If you're like me, you've probably become accustom to the modern kitchen with the modern dishwasher. When your family is done eating, you probably rinse your dishes off in the sink, load them into the dishwasher, add detergent, start the dishwasher and walk away. You go about your evening spending time with your family and friends while the dishwasher does the work. When we made the decision to go full-time, I never even thought about what that meant for dishes. We started looking at RVs and I didn't even notice the lack of dishwashers in the kitchens. As we were preparing for our journey, I remember coming to the sudden realization that we would be washing dishes by hand once we moved into the RV full-time. That may have been one of the few times I considered backing out of the arrangement. After my initial shock that we would be without such a basic amenity, I prepared myself mentally for "roughing it" on our journey.

Here we are, one year later, and I reflect on how silly it was that I ever considered backing out of this journey because of the lack of dishwasher in the coach. While I'm still not a fan of washing dishes (never was when I had a dishwasher either), doing so in the RV is not near the burden I once thought. However, I do want to share with you a little secret I learned a couple of months into our journey that changed the way I do dishes in the RV.

When we started our journey, I had to relearn how to wash dishes by hand. Before I washed dishes in the RV for the first time, I reflected on growing up in a house without a dishwasher and reminded myself of the process. You fill one side of the basin with water, add the soap, scrub the dishes and then transfer them to the other side of the basin. When you're ready to rinse, you rinse them in the second side of the basin and transfer them to a dish drying rack (or towel laid out on the counter). So then I thought to myself, all I have to do is apply that same technique to washing dishes in the RV. I was immediately faced with an obstacle. The sink in the RV did not have a split basin. How was I supposed to keep the dirty dishes separate from the clean dishes when all of the water in the basin would be dirty? I had to adjust my approach.

So, instead of washing all of the dirty dishes first and then rinsing all of the clean dishes, I went through the whole process with each dish. I scrubbed it with the scrub brush, rinsed it off into the dirty water and then immediately put it in the drying rack to the side. That worked pretty well but I quickly realized how much water I was using and how much extra time it was taking because I had to turn the water off and on in between each dish. This was a better process for the RV but it still didn't feel right. It felt wasteful.

Fast forward to October when Rob's grandma fell ill and we found ourselves in Wichita staying in my brother's house. My sister-in-law always had this bottle of foaming dish soap next to her sink. She would squirt a little bit of that dish soap on a sponge and scrub down (and rinse) a dish or two if the dishwasher was full. She never left dirty dishes sit in the sink. Because of that, my whole family got into the habit of either putting their dishes in the dishwasher or washing their dishes and putting them away. It got me thinking. If that worked so well in her house, why wouldn't that work in the RV?

The next trip to the store I made, I purchased a bottle of the foaming dish soap and started using it in the RV. I didn't bother filling the basin with water. Instead, I would fill a bowl or a cup with water, let it soak for a bit, transfer that water to the next bowl or cup and use the scrub brush to wash each item as I went. This was so much easier! And I didn't use near the amount of water each time I did dishes. I would simply gather as many of the dirty items on one side of the basin and then put the washed, soapy dishes on the other side. When I gathered enough soapy items and I started to run out of space, I would turn on the water, rinse the group of dishes that had already been washed and put them in the drying rack. Changing to this method saved a ton of water, which is really important when your gray tank only holds 40 gallons of water before you have to go outside and dump the tank. And if you're not hooked up to sewer hookups for an entire weekend (like we were at the race tracks most weekends), this became even more important.

Learning to wash dishes without filling the entire sink basin with water felt like a life hack to me. Then I wondered if everyone else already knew this method of dish washing and I was just late to catch on. A couple of weekends ago, I was at the race track spending time with friends - friends that recently purchased an RV themselves. My friend was talking about doing all of the dishes from the prior night's cookout. She was telling me how they had run out of water after washing all of the dishes from the prior evening and they wouldn't even have water to wash that evening's dishes. The first question I asked her was, "are you filling the entire basin with water when you wash your dishes?" She let me know that she was filling the basin. I jumped at the opportunity to share my life hack with her. And that's why I'm sharing it with all of you.

Do not fill the basin with water when you're washing dishes.
Purchase a bottle of foaming dish soap.
Scrub, rinse and repeat.

