I don’t even know how to begin this post. I’m already at a loss for words. I actually wanted to wait before I wrote about this past year’s experience, until I knew we actually survived it. There were doubts. But, here I am, jotting down the memories of the six of us living in our camper trailer; four kids, an occasional cat, and our 12 year old chocolate lab; for 13 months.
Last year, sometime during our adventure as full time campers, I saw an article circulating with so many shares and reads, about a family of five who had (gulp) lived in a camper for 6 months. Apparently they did this to prove they could survive without a huge house and the luxuries that come with it. I just remember being shocked at the attention this ‘news’ was getting. Families live in camper trailers and campgrounds more often than apparently our media realizes. I also realize this and feel it is no larger-than-life feat that our family was also doing this. For us, it was partly exciting because we were looking forward to and planning a new chapter. We were not stuck. I understand the difference and wish others and our news agencies would too. But with that being said, here’s our full-time camping story of survival…
We sold our home and moved out on Halloween weekend 2015.
We hadn’t begun looking for a new home or even planning our next step for a house because it had taken so long forever to sell our house. 13 months actually. We had a few contracts fall through, so at my request, Daddo and I stopped trying to look for a new house or even talk about our options.
We moved all of our belongings into a couple of rented storage units and took only our necessities with us to the camper.
How big is this camper? Well it isn’t small in the ‘travel camper category.’ We bought it five years earlier for our large family to use for trips. It has two slide outs, one in the kitchen and one in the bunk room. The back has three bunk beds, a small closet, three small drawers and we put a little chest of drawers against the back wall. Each boy had a drawer under the bed and each of the four kids had one drawer in the chest of drawers. The five year old and 9 year old (Rhett and Cole) each had a little shelf under the bunk bed ladder compartment for toys. So one or two little storage bins for toys. The oldest kid Will, he turned 11 the weekend we moved into the camper, didn’t really have a space for his things, other than the spot between the wall and the chest of drawers. The 3 year old girl had one storage bin for toys in the small closet under the bunk. Cora’s toys were still pretty small and we stored her large kitchen playset at her grandmother’s.
Clothes. Rhett’s hang-up clothes went in the closet under the bunk. The two big boys’ clothes went in the medium size closet in the hallway where we also had the towels and sheets and blankets. Cora’s clothes went in the roughly 24 inch-wide closet on my side of our master bed. My fold up clothes went in two bins in a cabinet above our bed. Daddo had the same and then some clothes (like 3-4 items) on his side of the bed closet. Our overflow closet clothes were in closets at my inlaws. Every Sunday night, I walked over and got my clothes for the workweek and hung them on a hook at the foot of our bed. All of my other clothes (I have too many) I kept stored in our storage unit. That’s also where the majority of our kids’ toys stayed. When we packed our house, we told them to pick their favorite toys and fill a bin with them. That was all they could take. Once or twice during the year of living in the camper, they asked for toys they hadn’t seen and missed and we went and got them out of storage. But they had to choose something from the camper to replace it with in storage. We quickly realized it’s not so much the amount of toys our kids need, but just the few they actually play with.
In a nutshell, that’s how we all fit in our, well, little nutshell. The middle son slept in one top bunk. The oldest in the other. And for over a year, our two tallest 3 and 5 year olds shared the bottom twin size bunk, heads on each end. They grew so much that year. During the night, we would hear one of them say, “Get your foot out of my face!” Sweet, sweet memories.
Our precious fifth child, (actually our first) a 12 year old chocolate lab, wasn’t able to make it up those steep camper fold-down steps. So within the first month living, Daddo built wide and deep wooden steps connected to the entry way just so she could easily go in and out. But still during those last few months there, her old hips and back legs were too tired to make even that climb and we had to pick up her 78 lb frame and put her inside. Her bed fit under our kitchen table and her favorite place to sleep was on the floor surrounded by the kids’ bunks.
For that year I did without several of those extra things I really don’t need every day. My jewelry for the most part I stored. Most of of my ‘dress-up’ clothes were packed away. I had room to store most of my shoes in the drawer under the couch but the rest of them I went a year without seeing. My home decor, stored. Kitchen cookware, mostly stored. Bathroom luxuries, stored. Most of my holiday decorations I didn’t get out. When my kids asked where our Halloween stuff was I went and got a few things. For Christmas we got a small maybe 2 foot tall prelit tree and mounted it in the corner of the kitchen with fishing string. We hung the stockings in our kitchen off the window ledge. We actually celebrated all the major holidays while living in our camper and kept most of the traditions. Santa came and stuffed the stockings, but he left mostly outside toys for gifts.
The Easter bunny visited us while there, the tooth fairy came by several times in a year including the first for the five year old. Our oldest son celebrated the most birthdays in the camper since he had one the Monday after moving into it, and another one about a month and a half before moving out.
All of our kids’ extra things like their sports equipment and school supplies we had storage for either in the camper, or big bins under the camper. We cooked out a lot outside in the outdoor kitchen of our camper when the weather was nice. We sat around the campfire more than the average family during that year.
