She Lives in the Most BEAUTIFUL Short Bus

Hey guys come on my name is Alyssa this is my Monarch bus and I live full time on the road with my dog ​​Rio it's a

short

five window school bus so I have a light bar for safety because sometimes I want power I leave camp very late at night or arrive at camp late at night and want to make sure I can see properly. I have 1300 watts of solar on my roof so I can go off the grid and stay out in the middle of nowhere for about two weeks straight it's exceptionally easy to drive, everyone gets a little scared knowing it's a bus but It's actually just a big truck.

First impressions are very important and I chose a commercial grade exterior door because I think it changes expectations of what's inside, people treat it more like a home and it is much safer. This is where I drive. I have five exterior cameras, so it's very easy to move around and drive back if I parallel park it. It is generally a dead zone. a bus and I hate that, so this whole cabinet is where I can put my million pairs of shoes, don't judge how messy it is and it just closes, you don't know it's there and then upstairs I have a record player. which yes, I actually use.

I have a little guest book where my friends can put their stickers so I can remember people on the road. It is a very sweet memory of the community. I love this cabinet, so I covered it with cork so I could secure it. little souvenirs and postcards of the places I go and it's absolutely huge here, so I have my bookcase, extra jackets, I have a whole area for Rio, my dog, and then I also have my projection screen, so I can have a little Cinema night. It's stuck, I have to break it, so here we go and you don't even know it's there.

This here is more of a tech closet, so I have my Wii Boost. I only have things to charge my microphone and things because I have a YouTube Channel, so this is just Tech Zone and all the cables are stored because that was very important to me. I don't want a million chords everywhere except Starlink. I mean, it takes priority, so I'm sorry. Link anyway, this is my main space. It was very important to me to be able to seat a good amount of people so this is just a normal sofa table setup but these storage boxes also slide out where I can sit here to seat more people and this can actually become an oh, sorry!

It's really a U-shaped dining room that can hold a lot more people and being here at Schooly Palooza I've already had so many friends here it's great, you can play, you can dine. I love the functionality of this space plus these are storage too so it serves a dual purpose. I just have camp chairs, blankets, everything I would need. This is a really big storage cabinet and I took the

most

important things with me, like my

most

important equipment, documents, any kind of arts and crafts, extra materials that I need. of my tools are also here, so it's easy to access them right away.

I love it. I also have my diesel heater here, it's just a two kilowatt diesel heater and that's enough for me because I have three inches of closed cell spray foam for insulation so the bus is really great at trapping heat and me love this. I put it straight into the tank of my bus so I don't have a separate diesel tank which is great. 55 gallons I never have to worry about it so on the other side I also have more social space where again you can use it as a bench, it's also storage currently I'm using it as an easy hamper just to do laundry again, the things you need in a house that takes up a lot of space so I don't really think about it as I lived on a bus before I knew all the awkward things I needed to hide and it has its own area so oh my god just a glow stick and some chips Fries, okay, so this just comes, just, uh.

It comes like this. I'm just starting to sew if you want to see that, so this is my guest bed and this is the first time I've set it up, so you think you need this stuff and here you are, a year later. It's my kitchen, I have overhead storage, a microwave, pantry, storage in here, I have my refrigerator and I also have a slide out slicer, I have a cutting board and then I have an oven, I have a three burner stove and I have a very deep kitchen. Sink Some people find it a little strange to have a microwave.

I love it because it's great for leftovers or before showing them the bathroom, which is my favorite part of the bus. The kitchen extends a bit here. It's usually full of food, but I'm at school Palooza right now, so I've been feeding people. This is just a really big pantry space and it also continues down here, so usually people only have one refrigerator unit. I actually have a separate freezer and refrigerator unit and I have plenty of solar power. to be able to do both and I did this because I make my own dog food for Rio so I can have batches of dog food that I can store in addition to any kind of microwave frozen snacks.

You know, now it's great for my favorite part of walking through my bathroom, this was actually my first tile job so I'm really proud of the aesthetic and how it turned out, but the functionality of this is nothing to brag about, but I had never seen such a functional bathroom on a

short

bus, so it's actually five feet deep. I have the shower head that rotates, it is extremely comfortable. I have the Nature's Head composting toilet that I hook up directly to my gray tanks. This has been great and the fact that I tour, people always ask me good questions.

Your toilet gets wet, does this whole area get wet and isn't it? So the rain shower works wonderfully and then people are always surprised by this, they think it's just a statement piece. This is actually my closet. I have an extreme amount of closet space. it goes all the way here it goes all the way to this accent piece and I really didn't have to compromise much in my wardrobe so I love that feature this stained glass window was a vintage find that I thought was incredibly

beautiful

so it was important to me to incorporate it into the construction and I thought it would be the perfect place to connect the bathroom to this side of the bus just to share a light, so I control all my solar with this, this is my water heater. changing the temperature of how hot I want my shower every time I get in it, this is controlling my diesel heater and then this is amazing.

I can see how much fresh water I have, how much gray water I have, so that there is no one to take a shower anymore uh I live very well here guys, okay, so it's great, so there's no guessing. I have complete control of my consumption which is a really empowering thing, very conscious of it, this is one of my favorite features on the bus, the mini split that I can. Use it to heat the place and I can use it for air conditioning. I usually use it for air conditioning since I have my diesel heater, which is more efficient in the winter because my panels are usually covered in snow, but it works great.

I can use it. It's completely off the grid, people even just a couple of years ago thought running an air conditioner on solar power was impossible. I do this all the time, so now we can talk about some of my favorite aspects of the bus, including this long open shelf there. There are many reasons why I did this, the first is that it actually creates a very strong line along the length of the bus, which gives it a larger visual feeling, which is important because it is a very small space and then also I can keep the things that contribute this. space that comes to life like real plants books that mean a lot to me different souvenirs from the road artwork dried flowers from some of my favorite places brings a lot of life and character to the space, which is extremely important because it's a small space and I spend a lot of time Here, one of my favorite design options is this cedar roof.

I finished it with all natural wax just to make it feel very organic and bring nature inside and I think the roof really ties the whole space to the road. It's been my home for over three years my only constants are the rubber on the pavement and a fire that won't go out inside my chest some people think that by leaving my old life behind to take the open road I'm avoiding responsibility or hard work and That couldn't be further from the truth. The funny thing about running away and leaving it all behind is the sure way to deal with it.

All the skeletons in your closet. The fears in your mind. The light in your eyes. The purpose in your heart. When all the material things are gone. They fade away and it's just you and the open road, you see life differently, it becomes crystal clear. The important thing is that the best analogy I can give is that of a flower, sunflowers thrive in certain soils and others, as their seeds fly with the wind. give yourself a Hail Mary to life and have some opportunity to make the life and experiences I come from flourish. He had no chance on that ground.

I was never going to blossom, I was never going to be able to present myself to the world the way I wanted to, so I took a drink of Hail Mary and threw myself into the really strange wind.