I Refused to Stay Stuck So I Built My Way Out

I built this van is the best way to give my daughter and I the opportunity to see the country and to spend lots of time with our family. Come see how we did it. This is my kitchen. It is small, but it does the job. I built this in less than six months, so I just had to come together really quickly. This is just prefinished plywood, and I wanted to do that so that I could have a white, simple countertop. So my sink here is a hideaway sink. My faucet is actually currently broken, which is a part of van life. You got to deal with breakdowns of all sorts. It still works, but I need to get it fixed. So for the sink, I do have the two water tanks underneath. They're not very big, and I typically just use any hose that I can find. There are some gas stations you can go to that will provide water or campgrounds or wherever I can find it. So I do not use this water for drinking. I only use it for doing dishes and for cleaning for drinking water. I just keep spare gallons of fresh drinking water for cooking and for drinking. So the drain for the water goes straight out the van to the bottom, and I use eco-friendly products when I'm doing the dishes. I don't actually have a stove built in. I do have two camp stoves, actually. I have one single camp stove and a double camp stove. I started with the double camp stove way too big. Moved to a smaller camp stove, a lot easier, still a pain in the butt to deal with. I don't like it so much so that I've decided I'm actually going to remodel the van a little bit, and I'm going to put in an actual stove oven combo at some point. So my biggest advice to anyone thinking about doing a van build or doing van life at all is once you get your rig, like, don't go crazy building it because you are going to learn along the way what you like and what you don't like. I would definitely test everything out before you do a crazy build. Like I said, this build came together really fast, and I do want to do a remodel of it for certain things like the stove. But luckily for me, it was a quick build, so it's not like that big of a deal to have to go in and like add a few things. One of the best decisions I made for the van build, though, is my refrigerator. This is a pretty decent size refrigerator, and it has a freezer in the freezer is a decent size, and it is big enough to put a pint of ice cream. And you know what? I don't think I need anything else. I'm just kidding. I do need to go grocery shopping, so it's a little bit lacking right now, but it holds so much food. I can go weeks without having to go grocery shopping. It's really nice. And if you're wondering how I keep my ice cream nice and frozen is because my refrigerator is a 12 volt refrigerator. So it's just connected to my DC power system. Everything in here is powered by a power station. And so I have one 110 outlet that is connected just to the 110 outlet on the power station. And we will talk more about that later. So the other great investment that I made for the van is this Keurig coffee machine. Now, people love to romanticize the pour over coffee or the French press, which I love a good French press. But it comes with a lot of mess that people don't talk about because then you got to clean the coffee grounds. You got to put them somewhere. This is just a K cup. You put it in the trash. Simple. So now that I've told you about where I keep my ice cream and, of course, my coffee, this is where I keep my dry goods. I have this small overhead cabinet, and this is where I have my magnesium, my mac and cheese, my coffee and some miscellaneous items as well. And for the last addition to the kitchen, I have a little pullout pantry here. This is actually just a shelf from Amazon. I put on a slider and I keep all my additional dry goods here. And behind the seat, I just have this little basket. I throw all of my dishes in there. The one thing I don't love about this van build in general, I don't have any kitchen storage. I really don't like I had to add this in here and it doesn't do a whole lot, but it gets the job done. So something to think about and consider. So overall, I actually really love this part of my kitchen. I just didn't take into consideration how much storage I was actually going to need for additional dry goods and my pots and pans and my dishes. So in the future, when I do a little more building in the van, I am definitely going to prioritize storage. So basically, this is my living room, hang out, chill area. I'm going to be honest, I don't do a lot of hanging out and chilling up here. I mostly just work. If I do have these seats swiveled, I chill on the bed. Both of these seats actually swivel the front seat. However, I don't swivel it often because I keep my window covers in the passenger seat. And then I also keep a small power station in the passenger seat that's plugged in to the car charger so that it's charging anytime I'm driving. And I just know that it's always charged. I'm always going to have that extra like emergency power. Anything happens to the power in my van. We recently had a crazy ice storm. I was cleaning out my van and I knocked loose the solar connection to my power station and it died. So I had backup power, which was nice, but you just never know when that's going to happen. So I like to keep it charged. And I also have a lagoon mount that connects to the passenger seat. So if I'm working and I don't want to sit on the bed, I can swivel this and have like an actual little office space. And then on each of these seats, I have additional storage. So this one I have just like a it's kind of like a bag that at first I thought I might use it as a trash can, but it wound up being like an extra linen storage. So I have clean sheets and pillowcases in there in case I need to switch them out. I do normally travel with two cats and my daughter, and things can get messy sometimes. This one, I have all my makeup in here, some miscellaneous items. And then this is where I keep all my toiletries. And