This is the simple but apparently not so commonly known secret to washing dishes in an RV.

-Do not fill the basin with water when you're washing dishes.
-Purchase a bottle of foaming dish soap.
-Scrub, rinse and repeat.

This is the simple but apparently not so commonly known secret to washing dishes in an RV.

I'm a member of various Facebook groups for full-time RV living as I'm sure you are if you are also looking to go full-time. There are two questions I always see posed in the groups by newbies - what internet service do you use on the road and what do you do for work on the road? Today's blog is going to focus on the latter because, if I'm completely transparent, we haven't fully figured out the first one yet - even a year in!

COVID-19 has undoubtedly created a remote revolution. There are good and bad that come with that but, so far, I've mainly see good come from it. When we started our full-time journey one year ago (yesterday), people thought we were crazy (thus the Lackeys Be Trippin' name). Our friends and family had so many questions for us. What brought us to this decision? What were the kids going to do for school? What were we going to do with our house? But the most popular question was, what are you going to do for work on the road? To be honest, when we first started our journey, we didn't fully know the answer to that question. I remember Rob and I saying to each other, "we'll figure it out". For those of you that cringed at that, you're right. It was very cringe-worthy but we did (mostly) figure it out so hopefully that lets you continue reading without too much anxiety.

We actually both intended on looking for full-time or at least part-time jobs while we were on the road. We needed (need) the health insurance since our 13-year-old son has Type 1 Diabetes, Epilepsy and Abdominal Migraines. We also didn't really have a fat nest egg to be able to go too long without regular income. Fast forward to today and we still haven't fully figured out what we're doing but neither of us have looked for full-time or part-time employment in the last few months. In fact, we're both certain it would be incredibly difficult for us to go back to working for someone else at this point. (But never say never, right?)

When we originally went full-time, we were almost a year into our business, Bison. Neither of us were working it full-time but we had grown significantly in the first year and knew we were inching closer to hiring someone. Since I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to do with my life after leaving my job as Vice President of Finance for a marketing agency, I was the natural choice to take Bison on full-time. I had the time. However, after much debate, Rob and I both agreed that I wasn't the RIGHT person to take it on full-time. Bison was born from Rob's passion for motorcycles and relationships he had created with suppliers. Because of that, we made the choice to have him focus on Bison full-time. He left his job as Service Director for a couple of car dealerships in Oklahoma City to work on Bison full-time and begin homeschooling the kids in September 2019.

After leaving my job at the marketing agency in July 2019, I joined a real estate investment company as their Chief Operating Officer. The job was extremely flexible and, while I did go into the office most days, I could take off in the RV for an extended period of time and still be able to function in my role. During my time there, we spent 18 days on the road with a trip to Barber Motorsports Park just outside of Birmingham, Alabama and Gulf Shores. We had a great time and work was able to continue like normal. Unfortunately, due to circumstances outside of my control, my time with the real estate investment company ended at the end of October 2019. I was officially on the hunt for my next thing going into the holiday season.

After much soul searching and several meetings with professional contacts, I decided to pursue my own clients for which I could do business consulting work. When I signed my first client, I formally created Caffeinated Consulting. While I was excited about my new adventure, clients don't just show up when you're building something new. It takes time and a lot of focused energy. I have spent the last eight months building a small roster of clients and advising them on all of their business needs, including accounting, finance, marketing and operations. I even went through additional training during quarantine to become a business broker so I could help my clients with selling their businesses and building value for their business until they are ready to sell. I work with my clients on an on-demand basis so there are no long-term commitments or dedicated hours every week. My work fluxes from week to week which is great for the life we are living on the road.

While I was working to build Caffeinated Consulting (did I mention it was a long, slow process?), I sparked an interest in developing a dropshipping business. Because I'm a firm believer in creating brands that support bigger missions, the dropshipping site I created was called Edie Kate (nickname for my daughter, Edith Katherine) and we committed to donating 10% of gross profit from the shop to charities that connect families to their babies in the NICU. (Our daughter was born 15 weeks premature at 1 pound, 14 ounces and spent 77 days in the NICU so it's something our family is passionate about.) Building the dropshipping website was fun and, while I still enjoy maintaining it, I hope to expand it to create signature products in the future versus only dropshipping. We are in the early stages of that right now.

