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.

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.

​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.