How we came to Van Life…

I loved my job.

I was passionate about my job, I lived and breathed it.

I loved the children I cared for, their happiness and wellbeing was always at the forefront of my mind.

I loved and respected the families of the children I cared for and I hope they were all able to see that.

I was a childminder.

But the rest of my life was not all in a good place.

Struggling with my mental health for years, I fought with low self esteem and fairly awful anxiety.

My physical health was taking the brunt of things from the rest of my life and I was in a constant battle with trying to lose weight.

On top of all that, my husband and I had been struggling for over ten years with fertility issues, and were desperate to have a family of our own but with no luck.

And I had zero time to do anything about any of the above, due to verging on complete burnout.

We also had debt up to our eyeballs due to the Covid situation and ploughing money into becoming foster carers, only to get zero support from our agency and it resulting in more heartbreak. (Perhaps that’s a story for another blog entry!)

And my husband and I worked 4 jobs between us to try and make ends meet. But it didn’t work, the pennies just didn’t stretch.

So, initially against my better judgment, we put our house up for sale. It was our only way out (and believe me we looked into everything) other than getting an IVA…we couldn’t face that. And the plan once the house sold, was to try out Van Life. Believe me I was a mass of wandering anxiety about this BUT I was also excited, because it meant freedom. No more mortgage, no more worrying about where the money was going to come from to pay it or how much it would go up by once our fixed rate ended in November 2023.

Selling the house was a battle in itself, initially going with an online estate agent to try and save money, but sadly they messed up a really great offer we had on the house. So we then switched to a local independent estate agent, who quite frankly struggled to get their finger out their ar*e and proactively try to sell the house. After getting a second agent onboard, the first one suddenly decided it was worth their while to try a bit harder (I suspect because having a second agent on board meant they would get a higher rate of commission once they sold the house) and after 5 months we got a finalised offer! We’d lost just short of £30k from the original offer with the online agent, as the housing market had dropped considerably over the past few months (sickening I know). But we seemed to have a solid offer from a great couple that we were glad to see the house go to.

It took another 4 months to finalise the sale due to another solicitor in the chain, who seemed in no rush whatsoever (a common trait of solicitors it seems). That time waiting was agonising as we struggled to scrape together enough money to survive. I don’t think there are many people who haven’t struggled through the cost of living crisis, and we certainly felt it.

We had to part with a huge amount of our belongings but my word it felt liberating, like a massive weight lifting off of my shoulders. All our large furniture and white goods went or were left to the new house owners and anything we didn’t definitely need for the future was sold, given away or taken to charity.

We were so relieved when we completed on the house sale. But my heart broke a little to say goodbye to the little ones I cared for as a childminder. They meant and still mean a lot to me and their parents had become my friends, they trusted me to care for the most loved and precious little people in their lives, and I trusted them because of this. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do but I knew ultimately in the grand scheme of things it was for the best for me and my husband on a whole. And importantly, I am very much determined to stay in touch with the families and remain a part of the children’s lives (and I’m so very lucky that the parents want this too.)

We spent what felt like forever scouring the internet for a van (converting one ourselves wasn’t an option, we had no space to be able to do it, despite being willing to give it go.) I literally put so many hours into searching multiple different places to find our ‘home on wheels’. We would find ones we liked but there would be important elements that just meant it wouldn’t work. E.g. we needed space for our dog, chocolate Labrador Lili, to be able to travel safely, and room for a toilet that was relatively private. Although I will add, nothing is private in a van & if you plan to spend time with your partner in one, you cannot be at all shy about them hearing what you’re up to on the loo…TMI I know but seriously it’s just the reality of it and may be helpful for some if I’m honest. But I at least wanted a door to shut so I could pretend he couldn’t hear anything! 😂

It’s probably worth mentioning at this point that we were after a van conversion rather that a motorhome or camper. With the idea that such a vehicle blends in a bit better and isn’t necessarily instantly recognisable as a vehicle that is being lived in. And with a long or extra long wheelbase, we would have a little more space than we would in something like a VW camper for example (although these have been a love of mine since I was a child, probably when my dream of living out of a van began!)

The first van we viewed, we really loved and the current owners were fantastic, and seemed pretty open about their reasoning behind selling it. The set up would have worked pretty well for us and Lili and the conversion/decor was great. But of course we had to consider the mechanical and bodywork side of things, so decided to have a mechanic look over it. Sadly, due to the age of the van and maybe it hadn’t been well cared for before it was owned by the people selling it I’m not sure? It needed thousands of pounds of work doing to it, to keep it road worthy and avoid it leaving us stranded. Due to the hard work, time and money the owners had put into the conversion, they couldn’t afford to sell it with the kind of reduction in price that meant we could afford to repair the van, so despite what our hearts said we had to conclude that it wasn’t for us.

Eventually we found one that looked pretty close to perfect on the ad, so we travelled to London (roughly an hour or so from where we were staying at my parent’s in Kent.) Wrongly or rightly, I fell in love with it, I can’t really explain why, other than the fact it really felt like I could see myself calling it home and my husband felt exactly the same. This time though, we had to take a risk on it mechanically, and being that it was a significantly younger vehicle than the previous one we had looked at, we hoped that this risk wouldn’t come back to bite us. (More on this in another blog post.)

And then began the next part of our journey, talouring the van to suit our needs, which consisted mostly of pretty small jobs.

EXCEPT safely fitting Lili’s dog crate for her to travel in. This was fitted by my husband and my Dad, my Dad is an ex merchant navy engineer and has many years behind him of tinkering with woodwork, mechanics, engineering etc etc and seems to have an idea for everything. So he and my husband fitted the crate beautifully and to be as safe as possible. Naturally Lili hates to travel in it…so it was time well spent. (Although I must say she doesn’t mind it when we’re not driving!) But as we take her travel safety and the legalities of transporting a dog in a vehicle very seriously, she still has to travel in it, despite the puppy dog eyes she gives and often refusing to get off the sofa before we travel anywhere. (We just do our best to help reduce her travel anxiety with natural remedies and gentle encouragement!)

The rest of the alterations were mostly cosmetic, I needed to make privacy blinds, strong magnets were required on the storage cupboard doors and we had to wait for our composting toilet to arrive from Germany. (Again I might write a little bit seperately about our toilet choice, as much as it doesn’t sound like the most exciting thing in the world to talk about, it’s an important choice when it comes to Van Life.)

There was no dramatic leaving ‘bricks and mortar’ life behind moment, no ‘f*ck you’ to our home town as we’d dreamed, our transition to van life has been a slowly but surely one…a very slowly but surely one! But as it stands I can offically say our van is where we feel most at home, it is our safe place and it holds the most important of our wordly possesions…Van Life just hasn’t happened as smoothly as we could have hoped. But this is why I’m here, writing this, because I’m not going to be all about the ‘Instagram perfect’ Van Life moments, the pretty scenery and the snuggly moments in the van. Yes they happen and they are fantastic, but they aren’t the full story nor are they really reality, especially when you’re full time in a van. So I hope to be able to be as honest as possible in future posts, which I think helps in many ways, especially for others who have hit methaphorical ‘bumps’ in the road when it comes to Van Life. It’s not fun looking at the idealistic pictures of Van Life when your van’s just let you down for example. But I’ll save that for my next post…