Van Life on Moments in the Miles

Inside the Van: One Corner of Home

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Everyone asks what it’s actually like in here. Not the tour-video version, the real one. So here’s one honest photograph of our galley, taken on an ordinary morning at a lake we didn’t know existed the day before.

Tap around. Every corner of this van earns its place, because in seventy square feet nothing gets to just take up space.

The Best Van Build Layouts for Full-Time Van Life (And What We Wish We'd Known)

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

After eight years of living full-time in our van, we’ve made a lot of decisions we’d make the same way again, and at least one major one we’d do completely differently. Our van build layout is the latter.

When we were planning our build, we researched endlessly. We looked at every Instagram tour, every YouTube walkthrough, every blog post we could find. We thought we had it figured out. And in a lot of ways, our layout is actually really smart; it maximizes space beautifully. But smart on paper and livable every single day are two very different things, and that gap is what this post is about.

If you’re in the planning stages of your van build, consider this your shortcut. We’re sharing the layouts we think work best for full-time van dwelling, why we believe in them, and the honest lessons we learned from living in a layout that didn’t quite fit our life.

A quick note: this post is written specifically for people building a van they plan to live in full-time. Full-time living means your van is your home, not a weekend escape or a seasonal adventure vehicle. Because of that, comfort features matter more here than they might for part-time builds. These recommendations are based on our experience after eight years on the road.

Day one. No idea what we were in for.

Start here: the question that shapes everything

Before you decide on a single layout detail, ask yourself one thing: will I be working remotely from this van?

If the answer is yes (whether you’re employed remotely or running your own business from the road), your workspace is infrastructure, not a nice-to-have. You need a place where you can sit comfortably for hours, focus, and feel like a functional human being, not someone hunched over a laptop on a couch cushion at a weird angle.

This is the part we thought we had covered. We knew we’d be working from the van constantly, so we built in a table: the top drawer of the shelving unit under the bed pulls out into one. On paper that’s clever. In practice there isn’t enough room there for two people to work comfortably, and once the table is out, whoever is sitting on the inside is stuck. To get out, you move everything and push the table back in first.

We’ll come back to that.

Our layout: a fixed bed, and the thing it doesn’t solve

Our van has a fixed queen mattress across the back. It doesn’t convert into anything. It’s a bed, all day, every day.

We’d make that call again. The sleep is good, the bed is always made, and the space underneath it is the best storage in the van by a wide margin. Nearly everything we own lives back there.

Our galley. The window does a lot of the work.

Mid-build. Every panel by hand.

What we never solved is where two people sit.

The passenger seat swivels around, which helps. But there is still nowhere in this van that’s comfortable for both of us to just exist together. Not to work at the same time, not to watch a movie, not to drink coffee on a rainy morning when we’re not going anywhere. The only real option is to sit or lie on the bed.

Eight years in, that’s the thing we notice. Not the square footage. Not the storage. Just the absence of a place that was built to sit in.

So if you take one thing from our build: solve the bed, then solve the seating, and don’t assume the bed will double as the seating. It technically will. You will get tired of it.

The case for a fixed bed layout

We have talked seriously about a renovation. Whatever else we change, we’d choose a fixed bed again without question.

A fixed bed means your sleeping area stays a sleeping area. You pull back the covers in the morning and leave them there. You make the bed once, the way you would in a house, and it stays made. Your sheets live on the bed. Your pillows stay on the bed. It’s just a bed. A real one.

This sounds so simple that it almost feels silly to list as a selling point. But when you’re living in 70 square feet, the things that create daily friction matter enormously. Eliminating even one recurring task, especially one that stands between you and sleep, has a real impact on your quality of life on the road.

