking up loose ends so that way the slides don’t get damaged.
Caution: Moving Walls
We love our camper, we love the bright and open feel of it. To achieve this open look, you have to have slideouts. Slides are pretty darn easy if you remember to take care of them! We learned our lesson with -thank goodness- a simple mistake. I had set a cat toy and some other things on the couch to clear up the floor to make room for the slideouts, but what you have to remember (and I hadn’t) is that the slides have slots on the sides (perfectly sized for small items to slip into while the slides are in). When we had gotten to our location, and I had started to move the slide out, I heard a horrendous crack and my blood ran cold. I quickly put it back in some more, and walked over to the edge of the slide and saw their cat toy was cracked and wedged right in between the couch and the sliding wall! The slide itself wasn’t too badly damaged, just a piece of trim that popped off on the one end (Caleb hammered it back on later). We still make this mistake from time to time, just last week our family bible got smashed because we didn’t look! So always take a quick look at the slides to make sure no pillows (same thing happens quite easily with those), cat toys, or even papers are not within the “danger zone”. The slides are not “smart” in any way, and will crush or keep moving anything in its path.
Our living room/kitchen when the slides are in
Cleaning the Roof
Another thing we never thought of before was our roof. It can get very messy and sometimes even be damaged without your knowledge. Getting up top and giving the area a quick check up can make a world of difference in most cases. We were parked under a pine tree for quite some time and started to accumulate many needles. With clumps of needles came sap too. After some time, the sap became really hard and was on the tops of our slideouts, so my husband had to go up and scrape it away and brush the remaining needles and pine cones off with a broom. We decided then and there that we would always need to check the roof before packing up after staying somewhere for an extended period of time (especially under trees). Most small items that are on top of the slide will move in when the slide moves in, which means we also got pine needles and cones inside of our RV!
Another thing we noticed after inspecting our roof was the damage we saw. The plumbing vent (which helps water to drain through the pipes) had snapped off of the top! We had been running the risk of our plumbing system not working efficiently without even knowing it. It is a very good idea to keep an eye on your roof and give it the TLC it needs to thrive. One of the most notorious sources of roof damage is trees.
Know Your Height!
It may seem obvious to not drive under low hanging branches, but especially when starting out and driving your big rig for the first time, you may underestimate your height. We have knocked a few branches away and always joke “the county should pay us for trimming their trees up!'' Well, sometimes we wish they had, because we could’ve used that money for repairs! In all seriousness, it wasn’t too bad after taking a look at it.
Caleb had a really good idea recently to put all of his specifications (height, width, length, base weight maybe) on a sticker for the windshield --similar to the ones an oil changing place gives you. That way when we’re hauling and he sees a bridge’s height, he can quickly refer to the sticker.
Our camper is 13 feet 6 inches, and this was our lowest bridge yet while bringing it home from MN! Quite nerve-wracking!
Filling Up the Tanks
When you arrive at a park or campground, you usually won’t have hook ups unless you pay more for it. You’ll have to fill up your water tanks at the dump station that the parks (usually) provide. Same as other pieces of advice we have received, we had to learn our own way. The same trip we had our refrigerator catastrophe, we had also forgotten to fill up! So, after a long afternoon of cleaning eggs off of the floor we then had to load up whatever got taken out and secure everything once more to drive the 110 feet to the fill station (we know the exact distance because he had tried using the 100 foot hose to reach where we were already parked)!
So when we finally got over to where you fill up, we just needed to refer to the water valve diagram. Right. There were 4 different options in the diagram. How could there be 4 different ways to deal with water?! We thought we had set it correctly, but after about 10 minutes, we noticed that the water level in our tank wasn’t going up. We checked again, moved one lever, and the tank started to fill.
Summer Heat
One of those things we can totally laugh about now: the lasagna from hell! I had been trying to figure out the new range in our kitchen for a couple days and decided I wanted to make lasagna (we were actually taking it on another trip in the next day or two) and so I had to use our oven. However, it happened to be 93 degrees outside that day! Silly me, the oven was blazing at 350, the steam from boiling water to cook the pasta was in the air, and the stove window was open to vent the cooking heat. The camper ended up getting to about 98 degrees towards the end of the cooking time for the lasagna and everyone was getting upset from the heat and there was anger building as the heat rose. The cats were looking more like seals on a beach, and Caleb and I were sweating so much. It was a literal hot mess! So, moral of the story, we learned to always cook outside as much as you possibly can.
