Her Camper Van Has An Ingenious Murphy Bed Design - Trading Rent For Life On The Road

I think the first step, starting to get rid of your stuff, is a great way to push yourself toward a smaller

life

style, whatever that may be. I love planning. I love it if I'm planning a vacation. I buy tourist guides and read blogs. and I'll read the guide cover to cover and highlight, but then I'll stop. I do not make hotel reservations as I do not plan activities. I don't do tours. I like to arm myself with research and then go with Especially the flow van

life

, I did a lot of research, I really armed myself with all the knowledge I could get my hands on and then I just tried it and you figure it out as you go with that little bit of background knowledge.

Hi, my name is Lauren, this is Penny and this is our house, Pennybaker, so I've been living in DC for about seven years and I really wanted to own a home, so I was researching how much it would cost to buy a house in DC. and a bad house in a bad neighborhood starts at about half a million dollars, so I said, okay, you know, I'm going to work for a long time and I'm going to keep throwing money at

rent

, you know, literally throwing money out the window and then I discovered Suddenly it was new to me that people lived in bands and that it was not necessary to just have a small sedentary house or a sedentary house and as soon as I realized that, I knew that I needed to live in a van and it became , so I bought my first house, so I ended up going with a professional builder and I got really lucky and there was a Curbed article about a builder on the east coast that canceled the Ogier Vans big adventure vans and all that. is to build affordable trucks that are eco-friendly and they are authorized Dodge dealer installers so you can have the truck built and a new one in the same car payment, so that really completely changed what I was able to bring to the table.

I would never have had this here it wouldn't be my truck if I had to pay for it out of pocket so I traded my lease payment for a short car payment and it's still less than half of what I was paying for

rent

in DC. This

design

is quite personalized. I found out with air who owns the company, so what they do, the Murphy bed is their

design

and I really loved that when I went to meet him we sat down and had a conversation in one of his vans it was like, oh, This is great because it's the best of both worlds: having this sitting area, but you don't have to put away this giant package of linens and make your bed every day, so I loved it, so most of my clothes It's in these top two parts and I'm very organized.

I have total OCD and I've been traveling internationally for a long time so I love these packing cubes so I have everything color coded and labeled here and in these packing cubes and I really think a minimalist wardrobe is pretty easy. I mean, I have this dress in the van. I have a lot of impractical things that I like to show off. You know, this goes here. Works much better like these jeans. So here they are very organized in their tiny, I have like six pairs of jeans in this cube, then this one is kind of double duty, so this half is my bathroom and then this side is all Tupperware and then Oil here.

I brought a curling iron in the van, but I didn't use it the one time I used it when I was staying in a hotel with my mom, so it's there, but I can use it if I want the last one here. this is all my food storage it's a little hard to open we have two sets of really really strong magnets so this is my bathroom and this is the largest piece of a custom design working here there are a couple of bands that have a semi something similar and I really wanted one so this would serve as extra counter space so I don't cut corners but it's a butcher block and it's usually where I prep so I can turn here and order. from my kitchen, but what is this because this actually clips here on the wall and then it opens and I have a natural composting toilet and a lot of storage space in the bathroom, like my laundry soap.

Here, this little plastic tower with all my toiletries and it's great to have this extra space and have a bathroom in the van. I was pretty adamant about not needing to find a bathroom and several times today I'm really well hydrated so it's really great to have your own. and the nature side is definitely the way to go, they are expensive for a reason: it's because they are a really good product. I would shower mostly at Planet Fitness. I think that's where most of us shower and I try too. I go camping at a state park about once a month and try to get all the things done.

Use the shower. Refill my water. If they have electricity, I'll plug into the shore and charge everything. as if it were an infinite resource, but after the shower it is very nice to have it. In fact, I love it more for the dog if you have muddy paws from a trail, if she really grows up, it's like you can hose off the equipment, it ends up being like a It's more of an external hose than a shower for her to use, so this is my kitchen. I love cooking. I cook a lot and most of this design is from the builders.

I changed the sink and stove. They make the genetic all-inclusive smaller. one, then, this suburban stove. I hadn't thought much about the stove. I knew I wanted burners and I wanted there to be some space so you could have a cast iron skillet in here and then something else. a pretty standard option and I think truck people prefer this or the Dometic. I was going back and forth about having it in this direction or turning it in the other direction and I'm not really sure why it shows this direction, but it works fine, it seems natural to me.