Pros of a fixed bed

A comfortable sleep surface: one continuous mattress, not cushion segments
No daily conversion required; your bed stays made and ready
Clearly defined sleeping and sitting zones, which makes the van feel more like a home
More under-bed storage (what van lifers call the “garage”) for electrical components, a water tank, gear, and bikes
The potential for a small secondary sleeping area for guests, depending on layout
Day-to-day functionality that makes full-time living significantly easier

Cons of a fixed bed

Takes up more square footage than a convertible setup
Your dedicated seating area may be smaller depending on the rest of the build
The bed tends to sit higher (closer to the ceiling), which can be a consideration if you’re tall

For most full-time van dwellers, the trade-offs are worth it. The fixed bed wins on livability, and livability is everything when this is your home, not just your weekend.

The lift bed, which might be the actual answer

You see these everywhere now, and we understand why. The mattress sits on an electric lift. You make the bed in the morning, hit a button, and it rises up out of the way, opening the floor underneath for a table and real chairs.

Done properly, that gets you both things at once: a bed you never have to break down, and somewhere to sit that isn’t the bed. It costs you ceiling height, and it adds a mechanism that can fail a long way from anyone who can fix it. Those aren’t small trade-offs.

But it solves the exact problem we’ve been living around for eight years. If we do renovate, it’s the first thing we’re pricing out.

Other layout considerations worth planning around

Your workspace

Whether you’re fully remote or just need a place to catch up on emails, you want a dedicated spot to sit and work that isn’t your bed. A small table or dinette setup that doesn’t require full conversion is ideal: swivel seats, a fold-down table attached to the wall, or a compact dinette that doubles as a meal area.

The goal is a seat, a surface, and enough light, without dismantling your entire living situation to access it.

Your shower situation

Shower decisions are personal in van life. A lot of people use gym memberships, campground facilities, or truck stops as their primary option, and that works great until you’re three days into a dispersed camping stretch with no amenities nearby.

An indoor shower takes up meaningful real estate, so how much you build in (if at all) should reflect how often you realistically think you’ll use it. Options range from a full wet bath with a proper shower to a compact outdoor shower mounted on the exterior, an indoor portable shower, or a cassette toilet with a separate rinse setup.

Kitchen space

You will cook in this van more than you think you will. Even if you’re someone who currently relies on restaurants, life on the road has a way of shifting that, partly because good restaurants aren’t always nearby, and partly because cooking in a van is actually enjoyable once you have a decent setup.

Prioritize a sink with enough depth to actually wash dishes, counter space to prep a real meal, and storage for a reasonable amount of pantry staples. Cramped kitchen setups are one of the most common regrets we hear from van lifers who rushed this part of the build.

Storage — all of it

Build in more storage than you think you need, then add a little more. Overhead cabinets, under-bed garage space, wall pockets, drawer systems. Every cubic inch counts when you’re living full-time. The layouts that work best over the long haul are the ones where everything has a home and you’re not constantly shuffling gear to access what you need.

What we’d include in an ideal full-time layout

Based on eight years of living this life, here’s what we consider non-negotiable:

A fixed bed with a quality, continuous mattress
A dedicated seating area with a table for work and meals, no conversion required
Under-bed garage storage (electrical components, water tank, gear)
A kitchen with a proper sink and enough counter space to cook real food
Some form of shower solution, even if it’s simple
Overhead and wall storage throughout
Enough ceiling height to sit up in bed comfortably

We’d also strongly suggest building for your real daily routine, not your ideal one. If you know you hate making the bed, don’t build a layout that requires you to do it twice. If you know you work long hours, invest in a proper workspace. The van that serves you best is the one designed around how you actually live, not how you imagine you might.

A note on van size

All of the layouts we’ve described here are best suited to a longer wheelbase van: a 170" Sprinter, an extended Transit, or an extended ProMaster (which is what we drive). Shorter wheelbase vans can absolutely be built out well, but you’ll have fewer options for separating zones and fitting everything comfortably.

If you’re still deciding on a van platform before you even get to layout planning, that’s a whole conversation worth having before you fall in love with a layout that won’t physically fit your vehicle.

