Things I wish I’d known before fulltime RVing (2017)
Not a full-timer, just a casual enjoy-er about four days a month of an RV kitted out how I want it.<p>An older model 38ft Class A diesel pusher with low mileage that has no slides. These were specific choices. If I did it over, it&#x27;d be a 32ft-er instead. No slides. Slides can fail. And the interior design is often made purposefully cramped until you deploy the slides. My RV is basically an open plan office &amp; kitchen with tile &amp; wood flooring throughout. Though I am in the process of ripping out the carpet in the bedroom because - it is time. Not sure if I will go with tile, wood or tatami mats.<p>My RV sits two comfortably and sleeps two comfortably. Me and my wife. Everybody else can walk. We simply don&#x27;t take passengers or ride alongs.<p>We pulled out the dinette, the built-in ice maker, the couch that reclines and folds down into another bed, and every other accoutrements that would accommodate six to eight people for a two week vacation. Now there is so much more space for activities. The dinette area turned in to a prep area with a custom built cabinet underneath with lots of shallow drawers. I can quite categorically state that the kitchen and prep area in the RV is larger than the one in our condo and has way more storage. The bathroom&#x2F;dressing room is pretty comfortably sized too. I pulled out the shower enclosure and put in a Japanese soaking tub and a simple curtain rail for showers.<p>Interior is an eclectic mix between boho and traditional Japanese. Full height sliding shoji screens with reinforced lexan inserts (just in case someone left something on a countertop and I need to slam on the brakes) that separate cockpit from living area for privacy. Sliding shoji screen doors on bathroom and bedroom. Sliding shoji screen window covers. All the 1980&#x27;s era country kitchen knobs, handles and pulls got replaced with either custom made pulls or an eclectic mixture of cabinet pulls we have found on our travels. Replaced all the external cabinet door hinges interior euro-hinges. All the country kitchen woodwork got sanded and repainted to a neutral white. Replaced all the terrible &quot;we cut a lot of corners&quot; drawer slides with push to open&#x2F;soft-close slides.<p>We went with reasonably high-end appliances; GE Profile fridge&#x2F;freezer, cook top, microwave, dishwasher, Gaggenau high BTU wok unit converted to propane, and a Bosch washer&#x2F;dryer combo unit in the bathroom. Wolf counter top oven (which also doubles as our toaster). And then the usual collection of small appliances that every kitchen has; rice maker, food mixer, food processor, immersion blender, Wega Polaris 2 group machine, teppanyaki grill plate that sits over the regular cook top. Built a vented (to the outside) cat litter box into a cabinet in the bathroom. Bunch of solar on the roof (that I need to get up there and clean) and a lot of lithium in the basement to power all the electronics. The one thing we don&#x27;t have in our RV is a regular TV screen, which means we don&#x27;t have anything to point any of our furniture at. Have been contemplating a composting toilet, which would reduce our black water tank to pretty much just grey water storage.<p>I put in two sit-to-stand electric desks, with Humanscale monitor arms, and a Humanscale laptop arm. Both desks have dual 4K curved displays and wireless accessories. Amazon has some nice mesh workstation chairs that fold down and slide right under the desks when not in use. Custom 19&quot; rack mount cabinet. Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro SE with a couple of WiFi APs and a G3 doorbell camera. APC LiIon UPS. ~24TB (30TB physical, 22.something TB actual) flash-only Synology media server (music, movies &amp; TV shows) that automatically syncs to the Synology in the condo whenever the RV connects to specific WiFi networks. We have a WiFi booster antenna that will form a bridge for us to distant networks - use a LinkSys with OpenWRT and some custom scripts to make that happen. And we have a cellular booster for our T-Mobile phones &amp; hotspot with about 100GB of data per month.<p>Couple of e-bikes in the storage bay, my wife&#x27;s reflector telescope, and a tool chest of accessories and tools for RV maintenance and those &quot;aw, shit&quot; moments of life, e.g. air filters, emergency fluids, power washer, cordless drill, full set of wrenches. We travel reasonably light (for an RV); no camping gear, no deck chairs, very few clothing items, not a lot of extra stuff that many RV&#x27;ers haul around with them.<p>I will agree with the article, you don&#x27;t need anywhere near the amount of stuff you think you need. I only have AAA and Good Sam for the recovery&#x2F;break down options, and some extra insurance in case of a complete failure. Obviously remote work has made using the RV a lot more possible than it did pre-COVID, though the number of RV&#x27;ers has skyrocketed since before the pandemic.