I have a really beautiful line of sight. You know, everything is here and then I have extra space to cut, so I end up cooking like that mostly. This is the piece I used to cut and I'll keep the rest. from the butcher block and I really wanted to have a deep sink, so this one is made with body roux and they are only from you can order it on Amazon. The stainless steel comes with a little cutting board and this strainer basket which is nice and then the sink is very deep. I can actually put something in here and wash the dishes.

I hate dishes. I hated them in a house. I still hate them in a van and I wanted to try to make it a little more pleasant experience, to have the space that I really like. putting a pot there changes my life. I also wanted to have some kind of nice faucet. Luckily I was visiting my parents while they were remodeling their bathroom and I went with them to the bathroom accessory store and found this one on sale. so it's really cool, it comes out, which is good. In theory, I think I could wash my hair here.

I haven't tried it, but I'm pretty sure I could stick my head in there and use it as a shower faucet. I have a five gallon gray water container. tank under the sink and that's actually just a jug, just one of these types and I try to empty this quite often before it fills because you have to take it out at an angle since the hose comes down from the sink and if it's really full, It's a bit of a precarious situation and for those of you who know how good water smells so good, you don't want it on the floor, dish water is disgusting even if it doesn't have food particles in it, it's really like What Smells Worst in the van, so empty it's big all the time, is a really fun way to do it, so I have a genetic refrigerator-freezer combo.

It's a little messy right now, but I think you can fit a lot of things here. My biggest disadvantage with this is that since the freezer is basically kept cold by running the entire back panel, so if you push something in the refrigerator part against the back wall it will freeze, so basically the entire part later it gets very cold. so this is a drawer and this is also in a soft and sister clothes, extra tea towels and all my utensils, a very important wine opener, so I have this is an extra set of switches and as I said before, there are extra wires, so these would be switches.

For other things, I have a Bluetooth reading from Victor on Energy here, so this is great. I can access all my systems here, but I can also sync it with my phone so I can check what the level of my batteries is and how much it costs. power that I'm using at any given time on my phone, which is really nice, moving on to I have two different sets of switches and they're both on dimmers, so this one makes this light bar down here, which is really nice and then this set of rear LED lights and then the front one makes the front set and again the dimmers are so nice actually at night I don't close the curtains very often so having this completely dimmed makes it less bright here so this piece is one of the things that the Builder does as standard and at first I wasn't sure if I wanted this wall here, but I actually love it.

I have a lot of things against this wall. I brought an outdoor rug. I have jackets on. here the remote control for this fan and you don't really need this line of sight this is not how you drive a truck you don't look behind your shoulder but here are all my dishes and between these two so this is like pots and pans the omnia stove oven Sweden, which is excellent, I highly recommend it if you live in a small place and then all the dishes up here fire extinguisher for safety in the middle section normally this is a microwave from the Builder.

I don't need a microwave. I didn't really need it. He uses the microwave a lot anyway, the food that goes in the microwave is garbage, so you shouldn't eat it. I have a small mini toaster oven that has a huge surge when you turn it on so it trips the circuit breaker so I just use that. when I'm plugged in, that's very good, you like to prepare food when I stayed at camp. I'll make little egg cups or things that I can freeze later and then the last part here, this side storage is where the table goes into.

The table goes in the middle and the legs are there. The table I also put a lot of other things in here, so the coffee grinder and the afghans that kind of stuff. I have a 27 gallon fresh water tank that's over here, so this just comes out and it fills into the other one, on the outside of the truck, with a hose. I love these bench seats and they are very comfortable. You can seat many people. This piece here can also be lowered on its own so you can do more. bench in the back if you want to have a lot of people sitting here and then these bench type seats I thought the bench, the bench storage, I thought it was going to be very difficult to fit things in here and you can put an obscene amount of things in there. inside them, so I take them off and put them on with very strong Velcro and there's all kinds of things in here, yeah, so this for me.

I have many games. I have tons of cookbooks. I do many. embroidery, so there's embroidery stuff here, pretty much everything on these is like fun activities, camp chairs, that kind of thing, then the other side, this one in the back, is actually a pull-out drawer, which is really nice so it opens completely and then you can access it as well. from above and it has soft clothes, it's actually mostly dog ​​stuff, so this is dog food, an extra pair of boots when it's cold, dog food in the boots and it's also my liquor cabinet, such tiny things, tiny, tiny, tiny bottles, but mostly the dog things.

I have a fan here. I ship to Florida a lot and before I turned six, I'm definitely a Floridian, so the fan when I'm in Florida and it's 80 degrees, you know, it's a metal box at the end. of the day, regardless of how well insulated it is, so if it's 90 degrees outside, you know there's an extra fan, it's nice to sleep, so in this one I have other clothes that aren't on top of my hiking backpacks, Here I have an air compressor tip. tie the tire Jack's of all the car stuff this is a backpacking tent you can really get a lot of things my dog's onesie because you have to have a onesie for your dog when he's at the camp table so There are many, many good things there too.