Because I'm never tired of bringing on new things, I also committed to writing an e-book in April 2020 after connecting with a beautiful, brilliant digital nomad named Christina Voll in the Workew Slack group. Workew is one of my favorite sites for finding remote work, btw. I highly recommend checking it out if you're interested in going remote! Christina was in the process of developing a site for digital nomads to find resources to achieve remote work success called Rise Remotely. She asked if I would be willing to be a contributor to the site and I enthusiastically agreed. And then I freaked out! I had never written a book in my life. I wasn't good at writing. I started to doubt everything about my ability to write an e-book. Then I forced myself to sit down and just start writing. Now, I'll be honest, I still don't know if it's really all that good but I did it! I'm still waiting for feedback from Christina before the book is listed for sale but I'm proud of myself for stepping out of my comfort zone. I'll keep you all posted about when the book will be listed for sale so you can tell me if it's good or not. Please, be nice. Did I mention it was my first book?

That's a lot, right? Not for me! I swear it takes a lot for me to feel fulfilled with work. Earlier this month I started researching affiliate marketing and how to create a revenue stream through a website. I actually started researching it for Bison but ended up realizing it was more fitting for Lackeys Be Trippin'! That's when I created a website for Lackeys Be Trippin' and started writing blog posts. And because I don't ever do anything half ass, I committed myself to a 90 day blog challenge which started on July 10th. The theory is to create one blog post a day for 90 days to jump start your website traffic and begin earning affiliate marketing dollars. Here I am 18 days into the 90 day challenge and I've fallen a bit short with only 12 blog posts complete but I'm very proud of the progress I've made and continue to be committed to catching up and writing all 90 blog posts by the end of 90 days. Wish me luck! Btw, if you're interested in the details of how affiliate marketing works, I highly recommend checking Miles Beckler out on YouTube. He and his wife started blogging in 2009 and have created multiple blog sites generating millions of views and millions of dollars. He's committed to giving away the road map for free so people don't have to pay for courses or books to get started. His material was super helpful and did I mention free?

I guess the last thing I would mention is that Rob and I also rent our home out on Airbnb and VRBO as a short-term rental property while we're on the road. Now, this doesn't provide any true income for our family but it has allowed us to keep our dream home while we travel. It also comes with a significant amount of work which is another reason why I mention it. Depending on the week and number of guests we have in our home each week, I can easily spend 2-5 hours per week in overseeing the operations of that business. The operations includes accounting, coordinating with cleaning people, writing guest reviews, responding to guest inquiries and ordering supplies for the property. Those are all things I can do from afar. However, not everything can be done remotely. We are very thankful to have a great friend who has taken on the property to manage everything on-site while we help coordinate with her from afar.

So there you have it - that's (pretty much) everything we do for work on the road. While we enjoy the entrepreneurship journey, I also understand that life is not for everyone. I simply present it as an option to all of the other blogs you will find out there focused on full-time and part-time employment. If you are interested in learning more, feel free to reach out to me at any time. I'm an advocate for entrepreneurship as I believe it's one of the best options for creating a flexible, remote friendly lifestyle.

I hate showering. I've always hated it - even when I was a little kid. It just seems like a waste of time to me. There are so many more things I'd rather be doing, including working, spending time with my family and vegging out on the couch to watch a TV show or play a game on my phone. Aside from feeling like there are more important things to do, the length of time it takes me to tame my hair after a shower (the process of drying it, brushing it, flat ironing it, etc) is lengthy and discourages me from wanting to take a shower at all. Regardless of my affinity for showering, it's a necessary task for everyday life. A proper home requires a minimum of one bathroom. A home on the road is no different. Just like RVs, showers in RVs come in all shapes and sizes. They are also located in various parts of an RV. Some RVs even have two bathrooms - usually one full bathroom and one half bathroom.

Our 2014 Thor Outlaw 37MD has one bathroom and it is located in the middle of the RV. It is a split design bathroom with the toilet and sink located on the passenger side of the coach and the shower located on the driver side. There is a door that swings open from the toilet and sink side of the bathroom to create one wall of the larger, expanded bathroom. The second wall is a pocket door that slides from the passenger side of the coach to click into place on the driver side. The combination of these two doors connects both sides of the bathroom to form a larger, more functional bathroom. Now that you have a good sense of the layout of our bathroom, let's discuss the functionality of the shower and the challenges we face using it.

