how to keep stuff from flying everywhere when your house is a vehicle

Drawers and cabinets, right?

See, I thought so too. But there are two issues: They’re heavy, and if you don’t maximize space, a van gets cramped pretty quickly. Can your chassis handle the weight of your construction materials? Will you have to contort yourself to get into that drawer? Are you gonna smack your head on that cabinet door if you leave it open?

Makes sense.

Totally! That being the case, we used a variety of different ways to keep our stuff in place:

Drawers

I know I just said drawers aren’t the solution but… they sometimes are! Also, check out this cool desk.

Doug says: It meant a lot to me to get to use this desk that my father gave to me when I was 7 and I’ve had all this time. And now it gets to be a part of the first home that I built.

We use drawers for silverware, plates/cups/bowls, pots and pans, and Tupperware. There’s also the obligatory junk drawer. Doug installed cabinet catches in the bottom three drawers to keep them from sliding open in transit, and that little chunk of mahogany keeps the top two drawers closed.

Cabinets

The vanity is secured with a clasp. It’s been pretty sturdy so far, but one particularly rough road made it fly open.

Doug trash-picked this door because it looked cool. This space has come in handy for miscellaneous everyday stuff that’s too bulky for the vanity or that might fall out of our shelves. (You only need to clean olive oil out from under a car seat once to never want to do it again.) We don’t have any special restraint system on the door; so far it just stays closed on its own.

Shelves

This eyelets-and-rope configuration has done a good job of keeping our food in place while also accessible (although occasionally a package of Ramen might make a daring escape). Bonus: It’s lightweight and looks nice.

Also, a note about the banana hammock (haha): We originally had it hanging from two hooks, but it was smashing against the wall and destroying all our fruit. Fortunately, we had an extra hook floating around. Doug anchored it from the bottom, and now our fruit is pristine.

Lips are another simple restraint solution. It took a little trial and error to figure out the best way to fold our clothes to keep them from sliding out, but now it works like a charm.

Velcro

I thought we would use more of this, but the glue tends to melt after enough time in a hot van. Also, like… who spends 15 months doing a beautiful woodworking project and then puts Velcro all over it? It works for our hand soap at least.

Bungee cords

We wanted our art supplies to be easily accessible so there’s no excuse not to use them. As soon as we park, that ugly bungee net comes off and we can work on one of the like six projects we have going on at any given time!

Eek, pardon our messy gear shelves! In the garage, the aesthetics don’t matter as much. We restrain our panniers, table, and tools with a combination of hooks and bungee cords. The ladder goes behind the fridge. All of our outdoor gear is (usually) carefully organized and restrained with two bungee cords. And of course, our auxiliary water tank is secured with an airplane seatbelt Doug stole when he was 14.

Hanging

We’re not wild about this, honestly. It keeps the guitar in place (and provides extra restraint for pantry items), but it’s enough of a pain in the ass to get the guitar down that it discourages us from using it. We’ll keep experimenting with this space and figure out the best way to use it.

Pockets

God this thing is so convenient (and the least ugly hanging shoe rack we could find on Amazon). We cut off these excess two rows, installed some grommets, and then screwed it right into the plastic in the back door. It’s the perfect storage solution for tools and other little stuff that we want to access easily.