of course, underneath each seat, I have a bunch of shoes. My biggest priority going into this build is where is my daughter going to sit? It has to be safe. It has to be a real seat. I had an RV before and the seats were literally made out of wood. And I just didn't trust it. So this is what it all resulted in. And while this is a real seat and I and I feel safe and she's safe, it takes up so much space. I am heavily considering actually taking this out and putting a middle seat in the front so that she can sit up in the front with me. She'd be right next to me. And I feel better about that. But then that would open up the space here so that I can add all of that extra kitchen storage space and the stove like I wanted to. And maybe even a couch. It was really important to have a real seat for her. I'm, you know, still learning. And I think I decided that this was not the move. And I'm going to do something else. So this is my bookshelf. I was originally planning on doing a fold up counter space. And I just I have so many books. And I was like, where am I going to put these books? So instead of the extra counter space, I did the bookshelf, which I actually really love. And it's one of my favorite parts of the van build. And I just think I just it makes me love looking at the van. I think the moment my life changed and I knew I wanted to go tiny was when I watched Expedition Happiness on Netflix. It really caught me because of the freedom I spent my whole life around Dallas, Texas. I never really traveled anywhere. And I didn't want that to be me. Long story short, I wound up driving up to Oklahoma and I bought an old Dodge Ram conversion van for twenty eight hundred dollars. And I fixed it up for dirt cheap and I lived in it for a year. And it was uncomfortable. I couldn't stand up in it, but it was happiest I'd ever been in my life. Moving out of my first van, I just I knew I wanted something I could stand up in. I actually wanted a Promaster. That was my dream van. And unfortunately, the reality is sometimes you can't afford what you actually want. And so for me, I had to get something cheaper. And over time, I've had several rigs and I do enjoy building. So I would build them out. I'd live in them for a little bit and I'd sell them until I was finally able to afford my dream van. So my first van was twenty eight hundred dollars. And then I wound up getting a short bus. And I think I paid thirty two hundred dollars for that. And that came with a lot of problems. And I wound up investing far more into it than I anticipated. But I was able to sell it for about thirty thousand dollars. And that gave me the opportunity to buy a T1 and Sprinter van. That was thirteen thousand dollars. I built that out. I used it for a little while and I sold that, I think, for I think it was a little more than thirty thousand. I fell in love with Chinook RVs after that. And I bought one and I remodeled it. It was a great journey. But because the seats were not actual seats, I didn't feel comfortable traveling the country with my daughter on a wooden box. So I unfortunately had to part with it. And I sold that for, I think, thirty five thousand. And I use that as a down payment for this van. This is a twenty twenty five Ram Promaster. And I use some of that as a down payment. And I do make monthly payments on it. And I bought this van with some discounts from the dealership because they were wanting to sell for eleven thousand dollars less than the highest value. And it wound up being like forty six thousand dollars, give or take. So I finally did it. I finally bought the dream van. And I definitely want to do a little bit of remodeling. I'm loving being able to live in it and really just enjoy the process that comes with learning what you want, what you don't want, what you need, what you don't need. And having my daughter along with me for that has been such a great adventure. She's the perfect little travel companion. And I don't love when she's away, but she loves the van and she loves it just as much as I do. She grew up her first whole year. She lived in a school bus, so she was made for this lifestyle. And I'm just really glad that we get to do it together. And she gets to see her mom follow her dreams and be a strong, independent woman because that's what she's going to be when she grows up. I built a big closet because I have me and my daughter for clothes storage. So I wanted to have some hanging storage for like all my winter stuff. And then I have these little bins underneath that hold like my delicates and then my clothes for my daughter. So what I actually like about the closet is it does give me these two walls and on each side of the walls, I have the ability to hang stuff up. So this is my special wall. I have my YouTube plaque. So I go check out my channel, Lever Wild. And then I have like all of my signed stuff from bands and things that I love. I'm able to hang them here. And then that goes into my sticker wall where I have like pictures and stickers of just memories and just anything that I think is cute and quirky. I can display it all. And so you get to see a little bit of who I am by the visuals. One last thing about the closet space is I do have my heater built in underneath it. I can take the face off if I need to ever get to it. And I have had to in the past. And it's vented out the front and little control panels also in the closet. Right here, I have storage from underneath my bed. And this is all stuff that I can access from inside the van instead of having to go out and open the back doors. So I have a bin full of extra shoes. I have two big adjustable weights so I can exercise. And this is actually the perfect space for my yoga mat. And it gives me a little bit of room to do a little bit of exercising inside the van in case there's bad weather. And then just some miscellaneous stuff. I have a USB-C rechargeable vacuum cleaner. And of course, the big question everyone always wants to know, where do you go to the bathroom? And