Despite the functional bathroom that is created by the two doors, the bathroom is still small (as are most RV bathrooms). The shower is even smaller. Our house in Oklahoma City had a big, beautiful shower with two shower heads. It may be TMI but Rob and I often took showers together at our house - it was our time to talk about our days and just catch up. That doesn't happen in the RV. The shower is barely big enough for one person let alone two. It offers just enough space for you to raise your arms to lather the shampoo in your hair or turn around to rinse the soap off your back. It has ledges for your shampoo, conditioner and body soap but those are barely big enough to contain our bottles. Space is certainly limited - but functional. We even store a plastic tote of medicine inside the shower and hang our jackets on the outside when it's not in use.

Once you get inside the shower, you're met with more challenges. The amount of hot water is extremely limited. The 2014 Thor Outlaw 37MD only has a six gallon gas/electric water heater leaving you with a limited amount of hot water for your shower. It also makes taking back-to-back showers a challenge. With four people living full-time in our RV, we have to be careful to reserve hot water for the next person. This requires some very careful planning. We usually have two people shower in the morning and two people shower in the evening (or we will rotate nights depending on the activities of the day). We also installed a special shower head with a shut off switch to conserve water while lathering up the soap for our hair or bodies.

The shower head is also extremely useful for regulating the water temperature in the shower. Due to the extreme heat of the hot water and the need to shut off the water in between lathering and rinsing, the shower head we installed allows us to set the water temperature where we want it and throttle off the water without messing with the hot and cold handles in the middle of the shower. However, even with the special shower head, we have to be extremely careful not to bump the temperature handles as we navigate the small space. Even the slightest bump to the hot or cold water handles can change the temperature drastically. And just when you think you have it all under control in the shower, someone flushes the toilet or turns on the faucet in one of the sinks which suppresses the cold water in the shower and blasts only scolding hot water on you for a brief amount of time.

The challenges of RV living continue into the shower but, just like with anything in an RV, you figure out what works for you and your family and make adjustments. Taking a shower in an RV isn't hard once you do it a few times and figure out the routine that works for you. This is a first world country after all - even our recreational vehicles have running water and other modern amenities that we should not take for granted.

Last weekend we attended another race event at Blackhawk Farms Raceway in South Beloit, IL. We were excited to return to the race track for the second time during the Wisconsin stint of our trip to hang out with friends and build our business. We did enjoyed spending time with our new friends of the north but quickly learned that it would not be a great weekend to build our business. 

On Friday, our first day at the track, we discovered an issue with the generator in our RV. We had been having some issues with it off and on over the past few weeks but thought that we were in the clear when we went to the race track. I'm not great with details so I'm not going to share all of the details of what went wrong and what he did to address it but I will say that Rob spent most of the weekend diagnosing and attending to the generator with no success. We were all so frustrated with the situation by Sunday (Rob was understandably the most frustrated) that we headed out a little early to get to our next destination - an RV park with full hookups just outside of Madison, Wisconsin called Whistle Stop Campground.

We spent the next four days enjoying the beautiful campground and exploring the surrounding area while we waited on a local generator expert to come to the campground to diagnose the issue with the generator. The repair man arrived on Thursday, spent a couple of hours checking out the generator and informed us that he would need to take the generator to their shop to have it pulled out of the RV (the issue was apparently in the back of the generator).

And that leads me to the most important factor of full-time RV living. You must remain flexible to live this lifestyle. If we would have had a place to be this week, we would have had to change our plans and, possibly, not been able to arrive at that destination. Because we've kept a flexible schedule, we've been able to adapt to our situation and make adjustments as necessary.

Broken generators (or similar situations) arise all of the time in the full-time RV life so be prepared. Be willing to make adjustments as necessary. Don't be surprised when situations outside of your control arise and you have to make adjustments to your schedule. Be flexible. Be adaptable. Flexibility is what we asked for, after all. Enjoy!

Most people plan their journey to full-time RV living through a thoughtful, phased approach. They come up with the idea, discuss it with friends and loved ones, research the best way to go full-time, make decisions on when and how to go full-time and then pull the trigger on those things based on the timeline that works for their lives and budgets.