Whatever layout you land on, we hope it feels like home from day one.

What Nobody Tells You Before You Start Van Life

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There’s no shortage of van life content online. The golden hour shots, the freedom narratives, the carefully curated morning routines with coffee and mountain views. We’ve contributed to some of that, and we don’t apologize for it. Those moments are real.

But so is everything else. And after eight years of living this life full-time, we’ve noticed that the things that actually shape you, challenge you, and sometimes nearly break you are rarely the things anyone leads with.

This is the honest conversation we wish someone had pulled us aside to have before we left, not a scare piece. The stuff that lives between the highlight reels.

Mount Rainier National Park

Finding a place to sleep is a skill — and it never fully stops being stressful

This one catches almost everyone off guard. You imagine pulling off somewhere beautiful and drifting off under the stars. Sometimes that happens. But more often, especially when you’re in or near a city, finding a safe, quiet, legal place to sleep is a nightly puzzle that requires real mental energy.

You can’t stay in the same spot indefinitely. Neighborhoods notice. Situations change. What worked last week might not work this week. We’re always reading the environment: is this street quiet enough, safe enough, respectful enough?

That last part matters a lot to us. We’re respectful of the spaces we occupy. We don’t park in front of someone’s home. We don’t linger where we’re not welcome. We leave places better than we found them. But that level of conscientiousness takes energy, and in denser areas (cities, suburbs, busy tourist towns) it can feel like a part-time job just to figure out where you’re allowed to exist for the night.

The search for a safe, quiet place to sleep is the most unglamorous part of van life, and it’s also one of the most constant.

It gets easier as you learn to read places and build a mental map of what works. But it never fully disappears, and knowing that in advance helps you make peace with it instead of feeling like you’re doing something wrong.

Your relationship will be tested in ways you didn’t see coming

If you’re doing this with a partner, buckle up. Not because van life is hard on relationships (it can actually be incredibly good for them) but because it removes every buffer you normally rely on.

There’s no separate office to go to. No commute to decompress during. No extra room to retreat to when you need space. It’s 70 square feet, two humans, and every unresolved thing you’ve been carrying.

We had to learn new ways of communicating. Not just talking more, but learning when to talk, how to ask for space without it feeling like rejection, how to give each other room to breathe inside a life that doesn’t have much of it. We had to get intentional about carving out time that was just ours, individually, even when the logistics made that hard.

The couples who thrive in van life learned to fight better, and to make space for each other on purpose. Never fighting has nothing to do with it.

Decision fatigue is real and relentless

Every day involves decisions that most people outsource to routine. Where do we park tonight? Where’s the nearest potable water? Is the dump station at that campground open? It’s going to be ninety degrees at midnight here, so do we drive somewhere higher or just sweat it out with the fan?

In a traditional home, these questions don’t exist. In a van, they’re the background hum of every single day. Early on, the novelty makes it feel like adventure. After a while, it can feel like cognitive load you didn’t sign up for.

The antidote is systems. The longer we’ve done this, the more we’ve built routines that make recurring decisions automatic. But it takes time to build those systems, and in the meantime, give yourself grace for feeling worn out by it.

The loneliness can sneak up on you

Van life communities are warm and real, and the internet has made it easier than ever to find your people. But community still requires intention and effort in a way that stationary life doesn’t always demand.

When you’re moving through places, or even parked in one spot for a while, you don’t have the built-in social infrastructure most people rely on. No coworkers. No neighbors you see every day. No gym where familiar faces accumulate.

Loneliness in van life rarely announces itself as sadness. It’s more often a quiet Sunday where you realize you haven’t had a real conversation with anyone outside your van in four days. It sneaks.

The people who navigate this best stay proactive about connection: they seek out meetups, make plans with people they meet, nurture friendships on purpose. It’s doable. It just doesn’t happen on its own.