while I do utilize like public bathrooms and stuff when I need to, I do have a portable toilet. It is a Mottiwell toilet. It has biodegradable bags and in my opinion is like the ultimate toilet. It kind of combines all of the ones that I've used. And it's really convenient because it's a single use. So you go one time and then you're able to throw it in the trash. It's completely biodegradable and mess free. You don't ever have to use compost or anything like that. This is my favorite part, the bed. I value my sleep. And this is a full size, I believe, 12 inch memory foam mattress. That's actually really comfortable. I love it. I spend most of my time here reading, sleeping, editing all the things I spend all my time here. I do have a hanging bookshelf here. I have overhead storage, some art. I have a 360 fan that I can open up my back windows and turn the fan on with the front windows open. And it makes for great circulation in the summertime. I also have the max air fan to assist with that and puts a beautiful breeze through the van and it keeps me so cool. I don't even know that I'm really going to need my AC except for on the really, really hot days. So a big van hack for me, because I don't have a whole lot of storage in the van, are these big pillows. This is actually full of clothes. So I keep all my sweats and sweatshirts in here. And I also have other pillows that I just put clothes in. Sometimes you got to get creative with your storage in such a small space. And this actually worked out really well. Also, something to consider is I actually didn't build the bed platform to go to the back of the van, and I didn't add anything to stop it from sliding. So my mattress always winds up being slid to the back of the van. I decided to just leave it. And it has good four inches of space over here, maybe five, where there's no bed. So I have that space on this side between the bed and the wall and on this side between the kitchen counter and the bed. So this side, I keep all my K-cups and my cutting boards and some spare baby wipes. And on this side, I have some drawing books. And I keep a lot of Ember's stuffies just stuffed down in that corner. And it also gives me a little step here to climb onto the bed. I also have a AC unit. I spend a lot of time in the south, and so that's kind of a necessity. This is actually a 12 volt Velit AC unit, so it's not 110. So it's not going to take a whole lot of power. And this is also connected straight to my power station. So my whole van is powered off of a power station. It is a Commvault 6000 power station from Velit. My power station is powered via solar panels on the roof. I have two 250 watt solar panels, and then I have a DC to DC connection, which means it is charged off the alternator while I'm driving. And I can also, if I ever need to, plug it into shore power as well. So this is my laundry chute. There's just enough room between the door and the bed that I can just toss stuff down in there, and then I can easily take it off these hooks and take it in to a laundromat, wash my clothes. So this is the box that my old toilet I used to have a little bail. It lived in here, took up so much room. As you can see, this thing's huge. Plus, the refills were gigantic. So I sold that toilet and I just need to get rid of the box right now. It's just empty and taken up space. So once that's gone, I'll have a lot more space down here for maybe a paddleboard or something. On this side, I have camp chairs. I have a Fantic. This is also a little bit of a power station, but I use it to air up my tires if they're ever low. I have my double camp stove. I have some chains for my tires in case of an emergency. I also keep two backup heating sources in case of an emergency. So I have a Mr. Buddy heater and I have a 12 volt heated blanket as well. And then up at the very top corner, I actually keep my pots and pans there so I can just reach around the fridge and grab a pan when I need to cook. When I was designing this van at first, I actually wanted to do a dinette situation where you have storage on the side, storage on the side and a table that drops down into the bed. But for optimal storage space, because I'm living in this full time and I have everything that I own inside of it, I wanted as much storage space as I possibly could have. And that's why I wound up doing the floating bed. And I actually did the bed quite high so that I could sit in there and work on stuff if I ever need to, like, fix the electrical or anything like that. I have learned so much about myself through the whole van life journey. And this van alone has taught me so much as have all the other vans I've been in, because it's not necessarily about the rig that you're in. It's about the adventure and the journey that you're on. And I can tell you I had just as much fun in my first van as I am having in this one. It shows you sides of yourself that you didn't know you needed to encounter. And this lifestyle has pushed my limits in ways that I didn't know I needed to be pushed. And I've become a better person for it. There are so many times where I thought I was afraid and that I couldn't do it on my own. And being able to prove myself wrong has just been incredibly empowering. And I sometimes am inspired by myself because I have to get through those tough situations. Like you're going to break down. You're going to get a flat tire. You're going to have engine problems. You're going to find yourself in situations where you don't know what to do and you have to figure it out. You have to meet yourself in a place that is uncomfortable. And once you get through those moments, there's just a feeling that I can't describe that no one can ever take away. Thank you guys so much for watching the tour of my van. If you guys want to follow along my journey, I do have a YouTube channel called Leave Her Wild, and you can catch all of my adventures there. And I also have an Instagram and TikTok, Leave Jaylina Wild. Thank you so much again for watching. Bye.