You want to know about vanlife...
When you see those pretty perfectly edited vanlife Instagram photos, what you see is a snapshot. You don’t see the moments that led up to that photo. The frantic jumping around the van, cleaning, hiding the mess. Throwing things onto the drivers seat that you don’t want seen.
You only see the image that we want you to see. Of course we are painting the vanlife dream for you.
We are the artist, curating our life. Which to be honest, when you live in a van you sort of become an artist. An artist of overcoming, of aww, of self perseverance and so much more.
Life on the road is NOT for the faint of heart. You receive so much beauty each day, but for each moment of beauty there are 10 moments of…
"What am I doing!"
Instead of painting the perfect picture today, lets paint some VANLIFE FAILS.
I’m going to tell you about some of the FUNNY VANLIFE FAIL, that I’ve experienced in my 2 years on the road.
Hopefully you can laugh. I tell you what, I sure didn’t laugh when they first happened, but now I crack up thinking of them.
1. You over flow your grey tank, INTO YOUR WHOLE HOUSE!
Yeah, imagine all that junk you put down your sink. You know the food particles. Let’s not forget I have one sink, so kitchen sink and bathroom sink are the same. My sink, also gets toothpaste, face wash, soap. As you’re thinking about this, think of your nose. That’s right, all those smells combined, thank you very much. It was rancid. So when my grey tank overflowed, it was this lovely seeping out of what some may call “sewage”. I don’t have someone to call, nope it’s just me here. I had to find a place to dump what was in the tank, and then try to clean the area. You know those times when you’re trying not to vomit and clean at the same time, that was me. Let’s just say it took awhile to get that smell out, and a lot of incense.
2. When you take a dirt road a little too hard
I’m not shy to driving some pretty sketchy and intense roads in my van. Let’s face it I had a wrangler prior to the van, so I like to get myself in situations. It wouldn’t be vanlife if you didn’t have extra fun. Of course I found a killer spot and I had to get in there. Well driving a 170 sprinter always presents its own fun, like being a long boat of a vehicle and having to drive little up down roads. This road was short, but rough. There was one section of a steep little hill, I mean little, less than 20’ but it was gappy and rocky, (huge holes to navigate). When you’re driving an incline you ALWAYS need to make sure you have enough speed. Naturally I roll up to the hill and give it some juice, well, I go up the hill and the front tire hits a hole just right. EVERYTHING from my cabinets comes FLYING out. The house looks like it just experienced and earthquake, because well IT DID. Once parked, I had to asses the damage, what fell. GREAT, a bottle of soy sauce, and apple cider vinegar. MY HOUSE SMELLED LIKE HELL. The absolute best part, was because they were liquids they ran all down my floors, underneath my bench into my fridge area and down into the garage. Here I am trying to clean this mess, and get all around my fridge, but of course my fridge is full, so it’s not like I can just pick it up. Another fun experience of cleaning for the books.
3. When you run out of propane.
You know in a house when you’re cooking, and you don’t have anything to worry about. Other than, wow this food is going to taste so good. Yeah okay, now imagine every time you’re cooking thinking I really hope I don’t run out of propane right now. WELCOME TO MY LIFE. Most people have little gadgets to tell them, but I guess I like to live in constant anxiety and on the edge making vanlife challenging, so I still haven’t gotten one. It’s a Sunday I’m making chocolate chip pancakes, because duh it’s Sunday. I’ve already flipped my pancakes, when all of a sudden my stove stops. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. Pancakes on the griddle halfway done and you decide to run out now! Lucky for me there was a propane refill just a couple miles away, but getting there entailed yet again another BUMPY ROUGH road. I have to pack everything up to move, and figure out how to secure my pancake batter and my pancakes. Pancake batter you fit in the sink, I put dishes all around it to make essentially a snug puzzle in my sink, because no way am I losing this precious cargo. Then I let my pan cool, and put it on my floor and surround it with items to secure it in place and hope to god my dogs don’t decide they’re hungry. Luckily the rest of the events went smoothly and we returned back to the spot to make a fatty stack of pancakes.
4. That time your sink runs.
I found this great little scrubber brush that had a hole on the end, so to keep it out of my sink I put it on my faucet handle. They were a match made in heaven, couldn’t be happier. Until one day I’m driving, and probably took a turn too hard, and well the scrubber brush shifted, and my sink starts running. Now in a normal house this A. Wouldn’t happen because it doesn’t move B. You have endless water. Not me, I have 5 gallons under my sink to last a week. So when I hear my water running I’m immediately panicked, my WATER!!!! And of course I’m not in a place I can just stop and pull over. There’s also one other problem here, my butcher block is in my sink, because space saver, so my sink is actually covered, meaning THE WATER IS RUNNING DOWN MY COUNTER. YUP, that’s right another spill. Once I finally pull over and turn the sink off, it had run out my water tank which meant it stopped pouring water everywhere. Somehow I got super lucky and my tank was practically on empty so I didn’t have a huge sopping wet house to clean. Lesson learned, don’t trust the sink handle.
