The ART of SLEEPING in YOUR VEHICLE | The PERFECT BEDROOM for Overlanding & Stealth Camping DIY

Not long ago I was talking to a group of friends explaining how I slept inside my Jeep, several of them said: I don't know how you could sleep there or what the hell it would make you want to do, are you crazy who sleeps? inside their car they laughed and then one of my closest friends chimed in saying, you know, when I was a kid, there were times when my mom and I had to live out of our car, not by choice but by necessity, we were people homeless in the room. He immediately fell silent as his sympathy, concern, and wonder seemed to stop time as he recounted this part of his upbringing.

Yes, all we had for a while was a Club Wagon on the streets of Santa Cruz. You could hear a pin drop as we listened, but he. continued continued when you're a kid you don't realize you're homeless you just remember the times you woke up and

your

front yard was a park or a beach those were good times he said some of the happiest memories Then he turned to me and said, I get it, even though you have the comfort of home and can easily afford to stay in a nice hotel, you sleep in

your

jeep and can wake up with a granite cliff for your front porch. a symphony of birds like your alarm clock the smell of pine trees carried on the breeze then he said something I'll never forget don't confuse comfort with happiness okay so welcome back to the channel uh I really appreciate you being here you know let it go Go ahead and give that subscribe nudge at the beginning of the video here if you're not subscribed to the channel.

I would really appreciate all that YouTube analytics says and shows that about half of you are not subscribed and are watching some of my latest videos so go ahead and click the subscribe button it's easy for you and free , it helps me a lot regarding the channel. I'm trying to get to 10,000 subscribers by the end of 24 and I'm filming this on New. The day of the year 2024, so I have 365 days to get there, so what is this video going to be about my

bedroom

or my

sleeping

setup? I'm going to explain each component of how I sleep inside the Jeep and the different pieces. of equipment, equipment and others that help me do that.

I've been meaning to make this video for quite some time because I'm one of the few quote-unquote overlanders with a channel that doesn't have a rooftop tent and that being said. Sometimes they look at me a little like Oddball, but I want to show you why, if maybe you're starting over. I'm a newbie to Trail so I just started this overland journey here in the last two years. If you're just starting out, you can sleep inside your

vehicle

, whatever

vehicle

you have, you can find a way to have a good

sleeping

setup in there without having to go through the whole process of a roof top tent and everything. that.

There are also a lot of amenities that I'm going to mention and that is that all your gear is inside your sleeping area so you can access things wherever they are, instead of a rooftop tent where you might go. Oh, I forgot something in the vehicle I have to go down the stairs I have to get it and it might be raining, it might be snowing, you might just not want to get out of bed, huh, but when you sleep inside your vehicle, everything is in there , so I'm going to explain this to you now and I just want to thank you for joining me. uh let's do this right, so my bed configuration starts here on the rear passenger door.

You can see my pillow right there. The bed is ready. at all times and I'll explain to you how it's set up and the various pieces of equipment that allow me to set it up that way, just so you can potentially consider this for yourself, but it's one of the key things. Sleeping inside the Jeep means that you are late to the camp. There is nothing to configure effectively. I could just jump into the driver's seat and stay back. Go to bed Go to sleep. It's possible that a major rain event, something like that, hits you and you don't do it.

I don't want to have to go out and set up anything, set up a tent, set up anything with this setup, sleep inside your vehicle, you can just show up, get into bed, go to sleep, a lot of times we get to the campgrounds, uh, late at night and The last thing you want to do is a lot of setup, the best way I can describe it, so I'm going to walk you through this and give you a close look at my sleep setup, which I've never done before and all that. . the things that make it for me the best choice for my land setup here so let me take you inside so one of the first things about having a good sleeping setup is the window curtains and these window curtains that use. they're from WeatherTech with one hand here and they just appear like this, that way you can have a blackout and obviously some privacy, here in your sleeping place or in your

bedroom

, now let's move on to the sleeping bag, nothing too exciting here I think .

This is just a Coleman, I don't know, 20° 0°, something like that. I'd have to look into it. In my opinion, the key to a good setup is having a full size pillow, so I have a king size. pillow here that is quite comfortable now for the sleeping setup in the Jeep. I need to put the front passenger seat all the way forward and that's because I'm 6'4 four and need every inch of space I can get. Here my head basically goes to the edge of the seat, my feet go all the way to the tailgate, so the amount of space here, I would say, is 6'4, maybe 6'5, uh, because I only have an inch of space at each end.

