How to start Van Life?
If your completely lost or just don’t even know where or how to start with van life you’ve come to the right blog. Hopefully we have all the answers for you. So let’s dive in.
These are some good resources and a ton of questions and many peoples thoughts.
Steps to start VanLife-
1- Test it out. The first and I think the most important thing I recommend you do before you dive into van life is TEST IT OUT! I can’t stress this enough. Yes it’s easy to see on social media the glamour of living in a van and traveling wherever you want but the reality of it is not shown often. You can now rent vans that have everything, or almost everything you need and want just to try it out and see if you're going to like it. It’s important to figure out am I okay with such a small space all the time. Am I okay with the inconvenience of having to move a lot and always find places to sleep and go to the bathroom and even do your laundry. There’s so much that goes into this lifestyle other than what you see online with being parked up by mountains or out in the Desert. The daily challenges are huge and it’s something that you should test out for a week or two at least before you commit.
2- Start Saving. This is a huge step. You’re going to need money to do this. Not only for buying your van but you’re going to need money for the build and to get you started once you hit the road if you’re not working remotely.
3- Buying your van. This is a huge step and now means your thoughts and dreams of van life is coming true. Now you have a huge commitment and it’s time to go for it.
4- Start your build. Now you need to decide are you going to do a DIY or hire someone to do it for you. This is a huge step and both are important because if you're doing your own build get ready for a ton of hard work and frustration. And if you're having someone build it for you get ready to spend up to 80k to 100k when the build is complete.
5- Start decluttering . Other than buying your van I think this is another very exciting part of starting van life because now you're purging everything you don’t need or are not taking with you in your van. This feeling of getting ride of a lot of random stuff that we all have is so freeing. Start selling or donating the things you don’t want to take with you. You're not going to need them on the road. You're going to have room for all the things. Only making new memories.
6- Get jobs and finances in line. Once your van is almost done I recommend start looking for remote work and figure out if you're going to do seasonal work instead of remote work. There are so many websites now that you can find both remote and seasonal jobs for travelers. Even if you're not going to work remotely or something have a savings or sell your house if you have one. That’s what Logan and I are doing. Even if you don’t sell think about renting or doing a VRBO or something similar to that for income.
7- Test our your finished van. I know I keep saying that this next step is important but they all are. Lol. This is where you put your van to the test. Once it’s finished or even better almost finished take a small trip in it. Try it out. See if you need to change or fix anything before you hit the road full time. Logan and I have taken many trips when our van was at the point where we could use it. This really helped us because we learned what we wanted to change and add so it would function better for us. Even if you go stay for a weekend somewhere close just try it. Doing this also set a fire in us to hit the road even more because we were so close to being ready. We found when we had been building our van for a year at this point we were very done with the build and just wanted to go traveling so taking a weekend or week to test things out was a boost for us to finish the final projects.
8- Time to purge again. Get ride of or sell the rest of your stuff. It’s not going to fit and you don’t need it at this point.
7 Relax and enjoy the ride. Your life is about to change for the better. This is where everything comes together and your ready to hit the road.