Your identity will shift, and that’s disorienting

Before van life, most of us have a clear script for who we are. Job title, neighborhood, routines, social circles. These things anchor identity in ways we don’t realize until they’re gone.

Van life strips a lot of that away. Which is part of the appeal. But the stripping-away process is messier than the freedom narrative suggests. There’s a period, sometimes months, where you’re not sure who you are without the old context, and you haven’t yet built the new one.

We’ve watched people quit in that window, convinced the life wasn’t for them, when really they just hadn’t given themselves enough time to settle into a new version of themselves. If you hit that disoriented patch, stay curious about it instead of afraid.

Maintenance will humble you

The van is your home, your transportation, and your responsibility, all at once. Things break. Things wear out. And when they do, you don’t have the luxury of calling a landlord.

The utility room, such as it is.

We’ve had to learn things we never expected to learn. We’ve done repairs on the side of roads, in parking lots, in the rain. We’ve had to make judgment calls about what can wait and what can’t. That knowledge is hard-won and valuable, but the earning of it isn’t always comfortable.

Budget for maintenance from day one, build a small emergency fund before you leave, and get comfortable with the idea that your van will occasionally be inconvenient. It will also, consistently, be worth it.

The things nobody tells you are usually the things that make you

After eight years, the unglamorous parts have stopped looking like warnings to us.

The nightly search for a parking spot has made us more resourceful, more observant, and more grateful for a great night’s spot than we ever would have been otherwise. The relationship friction made us better partners. The loneliness made us more intentional about connection.

Van life doesn’t hand you a better life. It hands you the raw materials and makes you build one. That’s harder than the highlight reels suggest, and it’s also more worth it than they can capture.

If you’re in the middle of one of these hard patches right now, we see you. The hard parts are the texture of the life, not reasons to walk away.

A Misconception About Van Life Created by Social Media

Mon, 26 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a version of van life that lives on the internet. You’ve probably seen it.

Golden hour through the back doors. Coffee in hand, mountains behind you. A perfectly styled interior that somehow stays clean despite the fact that two people, all their belongings, and the general chaos of daily life exist inside 70 square feet of moving vehicle. The caption says something like “just another Tuesday” and it gets 14,000 likes.

We’ve been doing this for eight years. And we’re here to tell you: that version is real. It just isn’t the whole picture.

The highlight reel isn’t dishonest, exactly. Those golden hour moments happen. The stunning campsites are real. There are mornings that feel so good you can’t believe this is your life.

This part is real.

But social media, by design, shows you the peak. The algorithm rewards beauty, aspiration, and ease. It doesn’t reward the Tuesday you spent four hours in a Walmart parking lot waiting for a part to arrive, or the week it rained every single day and you couldn’t open the windows and everything felt slightly damp and slightly tense, or the conversation you had to have about money, or space, or what you’re actually doing with your life.

Those moments happen too. They happen a lot, actually. And somewhere along the way, a gap opened up between what van life looks like online and what van life actually is, and that gap has convinced a lot of people that they’re doing it wrong.

The misconception that does the most damage

Of all the things social media gets wrong about van life, the aesthetic is the least of it. The damage comes from the implication that this life is easy.

When every van you see online is immaculate, every campsite is picturesque, and every couple looks like they’re thriving, it creates an unconscious standard. And when your reality doesn’t match that standard, it’s easy to assume the problem is you.

We’ve talked to people who quit van life after a few months because they thought they were failing at it. They weren’t. They were just living it.

So is this part.

Real van life includes:

The logistical weight nobody posts about. Finding water. Dumping tanks. Figuring out where you’re sleeping tonight when the spot you planned fell through. Managing mail, insurance, and healthcare without a fixed address. These aren’t glamorous problems, but they’re consistent ones, and they take real time and energy to solve.

