The First Step in Van Life: Visioning and Prioritizing

Before you buy your van or start building, take time to reflect of your own van life vision. Your van build should be based on your own needs and priorities, not someone else’s van life ideal.

Everybody and her brother is following the standard van-build process: heavy duty insulation, vinyl flooring, solar electric set up, cooktop and sink with plumbing, ceiling fan, all sorts of swivel and flip-down accessories. But before you begin, take some time to consider your needs. Visioning is the key to finding your own best version of the “van-life” lifestyle.

Trust me, it will save you a ton of time, energy and money. Perhaps it will save you some frustration and heartache, too.

No One Right Way

There is no “right way” to build out a van. And there is no one way to live or camp in it. The beauty of the “van-life” (and tiny home) movement is that people design their own spaces to meet their specific needs, rather than conforming to a pre-established societal ideal.  It isn’t about what you should do or have, it’s about what you actually need to live your happiest and most fulfilled life. 

As the “van-life” movement becomes more mainstream, there’s quite a bit of pressure to build your van in a particular way. Many vans have expensive features such as a full sink, shower, solar panels, and toilet (composting, of course!) There even seems to be a particular van aesthetic, white cupboards, blond wood, succulents in cute pots, and saddle blanket quilts. (Okay, I’ll admit, do sort of love this aesthetic…) However, before you start ordering all that expensive stuff, do yourself a favor and take a minute to consider your own version of van life and clarify your own individual needs.  

Vision-ing

There are soooo many ways to do this thing! Some folks stay in towns or cities, stealth camp and work “regular” jobs. Some boondock in the desert for weeks at a time. Some pick up and move to a new national or state park every few days or follow the snow… or the sun. Many plan their travels around an activity or hobby such as surfing or music festivals or climbing.  

How will YOU “van life”? This should dictate the design of your van.

So, take a walk, or sit quietly a while. If you are a couple, have a frank conversation over a lovely meal, or a delicious cup of coffee, or whatever works best for you.  Envision the life you are moving towards:

• What sorts of places will you visit?
• What do you see yourself doing in these places?
• How long will you be off-grid (if at all)?
• What range of climate and conditions will you live in?
• What will you eat? And how will you prepare it?
• How long will you be out before returning home, or will you live fully on the road?
• What social life will you have?
• What work will you do?

Now envision these things again– in the rain or cold, when it is growing dark and you are not sure where you will sleep, or on a humid summer afternoon when there are a ton of blackflies circling outside the van waiting for you to emerge. These things will happen. All of them. And your van should be designed to help you endure them. 

If you are brand new to camping and road tripping or find it hard to answer these questions, I suggest trying out “car camping life” first. Pack what you think you might need and take a few road trips. Sleep in different types of campgrounds, visit different size towns and cities, check out parks and trails and truck stops. Make note of what feels comfortable to you and what doesn’t, the cost of the travel you did, and what items you used most and least, etc.  

We’ve developed a simple planning doc to help you fully envision your van based on your own unique needs. But before you start, here’s an example of the visioning process.

A Real Life Example

Dan and I are veteran car campers. We are both teachers and have been lucky to be able to take long family road trips over many summers. We love the west and also love exploring wild places, far from crowds. We are not super social and our hobbies are pretty quiet: hiking, photography, writing, reading and rockhounding. (Well, I love rockhounding…. Dan, not so much).  

Our perfect van life looks like this: 

We travel slowly, never driving more than 4 hours a day. We visit smaller towns and less crowdy/touristy areas. We explore remote and beautiful places, drive rugged National Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management roads and use dispersed camping as a first choice. We camp for 3-4 days at a time with no electric or water hook ups. Then, because Dan is working remotely, we come into small or medium sized towns to use services (and wifi) at more developed town/state/county campgrounds.

We do lots of hiking,photography, writing, sketching and rockhounding. We will walk together every day (at least 10,000 fitbit steps!) and sometimes go backpacking for up to a week at a time.

In the van, we read before bed and sometimes watch TV together on Netflix or Hulu. 

We live OUT OF the van rather than IN it, cooking and eating mostly outside. We stealth camp only when needed… barely ever utilizing parking lot boondocking such as Walmart, Cracker Barrel, or Love’s.

We seek out unique and delicious local foods, eating out about once a week and punctuate our travels with deep-dive visits with family. We have NO interest in snow or cold weather camping and will follow the good weather south in the winter. (I, Perri, grew up in Florida and just don’t enjoy that stuff. After 20 some years in New England, I am sooo looking forward to not dealing with constant snow!) We stay cooler at high elevations and beside water in the summer. 

Oh, and we have a 12 year old dog, Milo, who has never been further than 50 miles from home and is not used to leash walking. It wasn’t exactly our plan to have Milo along, but he is ours and we are his and our vision is for him to stay healthy and happy and explore along with us. 

Now, our actual van-life will not go exactly as planned… even the shakedown trip didn’t go as planned as unforeseen family health concerns kept us in the Midwest and Great Lakes region, where there were fewer dispersed camping options and many more mosquitos and black flies.  But this vision definitely helped us clarify what was needed in our build.

And that, friends, is the point. If you don’t know where you are going, you probably won’t get there.

From Vision to Plan:

Based on our vision, these were our must haves and our solutions:

• Livable in moderately hot weather (Maxxair Deluxe Fan, homemade window coverings, cheap reflective windshield cover, floor insulation and minimal reflectix insulation behind walls. No heavy duty insulated needed as we will NOT be in cold weather for long.)
• Robust but simple power system (Jackery and an auxiliary battery that came with our van rather than full fledged solar set up which would have been much more expensive and difficult to set up)
• Access to WIFI for work (Unlimited Verizon plan with hotspots…thinking about StarLink but not quite ready to take that plunge)
• Minimal plumbing (No gray water tank or “real” sink, we will minimize water use instead)
• Minimal indoor kitchen (We’ll use our car camping stove and backpacking stove outside the van as much as possible with safe counter space available inside if needed)
• No toilet (Use pit toilets, the outdoors, and public bathrooms, have a bucket with lid for emergencies)
• No shower (We have a cheap sun shower for emergencies and plan to use State and County Parks and other options as needed)
• Reading space (Storage pouches by the bed, comfy back pillows)
• Work Space (Beds convert into a booth in case of rain or when Dan needs to Zoom, folding table and camp chairs for working outside while boondocking)
• Book storage (Behind the driver’s seat we have a full-on bookshelf for trail and rockhounding guides, maps and fiction)
• Gear Storage (Long space for backpacks and other gear in the bottom of the cupboard) 
• More Gear Storage (Space for an inexpensive screen tent, folding table and camp chairs)

You can always reassess:

One of the beautiful things about building your own van  is that you can UNbuild it, modifying as you go. Post-shakedown trip, we had few changes to make. While in Michigan, Dan and our brother in law, Mike, set to work making a chuck box for our kitchen gear. After the shakedown, we also unloaded our lovely blue ottoman to streamline our inside aisle.

End Results

There’s no denying it: Our low top van is a tight space for two people (and a large dog). But overall, we loved living OUT of the van while “shaking down”.  (Milo stayed home for the shakedown, so there will definitely be an update about how it goes for him.)

Overall, we are happy with our choices. Our van is simple and comfy. And we didn’t end up adding all sorts of unneeded and expensive items. If our needs change, we can expand our build by adding a more robust solar electrical system, a rooftop storage box, Starlink WiFi, a fiberglass high-top, a fully plumbed sink.

But for now, we’re good to go.  

Building a van? Here’s a planning page to help you develop your vision before you order one single thing!