Campers hold heat a lot more due to the small space, low ventilation, and sub-par AC units. The stove is nice to have, but I wouldn’t recommend using it unless you absolutely have to and try to schedule your different meals around the weather, or plan on cooking at night. Trust me, you’ll much rather want a lasagna on a cold rainy day, rather than the hot and humid temps of July! Grilling is a great way to prevent this. Any extra heat you make just stays outside. Also, using the slow cooker or air fryer (next to a window) will usually generate less heat.
Things Will Break
New RVs will always have something break on your first trip off the lot. That’s what we’ve heard through plenty of other nomads, and that is what we have personally experienced. I have plenty of stories in just the three months we’ve owned our new home. Command hooks falling which broke my clock and letterboard, one of our blinds fell off of a corner and now it just hangs there haphazardly, the cupboard under the kitchen sink still keeps falling off due to stripped out screw holes, we adjusted a vent in the bedroom one time and it snapped and broke, the silicone caulking wherever there is a counter is cracking since we’re sure it was put on very thinly, and the bedroom slide started to make an awful sound when we bring it in or out. The list goes on and on.
Trying to find a space for all our stuff was a stressful task. I wanted things to have a home, and not just sit on the counter or floor. We had a bar in our house before moving out, and we didn't see fit just dumping the alcohol down the drain. So I put it all together in a basket and placed it on the top shelf of the pantry cabinets. It was tucked behind the lip of the cabinet and I had grip padding on all of the surfaces (so it would not slide off). Yet when we arrived at a site early in our travels, I walked into the pantry and opened the cupboard to find that the top shelf had fallen straight down onto the shelf below! It was heavy, I will admit. But I didn't realize or know at that time that the wood in our rig (and all rigs really) was very weak to keep the gross weight low, which resulted in a not-so-durable product. With it being the top of the cabinet, it was only thin paneling. Thank goodness nothing broke besides that panel! No alcohol all over the plates and mixing bowls. So, we limited our supply (we really don’t need cocktail supplies on the road, not when we have a wine cooler in the same pantry) and decided to put all heavy items on the floor level of the cabinets, never to risk that mistake again.
said broken clock now just sitting on the couch (not too bad, just a crack on the top where the hook
One time we also learned an important lesson on bringing steps down during setup. We had put them down on a particularly hot day in order to get the AC going and get the RV cooled down. We were moving so fast (never a good idea, slow down and nothing gets broken!) that we started the auto level, pinching the screen door against the top step. When we opened it, the screen door’s hinge on the bottom snapped and it wouldn’t attach to the main door anymore. Nevertheless, stuff will break. Sometimes it will feel like the universe is just sending you bad luck and other times it will be completely and utterly your fault. That’s okay, you can fix it.
Future You Will Be Happy
Our last mistake we make more often than we’d wish, is that we forget constantly that we’re living so many people's dreams…including our own! Multitudes of people think about making that jump, to do what we're doing. Even us, the people doing it, dreamed about it for a long time before committing to it! Try to think of the future you, and how you'll be looking back on this time. Thinking about how good it was and you just hadn’t realized it at the moment. We all do it, it’s a fact of life, “the grass is always greener” mentality can ruin your dream, and can make you neglect your own grass. Every mistake, every repair, all of the struggles you face, they all seem to be your worst nightmare in the moment. However, they usually turn into skills you now have under your belt, a lesson you’ve learned… and hopefully a funny story to tell!
They may have grumpy cat faces whenever I want a photo, but I promise, they do love us haha and the RV life!
Hopefully you will gain something from our list of mistakes and do your best to not let them happen to you. The best advice we can give is to always expect the worst! You’ll be happily surprised when good fortune comes your way and you’ll play it safe with the things that can trip you up.
In the meantime, stay adventurous,
-E
