One mission of this website is to document the details of RV life. Want to know what RV travel is REALLY like? We’ll lift the curtain for you.
Packing seems like an arcane topic for a blog entry. But when you think about it, this topic highlights one aspect in which RV-ing is truly different. With every other type of travel, you pack your bags. With an RV, you pack closets, pantries, and cubbyholes. Heck, you pack EVERY SQUARE INCH YOU CAN. But you leave the luggage at home.
If you are a lucky RV owner, your rig is parked in a climate-controlled garage (your “coach house”?) that’s adjacent to your home. Packing is a cinch. You just tell your maid and butler exactly what needs to be transferred, “and don’t forget the Grey Poupon.”
Or maybe your RV is parked in your driveway. In this case, you have the luxury of casually packing over a period of days.
The rest of us aren’t so lucky. Many of us can’t park our RV next to our house, so we park our rigs in storage facilities. Sometimes these may be located a lengthy drive from home. So packing becomes a process that requires multiple trips back-and-forth between RV and house.
Over the past year, we’ve established a packing system that seems to work for us. Kristy discusses it in the video. Since we can’t park our Airstream next to our home, packing for an extended journey usually takes a couple of visits. When you’re going on the road for weeks, you don’t want to leave anything important behind.
On board the RV, we each have our designated storage spaces. A premium is placed upon the good ones. Although Airstreams are brilliant in terms of providing plenty of storage options, some of these choices are not terribly convenient. For example, try retrieving your laptop computer from beneath the bed while your spouse is still sleeping on it. She won’t be happy. Trust me!
On the other hand, one of the true blessings of RV life is the small space.
In our actual house, I spend the majority of my time wandering from room to room in search of whatever item was in my hands a mere ten minutes earlier.
But in an RV, whatever item you’re seeking is always close by. At any given moment, you are no more than a couple of steps away from the living room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. This means far less time wasted traipsing around a house in search of car keys, the TV remote, an adult beverage, or whatever else you’re seeking.
Kristy and I sometimes joke about the close quarters. “You know you’re in an RV,” we say, “when you can grab a beer from the fridge without leaving the couch.” While this is an exaggeration, it’s almost true! And believe it or not, it’s a great upside to the lifestyle.