I plan more—and less—than ever before living in a van

Things I used to take for granted are no longer a given. Where is home. When will I get a new supply of fresh water. (I’d never even had this thought before hitting the road.) Is our pee jug full. If so, where can we responsibly empty it. Have we overstayed our welcome in this little town.

I’m a bit ashamed of how rarely I thought about my resource consumption in any meaningful way before we moved into our van. Water came out of the faucet. Heat and air conditioning from the thermostat. Laptop, Instant Pot, bluetooth speaker charge from the wall outlets.

Now I constantly run a calculation in the back of my brain, mostly subconscious—but I can call it up in a millisecond—figuring out how much power we can use before our next stint of driving and if there’s enough space in the gray water tank to wash dirty dishes and what the odds are that the next gas station we see with a water spigot will let us fill up.

These equations exhaust me. Once every couple of weeks I flop onto the bed, or curl up in a cab chair, and moan to Sean that I just want to live in a stationary place with a washroom that has unlimited hot water for a shower. Can you even imagine a bath?

But then I look out my kitchen window at an unimaginable view—the Statue of Liberty from Brooklyn street parking, minke whales from a Cape Breton campsite, a perfect sunset from the queue to board Newfoundland’s ferry—and a bath seems very unimportant.

And I remember that other things require less thought than ever.

While we’re kind of always considering where we can dispose of waste and renew our fresh tanks, we basically never worry about different logistics. Driving home between a workout and dinner to change clothes? My closet (and shower) is now in my car. Packing snacks for a long beach visit? My kitchen is also mobile. When exactly Scout last peed and how long we can be away from her? Not a big deal when the farthest we stray is a few miles on foot. Laundromat visits pass quickly when we can work from the parking lot. No cell service on a remote drive is no problem for Starlink. Commutes aren’t daunting because we have our entire house with us. 

We are more free than ever at the same time we are more restricted than ever. Since moving into a bright yellow ProMaster, I have never planned so much… and so little all at once.