Now the key is a good mattress. Everyone is looking for a good mattress and in my case I use the Deep Sleep. Let's pull this placemat back. The Deep Sleep place mat is cut

perfect

ly to fit here inside the Jeep and I found that you don't necessarily need to fill it completely to make it really firm or anything, it has foam in it and it's extremely comfortable, right? let's put this back together here now, the next thing about having a good sleeping setup is being able to have all your gear up and away from your body, obviously you don't want to have, you know, gear on top of you that you want. to have a completely clear sleeping area, so I'm going to show you some of the keys to that, starting with my Vector Highland rack.

This rack is probably the key to this sleeping setup and the Vector rack holds a ton of gear. It can hold a ton of weight and obviously takes the Gear Up away from where my legs would be. I can also use this to store water. I have some Roto packs that are mounted underneath, but that's not all in terms. of equipment storage, you've seen many times on my channel, my front boxes, which I actually have a stack of, not just these two, but if you look down, there's a total of four front boxes here and, uh, take them out, I have legs for them so I can get all my gear out very easily around camp, but I can also store it completely inside the vehicle, very simple, well, a big key to my setup here are these size guards.

Amazing Life bags These are made by a great guy named David. You definitely have to visit his channel and his website to check them out for yourself. He makes them for the Jeep JL and also the Jeep JK and they are amazing. an absolute ton of gear, as you can see the zippers go down. I have tools on this one. I have my Kraken inflation tubes. I have, if I remember correctly, obviously, some for paper towels. I have mosquito repellent, etc., I have everything. My charging cables are in a little bag that I keep there and then on each side where the side fender is you also have this little detachable bag right here if you can see it, and here I like to keep a little tether battery to charge my phone by the night and so on.

I have filled these things with all kinds of gear and items that I need here inside the Jeep while I sleep or just for my general

camping

setup now that you purchase a side fender. bag, you don't just get one, let me take you around the Jeep here to the other side, move my thermal blanket, move my light Ranger divos and on this side I have a fender from another side made in the USA and on this one, I put a little Velcro on there, uh, I just labeled this as my recovery kit and if you open this up, there's all kinds of recovery gear.

I have a kinetic rope. I have a tree strap. I have some ratchets. I know there's more than that in there and then, like the other one below, here's this second bag that's filled with, I think, soft shackles, etc., so you get two of these and as much gear as you can get. Storing inside these side bags is crazy, right now, back in bed, one thing that I think is very important to have access to is your power system while you sleep, if you need to charge something, if you need to keep it. Take a look at what's going on with your battery, it's great to have it inside an Arms Reach while you sleep here, so in this case I have an Anchor Solx F1200 that used to be called the Anchor 757 and I.

I just got that kind of trickle charge from my Jeep while driving, so the battery on is always pretty much ready to go. It's the main power source for my refrigerator and my refrigerator is an iceco jp50 um, it has about 50 uh. L the um website says I think it's now 52.8 quartz to get a refrigerator this size and at the same time be able to sleep inside your Jeep. I made a whole video about this refrigerator compared to my previous refrigerator which was the dedicated one and this one is in my opinion and from what I found the smallest refrigerator in terms of side to side and front to back size is the one with the largest volume.

Here you get almost 50 liters and its size still allows me to easily sleep inside. my Jeep, this cooler is key to my setup here. If I didn't have such a small refrigerator, I wouldn't be able to sleep inside the Jeep. It's that simple, so having this uh ice Co JP 50 uh or a smaller format. Refrigerator, if you have one, is essential to be able to sleep inside your vehicle. One thing you need to consider is headroom, this looks pretty tight and I'm not going to lie, it's when you get dressed and stuff you have to do it from a lying down position, but I actually used to have the small one, I think it's gear Blue Ridge Overland or something like a Jeep attic that was like this mesh screen that you could put up. the upper part to be able to hold things and have more storage space.

On my first trip with her, I discovered that when I sat here on the bed, my head would hit and take away this precious space up here. Actually, Jeeps have a lot of headroom because of the way these fiberglass panels are, you know, way above the roll cage of the Jeep, so it's really cool to have headroom, obviously. , if you are in a rooftop tent. You're going to get a lot more space than this, you're going to get a lot more free space, but again, this is the setup that's

perfect

for me, let me talk about something that I think is the best. it's about sleeping inside your vehicle and that's not what these packages are Broken but let's put it that way the hard shell you're sleeping in we go out in snow storms high winds rain storms it's no fun if you're not facing some adversity right , not all The day is perfect and pristine like it is here while I'm filming.