The relational friction that gets edited out. Living in a small space with another person is an intimacy accelerant. It surfaces things. The version of van life you see online tends to feature two people who seem effortlessly aligned: same pace, same vision, same energy. What you don’t see is the negotiation that makes that possible. The checking in. The giving each other space in a space that doesn’t have much of it.

The days that just feel hard. Not dramatically hard. Flat, ordinary days of doing the same things you’d do anywhere (laundry, work, groceries) except the logistics are more complicated and there’s no couch big enough to disappear into.

None of this means van life isn’t worth it. For us, after eight years, it absolutely still is. But it means something different than the version online suggests.

What van life actually looks like

It looks like a life. A real one.

Figuring things out in real time, often without a backup plan. Building routines in an environment that keeps changing. Getting good at solving small problems quickly, because small problems in a van have a way of becoming bigger ones if you ignore them.

It looks like knowing your partner’s moods by the sound of their breathing. Waking up somewhere beautiful and feeling grateful, and waking up somewhere not beautiful and feeling okay with that too.

The hard parts and the good parts aren’t separate categories. They run together in the same life, and you’re in the middle of it.

None of that photographs well. It’s also what actually changes you.

Permission to let it be messy

If you’ve been watching van life content and wondering why yours doesn’t look like that, this is your sign: it’s not supposed to.

The people with the beautiful content aren’t living a different van life than you. They’re just showing you a different slice of it. And the slice they’re choosing to show is the one that performs.

What social media can’t show you, and what eight years on the road has taught us, is that the version of van life worth having is the one that feels like yours, not the one that looks good in the frame. Messy logistics and all.

You don’t have to earn van life by making it look effortless. You’re allowed to be in it, fully, even on the days that don’t make the feed.

Nobody talks about that enough. Honestly, it’s the best part.

The Honest Reality of Full-Time Van Life (No Filter)

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Let’s get one thing out of the way: the photos are real. The sunsets, the open roads, the coffee made in places that don’t have a parking lot or a loyalty card. All of it actually happens. We’re not going to pretend otherwise.

But other things happen too: the arguments about whose turn it is to empty the compost. The three-day stretches where the weather is bad and you’re both working from an 80-square-foot box and someone’s chewing too loudly. The moment you realize the nearest dump station is 47 miles away and you waited one day too long.

We’ve been living full-time in a van for eight years. We know what this life looks like from the inside. Not the reel, not the carefully framed shot where the bed is made and the light is golden. The actual inside. And we think you deserve to hear that version before you sell your couch.

It’s harder than it looks. Obviously. But not in the ways you’d think.

Everyone worries about the logistics before they start. Where will I shower? What about mail? How do you work? Those are real questions, and they have real answers: you figure them out, build systems, and it becomes routine.

The harder stuff is less photogenic. The low-grade mental load of always knowing where your next water fill is. The way a bad night of sleep in a hot parking lot makes everything the next day harder. The fact that when something goes wrong with your home, something is also wrong with your vehicle, and sometimes both at the same time at 9pm on a Sunday.

The logistics you solve once; the mental load you manage forever. Nobody puts that in the caption.

The caption on this one: we got out eventually.

Living with someone in 70 square feet is a personality test you cannot study for.

Jesse and I were together for years before we moved into the van. We thought we knew each other. We did not fully know each other.

Van life will locate every unresolved relationship dynamic you have and present it to you in a very small space with nowhere to go. You learn things. You grow. You also, occasionally, take a very pointed solo walk around a Walmart parking lot at 10pm just to remember what it feels like to be alone.

We’re not saying this to scare you. We’re saying it because thriving in a van has nothing to do with never fighting. The couples who last are the ones who figured out how to fight well in a small space and still want to be there when it’s over.

The tradeoffs are real. So are the reasons we stay.

There are things we miss. Real showers. Having a drawer for things that don’t have a drawer. The ability to have people over for dinner without it being a logistical event. A couch you can fully lie down on.

