adjusting to life in a trailer
In some ways, living in a house on wheels isn't wildly different than living in a traditional home. It's four walls and a door, after all. Sure, it's small, but plenty of people live in tiny studio apartments.
But there are a handful of things that we take for granted when living in a sticks-and-bricks house that you suddenly have to be conscious of in an RV.
1. Water.
Humans use so much water, a fact that becomes incredibly apparent when you're living in an RV.
This wasn't something I internalized until I started filling up our water tank and dumping the grey (which is another significant adjustment, but straightforward). Our trailer holds 100 gallons of fresh water and 50 for the grey tank (sink and shower runoff), and we go through that very fast if we're not careful. Part of it is because we also have a washing machine and that, even though it's a front-loading machine, uses a ton of water. Every day I do laundry I empty the gray at least once, and we take "navy showers" to cut down on water usage. 100 gallons is a lot of water. I'm kind of appalled. When you live in a normal home you don't have to consider it, unless your water bill is extraordinary and you take measures to cut back. But the lazy habits like leaving the sink on while washing dishes, taking long showers, and generally not visualizing how much water is being used have been kicked out of me. It feels dirty to take a non-navy shower. Even when we're hooked up directly to city water, so we don't have to consider our tank holdings, I won't let the shower run indefinitely.
2. Electricity.
Gone are the days we could run every appliance without any consideration. Parked in a campsite that only has 30 amp hookups? Guess we're only running one AC if it's hot out. And make sure to not use the washer or dryer while it's going, too. Boondocking? Gotta keep an eye on your generator's performance (ours currently doesn't work properly, FWIW). If those fail? Hope your batteries hold a good charge (ours are also on their last legs).
Solar is probably the way to go, but it can be expensive to install for what you need. Since we're not sure how long we'll be on the road, or with this specific trailer, we're on the fence as to whether we should commit, and solar can't keep up with our PC usage anyways.
This lifestyle would be 100000000% easier if we didn't use PCs for work and play, probably.
there was a cute, on-theme trailer at Meow Wolf in NM. this has nothing to do with this post but I needed an image to break up the text ok
3. Social Life.
Oh my god. If you've talked to me in person in the past six months, I've probably made you mildly uncomfortable when you ask, "how is trailer life?" and I respond, "really lonely" instead of "oh my gosh, it's so freeing! I'm living my best life!" I'm kind of a homebody as it is, and since we've been spending a lot of our time (up until about two months ago) in isolated or snowy areas without a lot of people, it's been a social struggle for me. Some people are good at talking to neighbors and meeting new people, so the changing locations/lack of "home" doesn't affect them as much. That's not me. People like that are the opposite of me.
As of right now, I'm feeling pretty sated re: social things. I've been stretching my time with friends and family when we're in California, and making the effort to go out and DO SOMETHING every day keeps the sadness at bay.
Chris doesn't suffer from this the way I do, partly because he plays a lot of PUBG with friends. I play PUBG, too, but not that much.
4. Driving.
Driving with the trailer is probably what you'd expect - slow, heavy, and wide turns - but I'm talking about driving the actual tow vehicle around town. Sans the trailer. The truck we drive is frickin' huge and I hate using it for day-to-day things. It's hard to park in normal park spots, it's 9001 feet tall (I have to "climb" into it), and is difficult to navigate in older cities - Santa Fe in particular was a little harrowing. Sometimes I wonder if it would've been better to have a motorhome and tow a car behind it, but I don't like the idea of my home being in the shop more often than it has to be.
The solutions to this are easy - you just park further away, or take public transportation while in cities. I just groan whenever we have to go into town.
While some of these transitions have been a challenge at times, we've developed a greater awareness of how we use and consume resources and feel way more comfortable being able to make do without essentials (to a point). Out tolerance for less-than-ideal situations has only grown since we started on this journey, and we look forward to seeing where that will take us in the future.