This side is actually there's a little bit of storage and then it's where my batteries are so there's this tray here it's really nice this is where most of my shoes are a little bit of incense and then this tray goes up and the batteries are below. and then this is access to a lot of my electricity and the nice thing about having a building around it so I have all these extra cables that I can add things to later so that all the wiring goes through and there are more cables in the wall . then I have things connected.

I have Battleborn 100 amp hour lithium ion batteries. I really wanted a fairly robust system. I work full time so I need to have the ability to carry all my stuff and I just didn't want to. being in a scenario where I needed to go to camp and find a way to have low power or move more than necessary, so I have 300 watts ofsolar power and 400 amp hours in the battery bank and honestly I can be off the grid for a long time, usually around 9:00 a.m. m. I don't have the load at 100 percent, so I have to maximize the fans, one in the front and one in the back, and then there are diagonal windows. each side so when you lift this up and the windows open it sucks all the air up and around and it really keeps it pretty cool pretty cold so I love our foot bed this bed is completely made up there are sheets , duvets, blankets and pillows. and a dog bed here currently so now is when you're holding the weight of the bed so you have to take a second but it's pretty easy everything comes down in one piece push the mattress and then straighten the pillows , Yeah. and the bed is completely made and ready to sleep.

This is a really, really comfortable 6 inch memory foam. I had a really nice mattress at home, but I still think this one is up there. It's not that good, but it's really nice. work I try to put it in every day I end up working. I usually have this back here and a pillow here and that's my work corner. I lean there and put my coffee here, but I really try to put on real clothes and make the bed. I think that's very important to stay in that productive headspace. I have what I call bed days, like the weather is really rainy, the bed stays down all day and everything is on the bed and you know that's when you're watching a lot of Netflix or doing non-productive things, but I don't do them. very often, especially when the weather is nice outside.

I have two separate part-time remote positions and one that my family publishes in tourism magazines in South Florida called Musty Visitor Guides, magazine in Sarasota, Naples and Fort Myers. I've been the assistant editor at your company for 11 years and I also manage your social media and run an exchange program for the State Department, so when I get out of here, we'll drive to Minnesota to drop off the Van and my dog ​​Penny to fly it and then I'm flying to Ethiopia for three and a half weeks to run the exchange program that I run, so I love this awning and this is the Fiamma.

I think it costs 3500 or 350 something like that. and it's a hand crank, so I can show you that it's actually attached right now, so this piece hooks through the two folded sheets on the inside, but it's just a little hole hook, so it hooks the end and you twist it to turn it into a handle and then you just set it up either way so it's really really easy it's a bit of a one person job the legs store on top so you basically do it What you do is take it out halfway and then take out one leg and put it on. on the ground and adjust it and then you have to move it, so if you have a second person you can move it together, it will take you like five more seconds to do it, but this awning is amazing, you can leave it up in a light rain. obviously I want to let it dry before I roll it up again to provide so much shade which is obviously great for gatherings.

I have this whole activity space with another van right now, so we were able to get this out, it's not even completely outside. it comes out a little longer these things are huge and they are very tall, obviously right now this is on top of another Vans sliding door, but you can also tilt it down to make it shorter, it's very adjustable, the shower is nice, in You can actually sit down. Here, here, so you can stand here and take a hot and cold shower and then you can also take this out and adjust the amount of water that comes out.

It's not the fanciest shower head, but it works quite well. The base of the hoses is quite long, so it's easy to get the dog to be really realistic with himself about wants and needs and what those lines are and if they are, if you're a person who needs to shower every day. just because there are a lot of people who live in vans and they are small. houses have showers Does it sound like you should put a shower in your truck? That's one of those things that will keep you on track because you'll be comfortable.

They are the things that break. People are always these little things that they. You misjudge, you know, they thought, "Oh, I can, I can do this as a garbage lifestyle. I don't mind having a bathroom and then they realize, you know, in the middle of the night, when it's really cold and it happens and you can hear". coyotes that don't want to go out and pee in the wild like you have to be realistic with yourself to figure out what makes it easier to make that leap. Thank you so much for watching, you can follow our trip and our trips on instagram at flit float fly away and we also have a blog, we shouldn't say she doesn't blog but she has a lot of features and all my stuff online, the website is flit float flyaway don't worry, thank you