And there are things we have that most people don’t. Eight years of waking up and deciding where we want to be. The flexibility to stay somewhere longer when it’s good and leave when it isn’t. A relationship that got stress-tested early and came out the other side knowing exactly what it’s made of.

The tradeoffs are real. We’d make them again.

It changes you. Quietly, then all at once.

You stop needing certain things. Not performative minimalism; you just stop thinking about them. The stuff you used to own that owned you back. The routines that felt like stability but were actually just inertia.

You also start needing different things. Longer stretches of stillness. Places that feel right, not just convenient. People who understand why you left without needing you to justify it every time.

Eight years in, we’re different people than we were when we started. We’re not sure we could have become these people any other way. That’s probably the most honest thing we can say.

So. Should you do it?

We’re not going to answer that for you. Not because we’re being coy, but because the honest answer is: it depends on what you’re running toward, not what you’re running from.

If you’re chasing the aesthetic, it’ll wear off around month three. If you’re chasing something real (freedom, simplicity, a life that actually fits you), it has a way of delivering on that. Slowly, imperfectly, and with significantly more trips to the dump station than the algorithm suggests.

We’re glad we did it. We’re still doing it. And we’ll keep telling you the truth about what it’s actually like, because you’ll make a better decision with the real version than with the highlight reel.

— Karlee & Jesse

Day in the Life: What Full-Time Van Living Actually Looks Like

Mon, 12 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

People imagine one of two things when they picture a day in a van. Either it’s golden hour on a cliff somewhere, coffee in hand, laptop open to an inbox that only contains good news. Or it’s chaos: cramped, dirty, one wrong turn from a breakdown.

The real version lives somewhere in between, and it shifts depending on the day. Some days we’re parked somewhere so beautiful it still doesn’t feel real. Some days we’re in a Planet Fitness parking lot in a city we don’t love because the wifi is reliable and we needed a shower.

Here’s what a real day actually looks like. Not the highlight, not the horror story. The composite.

Grand Teton National Park

Morning: the first thing that happens is not romantic

Before coffee, before checking where we are or what the light looks like outside, there’s a mental inventory. How’s the battery? Did we leave the fan running? Is it hot enough in here that we slept badly, or did we actually sleep? How’s the water situation?

This takes about thirty seconds and happens automatically now. Eight years in, it’s just the first thing your brain does. Like checking your phone, except it’s checking your home.

Then coffee. Always coffee. We have a setup we’re proud of, the kind of morning coffee that made us stop apologizing for living in a van. Whoever’s up first makes it. That’s the only firm rule we have.

Somewhere around 7 or 8am

If we’re parked somewhere worth being outside, we’re outside. Coffee, whatever we’re reading, maybe just sitting. This part earns its place on Instagram because it really is that good.

If we’re in a city or a parking lot or somewhere that doesn’t call for lingering, we’re inside with the side door cracked and the fan running and we’re already thinking about the day. Either version is fine. We stopped needing every morning to be scenic a long time ago.

Work: yes, we actually work. A lot.

This surprises people most. Van life is a location, not a vacation, and the location moves. We run two websites, manage content, handle affiliate partnerships, answer emails, and do all the same stuff anyone working remotely does, except our office has a windshield and the view out of it changes every few days.

Morning block — usually 8 or 9 to noon

What this block looks like depends a lot on where we’re parked. Most days an hour of it goes to the gym if we’re near one, or to a workout outside if we’re not. The rest is heads-down. Jesse’s usually on site builds or technical stuff. I’m writing, scheduling, working on content. We’re in the same 70 square feet but largely in our own worlds. Headphones help. Having a coffee setup we love helps more.

Wifi is the variable that shapes everything. Good signal and the day flows. Spotty signal and you’re making decisions: drive somewhere better, use a hotspot, accept that today is a lighter day. We run a wifi booster, which was one of the better calls we made early on, and after enough years you get good at planning around signal instead of fighting it.