We're not most people. We started our RV journey sort of on a whim. We went from our first conversation about full-time RV living to buying an RV in twenty-four days. There were no conversations with friends and family, very little research (at least on my part) and no well-thought-out plan with a formal timeline. We made decisions on the fly which caused us to move quickly

The first big decision we made to make to become full-time RVers involved our house. What would we do with our house while we were on the road? Sixteen days after our first conversation about full-time RV living, we put our house on the market. We have a beautiful, historic home in downtown Oklahoma City (our dream home, really). We made the decision to sell it because we didn’t want the risk of not being able to cover our costs of the home while we were on the road. Since we were quitting our corporate jobs to run our business, we were concerned with the strain that would put on us financially. However, twenty days after listing our house, we took it off the market. It truly was our dream home and we were terrified we were making the wrong decision by getting rid of it. We listed it as a short-term rental on Airbnb and VRBO instead. The house was officially listed on both platforms within four days of making that decision and we had our first booking two days later. It was official – we had to be out of our house within three weeks.

The second big decision in becoming full-time RVers was the RV. Rob spent the first couple of weeks doing a ton of research on what type of RV would be best for us. He would send me texts with links and pictures and go into these huge, in-depth reasons why we should (or shouldn’t) choose this model. He looked at everything from fuel mileage to towing capacity. I mostly focused on what layout made the most sense for our family. We finally decided on a Class C motorhome (Super C). We even went to look at a few of them in person. Then, one morning I woke up to tons of links and pictures of different Thor Outlaw Class A motorhomes in my text messages. Rob had stayed up super late the night before doing more research. He found the Thor Outlaw 37MD layout that was ideal for our family. He found two that he was interested in – one in Texas and one in Florida. The one in Texas was obviously a lot closer but the one in Florida seemed to be nicer and was less money. After several phone calls with the dealership, we put a deposit down on the one in Florida and had one-way plane tickets booked for three days later. Within twenty-four days of our first conversation about full-time RV living, Rob and I were officially RV owners.

​The next big decision we had to make about full-time RV living had to do with our jobs. Some people go full-time but stay stationary most of the time due to work or any other reason that may keep them close to a certain geographical location. Our plan was different. We wanted to go full-time to build our business so there was going to be a lot of travel for us. We needed the flexibility to work on the road. Since I had made the decision to leave my job of nearly eight years and my career as an accountant at the same time, I was faced with the decision to not only find a new job but also find a job in a completely different space. Let me tell you – switching careers, looking for a new job and needing that job to be flexible to lend to RV life was quite the challenge! I did find a job that I thought was going to work but that only lasted about three months (long story there). By November, I was convinced that the perfect job for me didn’t exist so I forged a new path to figure out how to make money on my own. (That’s probably a blog post of its own.) Meanwhile, Rob had quit his job as the Service Director of a couple of car dealerships to focus on building our business full-time. Since our business, Bison Track, operates through an e-commerce store front and does not involve a physical store front, the flexibility for travel was certainly there for him.

The last big decision in our series of decisions was deciding how to educate our children on the road. Believe it or not, that one came fairly easy to us because we had been going down that path for three years already. Three years prior, our son, Carter, started having severe abdominal pains in the fourth grade. They caused him to miss a lot of school (50+ days in one school year). Over the next two years, we took him to several doctors, ran countless tests and couldn’t find any answers until mid-way through fifth grade when his neurologist suggested it might be abdominal migraines. We started him on some medications and things started to improve. He wasn’t having migraines nearly as often and, when he did, they were rarely as debilitating as they had been previously. By the end of fifth grade, we were pretty sure we had him on the right track with his medications. However, as it was time to research and decide on a school for him for sixth grade, we realized there was a misalignment between the school we wanted him to go to and the needs of his health condition. We decided the best option for him at that point was an online charter school where he would have the flexibility to go back to sleep if he needed to sleep off a migraine but still do all the work he needed to advance his education. Sixth grade went great for him. He had some bad days but he had the flexibility to do the work when he was feeling better. We were also extremely lucky that our employers were both flexible and allowed him to go to work with us daily. After our experience with the online schooling, we knew that was the best option for both of our children as we began to travel. Edith has been more of a challenge because she has a completely different personality than Carter (and she’s also much younger). However, we were able to get her through first grade remotely and she’s excited about continuing to learn on the road.

