trial period

So! Before we fully committed to van life, we decided to do a two-week trip just to see how everything works. We took the Stratoship down to Great Smoky Mountains National Park so Doug could do fieldwork for an ongoing research project about breeding bird populations and hemlock death caused by the hemlock woody adelgid. And then we slowly made our way back up the East Coast!

Along the way, we compiled a big-ass to-do list and when we got back to Jersey, we methodically whittled it down.

Iterations of our to-do list.

Brooke says: Was the two-week trial period part of your original plan, or did it just kinda work out that way?

Doug says: Yeah, it was. Definitely wanted to get on the road and test things out a little bit, cause figuring out what you need is something that you can only really gain a sense for by living out of the van.

Brooke says: How do you think it went?

Doug says: Excellent. We’ve only been back for 12 days now, and we’ve gotten everything we wanted to do done. We’ve had a lot of good breakthroughs and adjustments.

Brooke says: Yeah dude, we got it done!

Here are some of the things we fixed:

Hanging up fine artwork.

Installing a set of keyhooks.

We didn’t need a door for the battery box, so Doug just walled it off.

Reinforced these shelves and slid our reusable grocery bags into this little space under the sink.

Added a recycling bin and restraints for the pantry.

A sophisticated restraint system for our art supplies. (Between us, we have 9 notebooks. It’s a problem.)

The garbage can was in the way of the sink foot pump and the laundry hamper stool, so Doug built it a little shelf.

More artwork!

We tried to secure our vanity with a magnet but it wasn’t strong enough, so Doug rigged up this clasp and it did the trick.

This sick box. It’s a frankenstein mishmash of parts from an old electric guitar tone capacitor testing platform that Doug made in 2015 and an ‘80s-era sound mixer. We’re using it for random papers now. Also, check out the bird-shaped truss rod cover that Doug also made!

These drawers kept sliding out and hidden restraints would have been a pain in the ass to install, so Doug put in this pretty chunk of mahogany on a screw. The wood between the desk and the wall is a detachable desk that also fills a gap that we were going to wall off with trim.

Lips on all these shelves to keep our stuff from sliding out when we’re driving.

Trim, like this lovely fretboard that’s covering up some Reflectix tape.

Installing grommets and hooks to restrain our shoe holder.

Installing hooks to hang our panniers.

Installing a dowel where we can hang wet clothes and Doug’s guitar. Also, the headlamp serves as a light for the garage!

Finally figuring out the ideal way to organize our garage area. This is all the gear we need for yoga, rock climbing, backpacking, and bike touring, with room to spare!

Custom bug netting for the back and sliding doors.

Huge victories:

• We are two people who live in a cargo van with everything we need and we have room to spare.

• Simple solutions, like the drawer and vanity restraints.

• Finding ways to make items pull double duty, like hanging the headlamp so it can also serve as the garage light, or using our panniers and backpacks as storage.

• Functional storage — I’m thinking in particular of the detachable desk that fits unobtrusively in the kitchenette area while also protecting against messy spills.

• Dude, there’s barely any rattling!

Things we just had to accept:

• Inevitably, things will fall off shelves when you drive. When it’s ramen or a t-shirt, you laugh and keep driving. When it is a bottle of olive oil, you pull over and clean it up. Such is van life.

• There’s always gonna be one more project you might want to do.

Doug says: We originally wanted to get outta here two months ago. We wouldn’t have had the vanity, the countertop, the bug netting, the garage shelves, the pillars. That’s what those two weeks were for. Not everything that coulda gone wrong went wrong, but like you said, I’m really confident about getting on the road now.