Midday: errands, movement, the unsexy stuff

Van life has a list of recurring logistics that don’t go away: water, laundry, groceries, dumping tanks if you have a toilet, finding a shower if you need one, mail if anything’s been forwarded. None of it is hard. All of it takes time.

Town days — a few times a week

We pick a home base (usually a library or a coffee shop with good wifi) and work from there while we knock out whatever needs knocking out. Laundry runs itself. Groceries get done. The van gets topped off with water if we’re running low.

There’s a rhythm to it that took maybe a year to find. The logistics that seemed overwhelming before we started mostly just feel like Tuesday now.

Some commutes are better than others.

Afternoon: this is when it gets good

If the morning is work and the midday is logistics, the afternoon is usually ours. This is the part of van life that actually looks like the version people imagine.

2 or 3pm onward

A hike we didn’t plan. A town we stopped in because something looked interesting from the highway. A long slow drive down a road that wasn’t on any list. Sometimes just reading in a camp chair next to the van while the light changes.

We’ve been doing this long enough that we don’t feel pressure to optimize the afternoon. Some of our best days have been the ones where we didn’t do anything worth posting about. We just existed somewhere and it was enough.

Evening: finding a spot, making food, settling in

If we’re moving, late afternoon is when we start thinking about where we’re sleeping. This used to feel stressful. Now it’s just part of the day: check the apps, think about what we need (hookups? dispersed camping? just a quiet street?), and point toward it.

5 or 6pm

Dinner in the van is one of our favorite things. We’ve gotten good at cooking in a small space, and there’s something about a meal you made yourself in a place you chose that hits differently than almost anything else. We eat outside when we can. Inside when we can’t. Either way, it’s ours.

Evenings are slow. We’re not night people. We read, we watch something if we have signal, we talk. The days that started with a battery check and a parking lot coffee somehow always seem to end well.

The part nobody shows you

There are days that don’t have a good narrative arc. The spot we planned fell through and we ended up somewhere fine but not special. We both worked too long and didn’t go anywhere. Something broke and the whole afternoon became about fixing it.

Those days exist. They’re real. And even those days, the flat ones, the ones that didn’t produce a single photo worth keeping, we’re still living in a van, on our terms, in a life we built on purpose.

It’s hard to explain until you’ve felt it. Even the ordinary days feel like yours.

That’s the whole thing, really.

— Karlee & Jesse

How Living in 70 Square Feet Changed Everything

Mon, 05 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We didn’t set out to live sustainably. We set out to live freely. It turns out those two things have a lot more overlap than we expected.

Eight years in a van will do that to you. Not because you made a list of virtuous choices, but because the van makes a lot of choices for you. Space is finite. So are water and power. And somewhere along the way, living within those limits stops feeling like sacrifice and starts feeling like the most sane way to exist.

Above treeline, Colorado

Let us show you what we mean.

What 70 square feet actually looks like

People ask us what it’s like to live in a van and we never quite know where to start. So let us just tell you what’s in front of us right now.

Our kitchen is three steps from our bed. Our living room is our bedroom is our office. Everything we own is within arm’s reach, and we mean that literally. There’s no spare room, no junk drawer that becomes a junk cabinet that becomes a junk closet. There is just the space, and what we’ve chosen to put in it.

Seventy square feet sounds small until you realize how much of a larger home you never actually use. The formal dining room that only comes out at holidays. The guest bedroom that’s really just storage with a bed in it. The garage full of things you forgot you owned.

We don’t have any of that. What we have instead is a home that we know completely: every corner, every cabinet, every inch of it. And after eight years, that intimacy with a small space feels less like a limitation and more like clarity.

The closet situation

Let’s start with the one that gets me the most, and I say this as someone who loves clothes.

The closet. All of it.

You cannot just go shopping in a van. Well, you can. But if something comes in, something has to go out. That’s not a philosophy, it’s physics. There is a fixed amount of space where clothes live, and when it’s full, it’s full.

