The first time I walked into our used camper, everything was a shade of tan I can only describe as “old dental office.” Tan cabinets, tan valances, a tan-and-brown floral cushion pattern that belonged to somebody’s grandmother in 1998. I stood there with a cup of gas station coffee and thought, I cannot sleep here…
Three days into our first big trip, I opened the overhead cabinet above the stove and got hit in the face with a full box of pasta that had worked itself loose somewhere around a mountain pass in Colorado. That was the moment I stopped organizing our RV like it was a tiny apartment and…
I still remember unpacking for our first six-week trip and realizing the “closet” in our travel trailer was 14 inches wide. Fourteen. I’d packed like I was going on a normal vacation, and by day three my clothes were living in a duffel bag on the floor because there was nowhere else for them to…
The first curtains I hung in an RV lasted exactly one trip. I’d grabbed a cute boho set off clearance, hung them with the little clip rings that came in the package, and by the time we hit the first stretch of washboard gravel outside Moab, one panel had already worked its rings loose and…

The first night in our travel trailer, I woke up at 2 a.m. with my elbow wedged against the wall and a very clear realization: whoever designed this “queen” bed had never actually slept in it. RV bedrooms are a weird category of small space — smaller than most bedrooms, but somehow expected to double…

My friend Dana sold her house three years ago, moved into a 34-foot fifth wheel with her husband, and the first thing she told me after her first month full-time was that the hardest adjustment wasn’t the square footage — it was realizing every single upgrade she wanted came with a weight number attached to…

Nobody has ever finished a meal at an RV dinette booth and thought “wow, I want to sit here longer.” I lived with ours for two full seasons before I finally ripped it out of our 26-foot travel trailer — my knees hit the table every time I sat down, the bench cushions had gone…

My uncle parked his travel trailer under nothing but a leftover blue tarp for three winters before the roof seal finally gave out and he ended up with water damage that cost him more to fix than a decent shelter would have cost him upfront. That’s the story that comes up every single time someone…

Our RV bathroom is 24 square feet, and the first time I tried to shower in it I knocked my shampoo bottle, my toothbrush, and a half-full box of tissues into the shower pan within about ten seconds of each other. That’s the specific moment I realized RV bathroom storage isn’t a decorating problem —…