That being said, the biggest complaint I hear from people who sleep in tents or rooftop tents is, "Oh, I had a horrible night's sleep because the wind was whipping around my tent." all night, in many cases, if you have a tent on the roof, you have to position your vehicle a certain way depending on where you think the wind is coming from so that maybe it will go up over your hard shell and not affect the soft. sides of your rooftop tent, so much so that you can sleep better at night. Little secret inside the Jeep, you don't hear any wind noise, sure if it's raining you'll get up on the roof a bit, but you know it's kind.

It's to be expected and it actually becomes a little bit like white noise, um, I don't care, uh, if it happens to be raining, so like I said, I think the number one reason for sleeping inside your Jeep is there and that. This is the hardtop on the hard side, uh, everything will keep you contained without having to listen to a bunch of flapping fabric. Now there's another thing to add to that and that's safety, so if you're in a tent on the ground, um. I don't care how brave you are or how tough you think you are.

I know you've had the thought what was that sound and you think there might be something walking around my tent, is it an animal? or maybe even worse is a person and you know, a little bit of the fear factor can kick in inside the vehicle, you don't have it, uh, I lock the doors when I go to sleep at night and I don't. I'm really too worried about someone getting to me or an animal getting to me to attack me or something, so having that tough side also gives you that extra level of security while you're sleeping, which I think contributes to a better night's sleep. .sleep when you're in an off road car

camping

overland uh whatever we want to call it here so no wind noise great sleeping safety also a great night's sleep so here's the part of the video that will get a little rare and that's me showing you how I get in the Jeep to sleep at night and you know I'm a tall guy and I'm going to tell you it's not necessarily pretty it doesn't look comfortable in terms of uh when you see someone in their tent campaign on the rooftop, he gracefully slides down his ladder, enters his tent, closes it and gets into your jeep and sleeps there.

It's a little different, you have to think about the way you are entering and once you are inside, you're practically inside, so the best way to get close is to actually walk towards the Jeep backwards, just like that. inside take a step forward now you're going to ask uh what's wrong with these muddy shoes of mine? I always have a grocery bag on hand, take off your shoes one or two, throw them on the roof if you know it's not going to rain or snow. I usually just put my shoes here on the roof for the night.

I'm not worried about someone coming and stealing my muddy shoes. Obviously you could also put them inside, forward and do that, and I would put them in the front seat so again everything is contained within the vehicle now from here it's a bit of uh I don't know a ballet if you want, you're going to have to do it right and being so tall. like me again this is going to look just a little uncomfortable so the feet need to go back and up and up and there you go I feel like I could take a nap like right now once you're in it's as simple as no that wasn't the end from the video um, it's as simple as closing the door, locking it if you want and that's it.

I know I have the door open on the other side, so obviously if I was really going to sleep at night, I would have closed it already, but I'm going to bring the camera here with me so you can see the room for my legs, my head and how I am situated here while I am inside the Jeep. It's probably good to show it to him when I wake up in the morning too. I keep my shoes on hand, always a good thing in my opinion, unless the weather doesn't allow you to have a pair of shoes that are just slip-ons. so you don't have to worry about trying to tie your shoes and all that kind of stuff while you're getting out of your vehicle in the morning, so I'm going to go back there with the camera. kind of a POV view of what it looks like when I'm inside the Jeep again, so maybe consider this sleeping setup for yourself, it's a great place to start, you don't have to spend money on a roof rack that doesn't No You have to spend money on a rooftop tent, all you need is to be able to fold down the seats, get a decent mattress and you'll be ready to sleep inside your vehicle, so I went ahead and placed the camera there. on a little tripod on top of my refrigerator, let me go ahead and come back in if I were to face forward, I actually think it would be impossible for someone as tall as me, but looking back, sorry, you'll have to do it. watch my back here for a second again, have the shopping bag handy for your shoes, in this case I'll just throw them on top, turn my legs around and hopefully you can still see me to some extent, put my feet down completely .