What this has done, slowly and without us noticing at first, is completely change how we think about what we actually want. We don’t impulse buy anymore, not because we’re disciplined, but because we have to mean it. Every piece has to earn its place. Does it work hard? Does it work with everything else we have? Do we actually love it, or do we just like it in the store?

We love it. We mean it. It comes home with us.

And then there are the boots.

I have a beautiful pair of knee-high leather boots that go absolutely everywhere I go. Jesse makes fun of me for them. They are impractical, they are heavy, they take up space I don’t technically have. But some things you just can’t trade off. I found a little hidden spot in the back of the van (my secret stash) where they live. They don’t come out often. But when they do, they were worth every inch.

Van life makes you choose. But it also teaches you what’s actually worth choosing.

Eight years of free electricity

We haven’t paid an electric bill in eight years.

Let that sit for a second. Our solar panels power everything: lights, fans, charging, the fridge, the whole operation. We’ve had a handful of cloudy stretches where we had to run the generator and wall charge, but those are the exception. The rule is free, clean, silent power from the roof of our home.

We can’t calculate exactly what we’ve saved, but it’s thousands of dollars. And honestly, it’s changed how we think about energy in a way that nothing else could have. When you watch your battery percentage and know that the sun is what fills it back up, electricity stops being an abstract bill that comes at the end of the month. It becomes something real, something you think about and use a little more carefully without even trying.

Water

You think about water differently when you have to go get it.

We carry our water. We refill it. We haul it. That process alone will make you more conscious of how much you’re using than any amount of awareness campaigns ever could.

We hand wash our dishes and use almost no water doing it. Not because we’re trying to be minimal, just because when you’re the one who filled that tank and you know exactly how much is left, waste stops making sense.

The average American household uses about 80–100 gallons of water per person per day. We could not tell you the last time we came close to that in a week.

Also: the shower is free and the view is better.

Almost everything we own fits in one vehicle

This one still gets us when we stop to think about it.

We don’t have a storage unit. We don’t have a garage. What we do have is a few boxes up in an attic: things we’ve gathered from our travels and some handmade furniture, saved for the one day we have a bigger place to put them. That’s the whole exception. Everything else, every piece of clothing, every tool, every sentimental object we decided was worth carrying, is in this van. Right now. We know where all of it is.

There’s something radical about that. Most people accumulate things faster than they can process them, and eventually they stop even seeing what they own. It becomes background noise. We can’t do that. If something comes in without purpose, it takes up space we don’t have. So things come in slowly, intentionally, and they earn their place or they don’t stay.

This is minimalism as practical reality, not as an aesthetic. And it turns out the practical version is a lot more effective than the aspirational one.

Everything we own, one vehicle. The back doors are load-bearing.

The math nobody talks about

This is what surprises people the most.

Our monthly costs (van payment, insurance that covers both our home and our vehicle, gas) have added up to less than most people pay for rent alone. That has been true since we started, eight years ago.

Think about what’s happened to rent since then. To groceries. To utilities. To the cost of just existing in a fixed place. We’ve been largely insulated from all of it because our footprint, financial and physical, was already small.

We’re not rich. We’ve never been rich. But we have had financial breathing room that most people our age are still waiting for, and it came directly from choosing a smaller life.

What actually changes

We didn’t choose van life to shrink our footprint. We chose it because we wanted to move, to see things, to not feel trapped by a lease and a commute and a life that felt like it was happening to us.

The smaller footprint came along for the ride.

But once you’ve lived this way, the old way stops making sense. Not in a judgmental way; we’re not trying to tell anyone how to live. Just personally. We can’t imagine filling a house with things we don’t need, or not thinking about where our water comes from, or not knowing exactly what we own, where it lives, and why it’s there.

The van didn’t make us better people. It just made certain things unavoidable.

And unavoidable, it turns out, is sometimes the best teacher.