​Becoming full-time RVers was a decision we made and implemented in less than sixty days. This involved four critical decisions. What do we do with our house? What RV is right for us? What should we do for work on the road? How will we educate our children? I’m not recommending anyone else necessarily make the decision on that timeline but it worked for us because we didn’t have the opportunity to drag our feet or back out when things got tough – we just figured it out. If you’re struggling with either of these things as you’re trying to go full-time, consider just doing it. It’s amazing what you can figure out when you make yourself.

Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin

Living full-time in an RV has a lot of perks.

We get to see a lot of different, beautiful places. Places we may or may not have considered traveling otherwise. For example, this week we are visiting Madison, Wisconsin. I cannot imagine a scenario where we would have traveled to Madison without living this lifestyle, but it is amazing. Today (July 16th) had a high of 81 degrees. There was no wind and no bugs. It was the perfect day to be outdoors

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

We get to spend a lot of quality time together. Some days that quality time is in the RV while we are working and some days, we take a break and explore the area. Today Rob took the kids to the amusement park that is within walking distance of our RV park while I finished up some work at the RV. We all spent the afternoon in the RV park's pond soaking up some rays. The kids played in the water with Rob on the inflatables and I laid on the beach drinking a tequila and soda. After we got cleaned up from the pond, Edith and I took a walk around the RV park. Tonight, Edith and I are watching a movie (while I type up this blog) and Rob and Carter are playing video games.

Road America

We get to meet a lot of new people. Last weekend we spent the weekend at Blackhawk Farms Raceway in South Beloit, Illinois. We hung out with what has become our northern racetrack family. We focused on the racing during the day and then turned to social time in the evenings. We grilled out, had a few drinks and even took an evening track walk together. This weekend we're headed back to Road America near Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin to meet back up with the track family and network for our business.

Marshall, Wisconsin

While I enjoy all of the perks of full-time RV living, my favorite has been getting to know my husband and my children better. Tonight, while Edith and I were hanging out outside of the RV drying off from our time at the pond, I told her that we should take a walk and see if we could meet new friends. If you know me, you know that I am an extreme extrovert. I love connecting with new people. When I said this to her, her face lit up! She jumped up and said, "Let's go meet new friends!" I quickly realized in that moment that she truly is my mini me. She craves human interaction just like I do. In fact, when were over at the bouncy bubble, she practically begged two little boys to come visit us at our RV so they could be friends. It reminded me of all the times I have done something equally as desperate to find friends. I felt like I was watching myself through her eyes.

I genuinely enjoy visiting all the beautiful places, meeting all the new people and spending quality time with my family but experiencing specific moments like tonight with my loved ones has been my favorite part. Those are the moments I will remember as I take my last breath. No amount of time together or experiencing new places will replace the moments you truly connect with another human being. Human connection is not quantifiable by the number of miles we drive or the places we see. Those moments are truly priceless.

Rainy days in our bricks and sticks home were gloomy but tolerable and even slightly enjoyable. We had an excuse for each of us to retreat to our bedrooms, curl up with a blanket on our bed or couch and watch a movie, play a game or work (depending on the day).

Rainy days in an RV are more difficult.

We do not have our own bedrooms. Rob and I sleep in a tiny loft compartment above the toy hauler. Carter sleeps on a bed that lowers down from the ceiling above the driver and passenger seats and Edith sleeps on a love seat size sofa that converts into a bed.

The couches in the coach are also not conducive to afternoon naps or lounging. The front couch is a half-circle shaped dinette set that is made out of delicate RV “leather” and surrounds a wobbly dining room table that also doubles as a workspace for our computers (when there is not food present). The back couch is the most comfortable piece of furniture in the coach and that is because it did not come with the rig (we purchased it at At Home late last year). While it is comfortable, it is also small (love seat size) and the kids tend to hog it for their video game playing.

The blankets are plentiful but finding a comfortable spot to curl up with them is rather difficult.

