The Worst Things About RV Living
Let’s get one thing straight, RV living is awesome. Exploring the open roads, checking off bucket list items and visiting family are a few of the benefits.
However, there are trade-off for everything.
Today we’re exploring the not-so-fun side of RV living. These six “RV bummers” are important to consider before your next RV trip.
Let’s dive in!
1. Internet Connectivity
Internet connection is essential when you’re road tripping in your RV. Whether you’re doing business or Family, a solid internet connection is a must.
We have multiple devices and multiple providers, but the best tool in our arsenal is the WeBoost cellular booster. It allows us to boost unusable cell signals to strong signals capable of Skype calls and Netflixing!
But, sometimes we’re just stuck without internet.
It took many bad experiences to convince us that cell connectivity is a must for RV living.
2. Nasty Weather
When we lived in a sticks & bricks house, inclement weather was mostly just annoying. Now a strong wind storm is enough to rattle our bones!
We’ve experienced 60 mph winds, torrential down pours and freezing cold nights; all of these conditions are amplified now that we live in a tiny home on wheels.
RV Bad Weather
The up-side: we live on wheels, so we are free to move. But, sometimes the weather will creep up on us pretty quickly.
3. RV Storage Space
Traveling in an RV means you’re going to have to minimize. You can bring a lot with you, but you surely can’t bring it all with you.
After a year & a half on the road, we’re still getting rid of stuff that goes unused. Its amazing how few clothes we wear… but, there’s never enough storage for kitchen items!
We’ve discovered a few RV storage hacks that really help, but nothing compares to the storage space of a home.
4. RV Maintenance
Screws (or in our case rivets) get rattled loose every week!
RV maintenance is an ongoing venture. We overhauled and renovated every system in our RV before hitting the road, but maintenance is never ending. Once we fix a leak the tires need attention, and so on…
We recommend as much preventative maintenance as possible, but it’ll never be enough.
5. Laundry
Some huge RVs have washers & dryers… ours is not one of those.
Each week, in every new town, we hunt for a laundromat and hope we have enough quarters. This issue annoyed me much more in the beginning, but lately it’s become a therapeutic chore.
A good rule to live by: always have a least $10 in quarters at any given time!
6. Being Lonely
A life of constant movement can easily turn into a life of solitude. We’ve found that slowing down our travel speed can help create new relationships with the locals.
We also joined a few RV groups (Escapees RV Club is our favorite) to build friendships with fellow nomads. And, lastly, a phone call to the family can always cure the nomad blues.
The Best Part About RV Living…Free Camping!
We love camping across this amazing country. And, we really love it when its free. Here’s our list of the 20 Best Free Campsites in the USA.
If you haven’t tried free camping before, also known as boondocking, take a look at our beginners guide to boondocking filled with everything you need to know to get started.
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Good list, especially the Laundry one! I even bought more undies so I could go longer between laundromat trips. The only one that doesn’t apply for me is the lonliness one; I boondock almost exclusively, 365 days a year, and never get lonely as long as I have something to read!
Ah, the irony of laundry. Our college-aged son has a washer/dryer in his apartment. We full-time RV parents are the ones taking our dirty clothes to the laundromat every week! Did not see that one coming…
We’ve been lucky with laundry. When we’ve campground hosted, the state parks all had laundry facilities on site. Our big headaches have been maintenance — every time an RV moves, seams flex, screws vibrate, and seals around windows and elsewhere that we thought were watertight turn out to have leaks the next time it rains. Storage is the second biggest issue. We have plenty of it; it’s just not especially convenient. Lots of blind corners where it’s easy to forget exactly what all is in the compartment when you can’t see half of it or compartments where access to them involves getting down on the floor and seeing things from a snake’s perspective.
This winter we’ve been having condensation issues, which is not something we expected in Arizona. We probably should have because of the dramatic differences between day and night temperatures. The pads for the bunk over the cab got soaked from water building up on the inside of the window glass and then running down on to the bunk. We invested in a dehumidifier and that’s helped.
Internet has been the main issue for us. Free WiFi doesn’t always mean at your site, or a good connection from the clubhouse. We’ve upped our data twice and only been on the road 3 months.
We bought one of those little washer that suppose to spin, it doesn’t that has been a waste of space. But agree, we brought too many clothes. I’ll be cleaning out next month before we hit the road again.
And kitchen stuff,… it is spread all over the camper due to lack of actual kitchen storage.
Thanks for the tips. We’re just starting as full-timers-lots of questions
Your list is a good one, but as with any major life change it takes serious thought and a lot of consideration. My wife and I have been active RVers for 46 years, our dream was always to be full timers and travel. We host at State and National parks all over the US for about 9 to 10 months out of the year, we have been doing full time for 6 years. For us there is no better life, but our answer to everyone that asks, this life isn’t for everyone. There are plenty of things you must give up and likewise all kinds of gains. Even though we new we could handle the changes we did it for 2 years and kept our home until we were absolutely sure we wanted this life. I would say the thing on your list that most is at the top of our list is the weather, laundry and one you didn’t list, medical care. Heck most of the others you have even in a permenant home. The bigger the space the more you use, maintenence is needed on anything and so on. A very important fact is if your living in it buy a unit that has full time features. Ours has insulated windows, no sweat, cold weather package, extra heavy tires and axles, it was built to live in not just for camping weekends. We hope everyone has as much fun as we do, our travels have taken us across the US 6 times and across most of Canada.
We replaced our WeBoost Drive 4G-M with a Maximum Signal Max Amp RV cell booster/repeater, and found we are getting solid cell signals and good data speeds on both Verizon and AT&T even in some places the WeBoost gave us little or nothing. The Max Amp inside antenna also gives us a signal throughout our motorhome, instead just within a few feet of the inside antenna like the WeBoost. We’re obviously very pleased with the improvement!
[…] just read an article in Drivin’ & Vibin’ titled “The 6 Worst Things About Full Time RV Living.” Having dealt with all six of these issues, here is my view on how to handle these “6 […]
Awesome! Thanks for sharing!
We wouldn’t trade this lifestyle for anything! We love it and the challenges are so minimal really. We hope to do this for many years to come! Happy Trails!
We completely understand! Living in an RV is constant maintenance! We also have issues with condensation with our camper from time to time. I dont think we have anywhere to put a dehumidifier though.
Haha!
Can’t have too many undies!
All great things to know here. We both work remote so the internet/phone suggestions are particularly important. I would thought dealing with the black tank and small refrigerator would bother more people. Trying to find a place to dump your tank isn’t a pain? Plus, if your in ‘who knows where’ wilderness where will you store your food? Most campers we see come with the standard dorm frig.
We’re thinking of going full time RV living in April 2018. Class A or C. So much to consider my brain hurts.
We aren’t full timers, but are often out for up to 6 weeks in our truck camper…possibly longer when I retire. Our Chevy 3500 is a wi-fi hot spot and does have 4G OnStar telcomm as long as it has an unblocked southern orientation. Laundry has yet to prove a problem. We learned to use attended fluff and dry services in our 1st trip to Europe. We went out 2 pillow cases full of laundry after being out about 10 days. We got it back in 2 days with a $400 bill. Ten days later we found an attended laundromat…dropped it off, went to lunch, shopped and returned in 3 hours and paid about $50 with a nice tip. We’ve done that same thing camping in just about the same 10 day cycle. We don’t get into many winter situations, but when we have the 30,000 BTU heater in our insulated Bigfoot is more than adequate,..and we have not experienced any interior moisture.