Even though we stored the majority of our kids’ items in order to have more space in the camper, they acquired lots more during the time we were there. It was an eye opener to see just how much they accumulate in one year!
For the first few months and the Springtime of that year, living in the camper was kind of enjoyable for all of us. Spring break of 2016 was a record time for rainfall though. And our crew was stuck inside and not even able to drive the two main roads because of flooding.
The kids had friends over (and they all thought it was so cool to get to go ‘camping’ all the time).
It didn’t become a burden or annoyance until probably this past summer. The heat was horrible and the kids had no place to go. I was home from work, the kids home from school and we were stuck. Sadly, the board games, puzzles, and crafts I pictured us doing together at the camper kitchen table, never really happened. Airsoft became the most popular pastime for the boys mainly because they had acres of space for their ‘wars’ including a creek and woods. They’d do that and forget it was 98 degrees. I’d try to have the family’s giant blowup water bounce house ready for them by the time I expected the airsoft battle to be over. But by the heat of the afternoon, my kids were inside watching tv or playing video games. Like most kids in the Texas summer heat.
So enough of the boring how-we-did-it essay, here’s a list of just how different life was for our family of six living full time in a camper. (G-rated version) in no specific order, because it’s all humorously important:
1. Every 2-3 days the black line (toilet) should be opened and emptied. We learned this early on when our sink to the outside kitchen caught the overflow.
2. When said black line is left open, the stench is so bad from the underground septic, that your eyes water from the burning smell.
3. One cannot boil chicken for the allotted 2 hours for dumplings, or things begin falling off the walls from the moisture in the air. Actually, no casseroles or boiling happened for the duration of the stay because of the humidity and the tiny oven. Crock pot/ grill everything.
4. Daddo and I got out of bed and walked sideways for over a year. And got dressed while standing sideways.
5. Kids shouldn’t touch momma’s hot iron dangling off the side of the bathroom sink in the mornings.
6. There is just enough hot water stored in the camper’s water heater for three showers. Then wait an hour for the next three.
7. Momma’s shower had enough hot water to either wash my hair or shave my legs. So dirty hair meant smooth legs, clean hair, well you get it.
8. Sometimes we tripped breakers (463748 times). You could not run the microwave while the AC was on. Or dry your hair while the coffee pot was brewing. Etc.
9. April-June Texas thunderstorms… We laid in bed feeling the camper sway back and forth from the high winds. More times than I can count, we gathered up our kids and ran across the pasture to my inlaws.
10. Couldn’t put your hand next to the door for too long or the wind off the south end field would blow it shut right on your fingers. Ask Cora and Rhett.
11. The tooth fairy expedition became close to impossible and was quickly maneuvered to the kitchen counter with a ziplock bag and dollar bill.
12. The 11 year old had zero privacy. Neither did his parents.
13. Our family’s laundry bag filled up every day. Every single day.
14. My old rule of ‘no snacks out of the kitchen’ was thrown out the window.
15. I only need five tshirts and four pairs of shorts for an entire summer.
16. It took 15 minutes to clean the entire camper from top to bottom. 4 minutes for just the bathroom. And I used Clorox wipes to ‘mop’ the kitchen floor.
17. Only one kid fell off the top bunk. He stayed asleep so we left him there.
18. I can complete 9 graduate courses while sitting at the kitchen table on my laptop after putting the kids to bed, closing their sliding door, and turning on the bathroom fan.
19. My four year old daughter can live a year with only 4-5 toys and not miss anything. Same for the other two younger kids. The oldest can survive with only airsoft guns and sports equipment for a year. I will always remind them of this.
20. After long trips away, it still felt good to pull into the drive and see our little ‘home.’ No matter the size.
Since moving out of the camper and into our home that has plenty of space for us, I’ve noticed how the year in the camper changed our family. My kids have their own bedrooms (two boys share), two different playrooms and a gameroom, yet I find them all together in the family’s great room. They never play alone or watch tv alone. My daughter who before now had never slept without her older brother Rhett, refuses to be alone in her room. She never plays in there and most nights she makes her own sleeping pallet on the floor next to my bed. Our first night in the house, she was scared and upset about getting in her bed. Rhett was worried about her and went to her room and hugged her and told her he would sleep with her. I told him she would be ok and they both needed to get used to it.
Also, now my kids think they can take food all over the house, like in the camper. This habit has been the hardest to break. Our old faithful dog Sunni doesn’t really like our house. But she loves the carpet in our closet and chooses to nap there most days.
This entire phase in our life actually took over two years. We put our house on the market when my oldest was 9 years old. He moved into his new home when he was 12. That’s just crazy to me. But it flew by so fast now that we look back on it. Daddo and I randomly blurt out sometimes, ‘Can you believe we just lived in a camper for over a year?’ It didn’t feel like that long. Spring break actually felt longer than the whole year (remember that rain?). It just goes to show that we can weather anything as long as we’re together. A home is just a place a family lives. No matter the size of the home… or the family.
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