Normally I would say that streaming movies and playing video games is something that can be replicated in the RV, but we have been having internet issues as of late and both of those things have been a challenge as well. I am grateful we decided to bring all our DVD movies with us for these times without high speed internet. We also finally broke out a deck of cards we have been carrying around the past year and played a couple extremely competitive games of War.

I think the most difficult part about this particular rainy day is that we are currently at this amazing RV park with lots of outdoor activities, including a beach, train rides and an entire amusement park within walking distance. All the kids (and Rob) want to do is go outside and play. Normally we cannot pull them away from video games to go outside to play but, here, they have been begging to go outside and experience the outdoor activities.

Rain, rain, go away.

​Let the Lackeys out of this tiny space today.

​Our daughter texted us this morning to let us know she and her boyfriend were considering moving into an RV as their first place together. She reached out to us since we were full-time RVers and she wanted to know what tips we had for them.

First of all, there's no one-size fits all answer to this question. There are several basic RV styles with multiple layout options for each style. There are also many different lifestyles one can lead in an RV. Therefore, specific recommendations for furnishings, storage and maintenance cannot be given until the RV style, layout and lifestyle are chosen. However, there are at least five recommendations I could give to anyone looking to go full-time that would be applicable to everyone no matter the specific choices made in these areas.

Downsize as much as possible.
No matter how much you think you've downsized to move into your RV, it won't be enough. You'll downsize again at some point. We're nearly a year into our journey and we've already downsized twice since moving into the RV. (We probably got rid of 2/3rds of our stuff before we even moved into the RV.) It's amazing how few things we actually needed once we hit the road. We simply don't focus on things anymore. We focus on spending quality time together and making memories. We also use the "where would it go filter" before we purchase anything new. If we don't know where we're going to put it in the RV then we don't buy it. Let's be honest, I never used that method in my house. I just bought it and figured out where it was going to go later.

​Learn the KonMari folding method.
Unless you're a person that can live with an extremely limited amount of clothes (I'm talking capsule wardrobe size or less), you will probably need to find an efficient way to fold and store your clothes. Even if you do have a small number of items, folding them properly can reduce the amount of unnecessary wrinkles. The KonMari folding method by Marie Kondo focuses on both space saving benefits and the reduction of wrinkles and it's a must-know for any full-time RVer. You can learn more about the KonMari folding method buy reading Marie Kondo's best selling book called The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing.

Now, the down side of the KonMari method is that it takes additional time so find a TV show to watch or an Audible book to listen to while you're folding because it's going to take some time. It does get easier the longer you do it, though.

Leave the glassware behind.
It's not a good idea to bring glass in the RV. Even if you are going to be stationary more than moving, the spaces where you will be keeping your plates, bowls and cups will be small. You will need to stack everything together to save space and, with that, comes the risk of breaking. I highly recommend picking up some plastic items and leaving all glassware behind. We bought these from Target for $0.79 each but Amazon has some great options as well if you are an Amazon-aholic and prefer to get the most out of your two day Prime shipping.

Invest in high quality internet.
Internet has become a household necessity just like water, sewer and electricity, especially if you plan to work on the road. Many RV parks advertise their free WiFi but very few parks actually have good WiFi. If you are doing any sort of work or want to easily communicate with family and friends from the road, high quality internet is a must have for all full-time RVers. Some people can get by with using their phones for internet connectivity but others will need to invest in a hotspot to use on the road. (We invested in a Netgear Nighthawk.) There is a ton of information out there already on the best internet options but the truth is that, just like the type of RV, there is no one-size fits all solution for internet. You have to review the carriers in your geographical area and research their plans. Plans also change all of the time so just because someone was able to get a great internet plan six months ago does not mean that plan is still available today.​

Make sure you have a nest egg for repairs.
If you buy an RV, you should definitely consider buying an extended warranty for major repairs but the truth is that there will be times when using the extended warranty may not even be an option. Here's an example. Your generator goes out because a piece inside the generator breaks. It's Saturday afternoon and all RV dealerships are closed. You are boondocking and you can't wait until Monday to have it repaired because you need power for the rest of the weekend. You figure out you can fix the issue yourself by doing some Googling. Guess what? You do it. You fix it yourself (even if it would have been covered under your extended warranty if you would have waited until Monday). These situations occur all of the time in an RV. Sometimes you don't have time to wait until Monday or until a dealership can get to you in two weeks. You have to be flexible and sometimes you have to solve the problem yourself. Be prepaid to pay out of pocket for repairs in these situations. And these situations happen a lot in an RV.