Ah, I don't know what it is about this deep sleeper, but it's super comfortable, you'll notice, probably with a hat on this little button that starts to touch the top of this chair here, but what I really do is as tall as I am to being able to, you know, get a good night's sleep, those are some things that I can let myself go ahead and close this out. I wanted to close this just to give you a full picture of a few things, one in To make sure you can completely fit in here if you're tall, you can sleep well, you can bend your legs up a little bit and as you can see there's plenty of room in the top of my head and I actually have to stretch my feet out a little bit to touch the tailgate so you can sleep without your feet or your head touching anything now if you want to fully stretch out and you're into this. case of a Jeep JL uh on the Deep Sleep single mat, what I do just to give myself a little more space is put my feet in the far corner and then push my head and my pillow up a little bit more. this armrest, so in this case my head, although yes, I can still turn like this and there is a little bit of space between the top of my head and the front passenger seat.

I like to sleep on my side a bit, which actually makes me oh. Yeah, plenty of room and there's actually nothing behind my head here, so this is my general sleeping posture. My refrigerator and all my gear storage on the side here. I still have, you know, shoulder room or elbow room, whatever you want. to call it and then let me show you my feet area just for a second so here are my legs and right now you can hear them. They're actually touching my Outback Adventures trailgator table. This really isn't that big. It's a problem if I stand a little different, it doesn't touch anymore, but believe me, it's close, but I wanted to show you the amount of space between my knees, so to speak, and where these Roto packs are now, an option.

Don't use Roto backpacks and you'll have a lot more room for your knees to move up or something, but for me it was more important to have water storage and I won't be able to measure. This I'm necessarily going to say I'm probably a good 10 inches above my knee before I get to the package Rota or something oh sorry I fell asleep there for a second it's very comfortable so here. It's kind of a view of my free space again. I can put my head here and I still have a I don't know if you can see it just a slight gap there, um, I'm not sure if the camera caught that, but what?

Again, what I usually do is I actually prefer to sleep a little bit on my side and there I am sleeping with my feet fully extended inside the Jeep. Here I regret the configuration and it really has nothing to do with it. with the equipment I have the refrigerator the blinds the mattress the sleeping bag nothing really has anything to do with the V icle and you're saying well, Jeeps aren't all the same size, right? effectively the same dimensions and everything inside uh answers kind of one thing I'll mention real quick if you have a 4xe this is going to be very difficult because the seats are actually higher so you're probably going to have to remove them.

If you have a 4x8 then there is a little PSA but my only regret about the vehicle is that I got a base model Rubicon in 2020 and I didn't get remote start now remote start what does that have to do with it? you're sleeping, I can promise you that one of the nicest things about waking up is the warmth and when I go camping in the winter and so on, even though I'm working on a diesel heater, the option right now is to wake up when it's really cold, right? I love it no so if I had remote start I could click click preset the heater on high so it pumps out heat as soon as the vehicle starts which would be awesome.

I wanted it so bad, so I really did it. On some really cold mornings, I crawled up here to the front seat or at least extended my leg down to depress the brake pedal while reaching up and pressing the start button. You need to be quite flexible, but I was. able to do it, believe me, it's not pretty, one, two, you have to get out of your sleeping bag and all that, which is not what you want to do anyway when it's really cold, so, um, that's something that You will regret it if you are going to do it.

Sleeping on the remote start of your vehicle is very important and also be absolutely aware of the remote start when you are doing your options right, so I could have prepared that I could have put my shoes on earlier, but I just wanted to show you. This is the time it takes to get out of the vehicle and be ready to go. I think if you had a rooftop tent it might even take longer because you have to go down the stairs, you still have to put your shoes on and everything. That kind of stuff, so that's going to end up in this video.

I know it's a little strange seeing me lying inside my Jeep while talking to you here, but I thought this was an important video to put up. Featured because the way I do Overland, the way I run Camp is different in many ways from a lot of other channels, uh, that have more platforms built and that's what I'm trying to show here, not just that I have, you know , the perfect. setup or something, that's not the case, but it's a very minimalist setup when it comes to having everything inside the vehicle and at the same time being able to sleep there.

I love it, I hope you like it if you start setting up your vehicle this way, but being able to show you my room or my sleeping setup is, you know, something I've wanted to do for a long time. I've just never taken the time to do it, so I hope you're still with me at this point in the video, like, comment, ask me if you have questions, and most importantly, subscribe, it helps the channel a lot, so , as I usually say, thanks for joining me, I really appreciate it.