Van Layouts

Our tiny traveling home is perfect. The layout works exactly right for us, everything has a place, and it is very comfortable to move around and live in, but it hasn't always been this way. The layout of our van has changed and changed, and changed again over the past year as we shift things around and learn what really works best for us. Here is some of the evolution of our tiny home.

 October 2015 we were vandwelling babies. We hadn't built any furniture into our van home, but we found a cute bookshelf at the antique store, and we had boards laying across the window sills to hold up the bed.

Our stove had no spot to stay, and our space was very cramped, but this was one of the first layouts we lived in after we moved into our van.

Further into the winter of 2015 we moved some things around, but we still hadn't built  any actual furniture. The bookshelf on this side of the van gave us more walking space, but it also covered the side door some. The wicker table underneath the bookshelf was there entirely to try to help stop the book shelf from turning over when we made sharp turns. Obviously not the best layout for our full time traveling home.

Finally we took the bookshelf out and began building actual furniture. This lowered the bed down to a more manageable place, and gave us actual dressers, so we were finally able to move out of our suitcases.

We built a bookshelf into the window, which we sill use to this day, but we also added a very flimsy, and not very convenient desk that was quickly removed from the van.

In a moment of decor inspiration I built this beautiful canopy in our home, which lasted about a week, when we realized that dividing 50 square feet in half with a curtain wall begins to feel awfully claustrophobic.

 A bit of rearranging again gave us a much bigger bed, as well as a cabinet under the bookshelf. This layout lasted the longest, since we were finally on the road and away from tools, but it only took a few months before we began dreaming of something new.

 Finally we get here, to the van layout of our dreams. With the bed right behind the drivers seat, that tucks away into an L shaped couch it opened up room for us to add full counter tops on either side of the back of the van. Plenty of cubbies were built to finally give everything a place. Floor space was opened up to make it easy and comfortable to walk around inside the van, and making us feel more like we were living in a real house. A water container sits above our sink giving us easy electricity free running water.

There are still a few problems. Our sink doesn't have a drain, the bed is often a pain to turn back into a couch, and the counter tops collect our junk that we forget to put away, but this is home, and I wouldn't have it any other way.