I have mentioned in the past that we have a “second home” - a very small RV. I have to first explain what I mean by small as when people hear “RV” they think of the huge bus size and shape RV (called a Class A) that they see on TV and in the movies or one of the ones which have a section (which has a bed in it) that sticks out over the driver and passenger seats (called a Class C). NO, ours is SMALL. It is called a Class B and is a conversion of a van. What I am talking about is the vans used by tradesmen. The Class Bs are made in a variety of these vans - in our case it is a Chevy Express 3500 van. Next time you are driving down the road and a Chevy van passes you (or you pass one) look at it for size. The entire inside is less than 120 sq ft. My sister in law has a closet bigger than that. (I don’t have a closet even close to that, but she has one bigger.) Life in this Rv is very close and there is little room for stuff.
Last week (in case you were wondering) we ended up just going to the dealer and having the work done - and not all of it, as part of it they suggested waiting for as it involved too much time. We had dinner afterwards at a restaurant we like in the general area and then drove home - good thing, as there were big storms over the weekend and we would not have been able to go where we planned - plus we would have been dealing with the RV.
Husband always feels bad that we have the RV (and are making payments on it) and are not constantly using it so he planned a trip for this week instead. We were to drive to Lancaster, PA on Wednesday, and then on Thursday drive to Delaware for the day to a museum since it is having an exhibition we were interested in and then back to Lancaster and spend Thursday and Friday there.
The trip was delayed to Thursday and it was not certain that we would go at all (and we are not going as this weekend not only will there be rain, but also hail), but yesterday (Tuesday) I decided to deal with making the bed up anyway. We will make a trip by the end of the month as we have reservations for July 4th, so I figured I would get it over with now whether we go on a trip this week or not.
It takes at least 45 minutes to make up the bed due to the small space. The bed makes up into a short king size bed - shorter by 3 inches on one side than the other in addition to being shorter than a king in general. There are 2 bench seats facing each other (like a restaurant booth) with the end (the back of the RV & the head of the bed when it is made up) filled in between. To make it into a bed one fills in the space between the seats with pieces of plywood and then slides the cushions of the seats to the middle and then lays the cushion seat backs between the seat cushions and the sidewalls of the RV to fill it all in. When this is done the bed goes from the wall on one side of the RV to the wall on the other. At the back of the RV (head of the bed) the bed is touching the headboard. At the foot of the bed there is the kitchen area counter touching the bed on one side of the aisle and the toilet closet touching it on the other (with a cabinet overhanging the foot of the bed on that side). This leaves just 2 and half feet of aisle at the center of the foot of the bed to make it up from. So, basically one has to be in the bed to make it up.
What I have found to do is to use (flat) twin bed bedding and make each side up separately. I first make up husband’s side. I do his first for 2 reasons - first, it it’s the better made up side (less wrinkly sheets, etc) and second, it is the longer side. To make up the second side I put the main mattress piece (seat cushion) from the other side on the already made up bed for part of the time and it would not work with my side first as his mattress piece is too long to go on my side.
Since the reason we are in this tiny home is the bed bugs we had, I don’t want to go on the bed in my street clothes, so I change into fresh jeans and tee shirt before making up the bed - when we travel this outfit will be my pjs. I won’t go through all the details (unless there are requests to do so) but I make up his bed as one would a regular bed. I then make up on my side the seat back (now lying against the wall on the bed platform) as if it was an entire bed with the excess of the bedding lying across the platform, then stack it all on the seat back, slide in the pieces of wood to hold up the center of the bed, slide my mattress piece (seat cushion) into place and then - while lying on husband’s previously made up side of the bed - pull the various layers of my side into place and tuck them in.
The bed is now one bed, but each side has its own bedding. Rather than entering the bed from the sides as one does with a normal bed, I have not tucked in the top sheets and blankets along the center where the 2 “beds” join together into a king bed. This allows us to get in and out of the bed in line with the aisle at the foot of the bed. If we got out of the bedding on the sides, we would have to crawl on the bed to the middle to get up, this way we just have to crawl to the foot of the bed to get up.
It was in at least the upper 70's today and hot in the RV. I opened a window, but did not want to turn on the battery to run the fan. I was glad when I was done. Since we were not using the RV for at least 2 days and probably longer, I covered the head of the bed with a plastic shower curtain. We have this to cover same when it is raining out so that when we open the back door of the RV - less than a foot from the head of the bed - the bed does not get wet.
Oh, I should mention that once the bed is made up there is only the aisle which is 2 and half feet wide by maybe 5 feet long to walk around.
Now when we are ready to travel we “only” have to fill the water tanks, add clothing, spare shoes, snacks and related items and we are ready.
Now think about this - if you have less than 120 square feet of space - what would you decide you need to have with you?
There are people who live in these full time and some have large dogs. They have to decide very carefully what they will own and have with them. Two weeks is about as long as we have we have been able to stay in it - sans dogs (as we have none).
Believe it or not when we first looked at this RV and then bought it we thought that there was a major lack of storage space and wondered how we would fit everything in. We are now at a point that when we make some of our short trips we have - TOO MUCH STORAGE SPACE - in it. Why too much? If a space is only partially filled the stuff in it will move around while driving and if the items are hard they will add to the noise that is already occurring. I have learned that depending on the trip we need stuff to be stored in different places than it is on other trips and that the spare plastic shopping bags are great at filling in the space around hard stuff to keep it in place and deaden any noise it might make shifting about - also good for garbage bags. In later posts I will talk more about what we originally brought, what we have found out we need, and the odd places items are stored.
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