Laundry is one of those never ending chores (no matter how much you do there is always more!) and I get a lot of questions about how we get the job done while living on the road full time. It was something I had definitely taken into consideration before we took the leap to live full time in our travel trailer since I had no experience doing laundry anywhere but in my house. The information, however, was limited. I couldn’t find anything about the cost of doing laundry at a laundromat or a campground. So after having done laundry for a family of five while full time living in our travel trailer I thought I would share my experience for others who might also be considering this lifestyle.
Life On The Road
5 Things That Change when you Travel Full Time
Traveling across the country a couple of times gives you perspective. America is made up of individual states and each state has it’s own style and idiosyncrasies. Although there are tons of similarities and people are basically the same whether you are in Washington of Florida, there are lots of differences. As we travel around this big country we have noticed these five things are drastically and can be hard for a full time traveler to deal with. If you are thinking of full timing and want to know what you might encounter, then this blog might help you. Just remember there are tons of things that stay the same (we will go over some of those on another blog post).
5 Modifications Of Our Trailer
Almost every full timer makes some modifications to their living space. We talked with another couple that had the same model trailer as us and they had a few mods to show us. I decided to show our mods to him and we both walked away with plans to make future modifications. It got me to thinking that our mods might help someone else planning on full timing or satisfy someones curiosity about life on the road. After you read this please feel free to comment suggestions for additional mods that would help us or questions if you want technical information on how to do the mod yourself.
Car Troubles in New Mexico
Cars, like homes, always need maintenance and it can be tricky finding good auto shops while traveling. The plan was to replace the tires when we were in Texas, but we wore them out faster than anticipated. While driving in ABQ, as the locals call Albuquerque, we started having a bumpy ride and were worried … Read more
Ants, Power issues, and Sewer Mayhem
Life on the road is very similar to life at home in many respects. Stuff happens and it has to be dealt with. The big difference is being somewhere unfamiliar makes finding a store a little tricky sometimes. You never know what problems will spring up and it isn’t the problems in your life that define you; rather it is your reaction to the problems and how you handle them.
Fun Times At Night
I think sometimes people wonder what we do for entertainment since we don’t watch television. We do watch some television shows and have several DVD sets that we put on and watch every few nights. Both Sarah and I are big movie buffs and have watched many a movie over the years, though now we only have a few movies with us. I don’t mind watching t.v. shows on DVD though since there are no commercials.
Being a gamer made me think the game situation was critical to our plans to go on an adventure. We brought along board games that replay over and over well. Plus I brought along some of my card games, which we play pretty often. I went ahead and brought two of the board games that we developed (Zoning and Ancient Tactics) and I still get a kick out of playing them even though we have played them hundreds of times. The kids have brought along several kids games too and we occasionally have a family game night. I think it is good for math and social skills for kids to play board games. If I couldn’t have brought some games along I don’t think I would have set out on this adventure.
Towing A Large Trailer
When I first started towing our trailer, I was petrified. Here was our home and I am responsible for making sure it isn’t destroyed in transit. I also have to make sure that everyone in the family is safe while we travel across the country. I don’t regret getting a large trailer though, since we are living out of it. I have had the chance to park in a pull through, do a blind back up, backed up into a space only a foot larger than our trailer, taken it on a mountain path on the edge of a cliff, and of course had to navigate tons of road construction sites. There are somethings I learned along the way that I thought I should pass on to anyone else who wants to tow a travel trailer.
First disaster
Up until this point in our adventure we have been pretty lucky and had very little go wrong. A few missed turns and an ear ache have been the only real negative things to happen. When we went to break camp in Pleasant Lake Michigan we had a serious disaster happen. Everything was going very … Read more