So, there you go. Those are my top five must knows about the full-time RV lifestyle. Let me know if any of them resonate with you or if you have any you would like to add. Like I said, this is meant to be a list of must knows that apply to pretty much everyone. I could come up with several different lists depending on the RV style, layout and lifestyle you choose. More to come on those in future blogs.

Yesterday was a bad day.

Bad days on the road are inevitable but the secret to life on the road is making sure you don't have too many bad days in a row. Multiple bad days will make you question your decision to go full-time. Trust me, I've been there.

What if we just go back to the house and return to a "normal" life? This thought crosses my mind if we have too many bad days in a row. It seems so easy to just pack up, go home and leave it all behind. It seems like the answer to the problem (or problems) we're having at the time. I'm here to tell you that's not the answer. Leaving behind the problems on the road won't fix the problems. It will just replace them with new problems.

If we go back to our house, we have to figure out how to pay for it. Renting our house through Airbnb and VRBO has given us the opportunity to keep the house while we travel. We love our house. It is very close to downtown Oklahoma City and all of the activities we love doing, including going to pretty much every single home Oklahoma City Thunder game (we have season tickets). It was built in 1910 so it has historic charm but was completely renovated in 2015 right before we bought it so it also feels brand new.

​If we go back to our house, we may not have an RV generator to fix but there will probably be something equally as critical or expensive at the house to fix. Did I mention it's 110 years old? Old houses actually have a lot in common with RVs - there's always something to fix!

If we go back to our house, we won't be able to travel as often. We'll have responsibilities at the house and to the city that will keep us there. We won't have an RV to pack everything in if we do want to travel for a week or over a long weekend. We'll have to pack everything in suit cases and put miles on our cars - er - car. Oh, that's right! We only have one car. We would also have to buy another car if we left this life on the road.

So, yeah, yesterday was a bad day but bad days happen to everyone regardless of where they live or how they live their lives.

The only difference between yesterday and today is what we did with those 24 hours. We rebounded from our bad day by coming up with solutions to all of yesterday's problems. We also spent the day at the beach as a family.

Today was a good day because we didn't let yesterday keep us down.

Today was a bad day.

We started our full-time journey nearly a year ago. When we started our journey (and still today), people are envious that we get to live this life. Now, I'm not going to lie. We've had some pretty amazing days. We've had days where everything just went right. We've had days where we didn't do much work, got to spend quality time together as a family and enjoyed some pretty spectacular sights. But that's not every day. Today is not that day.

Today I woke up to discover there was something wrong with my eye. It's 5 pm and I still don't know what's wrong with it. It's gotten progressively worse. I either have something caught in it, I've scratched it or I have pink eye. All I know is that I can't function very well today. I can't be in the light because it really irritates my eye. I thought it would get better throughout the day but it hasn't. Now I get to decide if I need to go to the doctor and, if I do need to go to the doctor, where do I go? We're in Illinois - hours from home and my normal eye doctor.

On top of the issue with my eye, we've got a generator issue. Rob has been working on it all weekend (for weeks actually) and I think it finally crapped out on us. Thankfully it was fairly nice out today but we were still without a way to eat, charge electronics and cool the coach. We're currently on our way to an RV park strategically placed near the best Cummins technicians in the area so we can (hopefully) get it fixed in the next couple of days.

To top of our day, the person (people) that stayed at our house the past twelve days completely trashed the house. They didn't break anything but they did access areas of the house they shouldn't, left filth everywhere in the house and left three completely full dumpsters outside of the house that started attracting flies. Needless to say, my afternoon was spent on the phone with cleaning and handy people to resolve the issues. It's tough to be so far from your home without any way to resolve the issues personally.

So, no, it's not all perfect. Each day comes with new challenges that we have to address right then and there to be able to function. We don't have family near by to just go crash with if there's an issue. We have to problem solve and make concessions.

Despite all of this, I wouldn't change our lives for anything. I think it's made us independently and collectively stronger. We're becoming better versions of ourselves because we have to figure it out.

Today was a bad day but I still loved today.