One Texas Sweetheart

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Now That I Got My RV, Now What? Part 1

If you are thinking about going full time RV living or you decided to take the leap and still a bit unsure on things to do, or steps to take to get your RV ready for y’all’s full time living. Well in this post I will provide some important information, recommendations and necessities to help you. I have also realized that buying products at stores like Camping World are way over priced. All the stuff that we have needed we have mostly found on Amazon for more than half the cost. We have saved money buying through Amazon than at Camping World, hands down.

So here is a list of items that are a necessity:

Sewer Hose I would reccommend the longer one because, even though you may only need a certain length, you may have to move so you may need longer. Good thing about these hoses you can collapse them to make them smaller, like an accordion, but a hose.

Sewer Hose Wye Adapter This is to split the hose for an outside kitchen or for multiple tanks so you can dump them.

Sewer Hose Support Stand This one is fairly impprtant because you do want to make sure that whatever you are dumping from the tanks that it makes it there. I would also get some gloves to handle these items and a storage tote for storage.

Water Pressure Regulator This one is pretty self explanatory, its important to regulate your water pressure, highly reduces the risk if pipe combustion. Which can cause extensive water damage to your entire RV. So this is the time I say “better safe, than sorry”.

Water Hose Splitter Valve This one is also important so you can flush your black tank.

New Mattress ALL RV’s come with really crappy mattresses, trust me. If you would like a good nights sleep then go ahead and upgrade that bed topper they call a mattress.

There is more to come! I will provide more essential items in part 2! Stay tuned! Also, Thanks for reading!

RV Hacks and DIY

There is one hack that I have always kept in the back of my mind is to think “dual purpose” there are many things I have found to be very beneficial and super inexpensive.

One item for my kids is that I think all kids have is stuffed animals and such and maybe in a excessive amount, it could be just me, anyways, we did donate some but with the ones that didn’t want to be parted with I found a giant empty Storage Bean Bag and stuffed all of my girls stuffed animals in and zipped it up.

So now that not only de we have a place for all the stuffed things, they now have a seat to sit down and lounge on and when they want to have a party with the buddies then they all come out and then eventually get all picked up with constant encouragement. It’s a daily thing.

Another one that I am so happy that I bought was a Over The Sink Dish Rack. Doing dishes in a RV you are typically THE dish washer. There is no appliance that you just put dishes in and press a start button. I do know they exist but it isn’t standard.

If only…..okay nice thought….moving on.

In our RV we have an island and not a lot of counter space, so with this dish rack I now can use both sides of my sink and have counter space as well. I absolutely love it and I would recommend to everyone RV or House. It also has a paper towel holder so thats another thing that I can save space with. It’s a complete game changer.

I also made use of organization caddy’s for vanity items such as perfume and makeup. Also in the bathroom for first aid and medicine. Even in the shower I was able to implement more space for bathing necessities with a Shower Caddy.

I made our bathroom look very close to a residential bathroom. I added a shower rod and shower curtain to provide more privacy. Which is important for any family with one bathroom.

I also have storage totes for all of our basement storage. It makes things very easy and also in case of any water damage it can be mostly protected. I recommend these full heartedly. I also purchased a couple of Shoe Organizer , I use these for shoes and storage of miscellaneous items. It’s been super helpful.

Making use of your space is very important I have started using all of these items to make life a bit organized. I am sure it comes easy for a lot of people but I had to do research and also reach out to other full timers to get ideas. So I want to pass on my knowledge and what I have learned in trying to make the most out of small spaces and remembering to always find items that have dual purpose.

One DIY item that you can get 2 for 1 are the air filters. The air filters that come with the RV in my personal opinion, garbage! They are just a piece of foam that you have to clean frequently. So we decided to try something else. We removed the foam filter garbage and put the plastic cover filter back on and got a 16x20x1 Air Filter, Cut the filter in half and then got another piece of siding from a Amazon box and taped it up to the ac with masking tape. It holds up very well. We change them every 3 months or so. Way easier!!

If you have any questions, I’d love to help. Reach out to me in the comments. I also plan to do a video.

Cooking In An RV

For many non-RVers the main question I get asked is how I cook in such a small place. I mean I do miss having a full size kitchen, but I have made do and still continue to make delicious meals for the entire family. Definitely not a thanksgiving dinner, but we make it work. So most of all RVs come with a small gas pilot stove. So on mine I have 3 burners and a small oven. I also implement a Slow Cooker and a 10-in-1 Air Fryer. The one of a couple issues I face is flipping the breaker, because our rig is a 50 AMP. My husband also was an electrician and installed additional plug for overcrowded circuits. So that has helped, less breaker flipage and losing power. So for the most part I do use the gas stove and mainly do things 1-2 things at a time. Like if you wanted to boil noodles it would take a little longer, but still gets cooked. Another issue is cooking in the RV in summer months. It’s gets hotter and the A/Cs have a hard time keeping up. I would also consider if your allowed to is get a small window unit A/C to help with the heat. Or better yet cook OUTSIDE. I mean who doesn’t like BBQ, grilling, or smoked meat. Finding things for outside, its a good thing to try and find things that are portable. You have so many options. I have provided a few of the things I do and use. By the way, Texas is a great place for BBQ. If you ever make it to Texas ask some locals and they can guide to a good place. Texans love their BBQ.

Fun Things To Do With Kids Living In a RV

When deciding to go full-time we thought it would be fun for all of us. Even though for most of it we have been stationary, we have and continue to have fun with endless joy and creating life-long memories.

Here are some captures of my family during the 3 years of full-time RV living:

There is so many things you can do with family, especially if you are in a city or close by to one. There is a lot of options. We haven’t really ventured out to much as of late, due to COVID-19, but we are starting to get back of the groove of things. More normalcy.

As of right now, my husband and I are getting married legally, we have been common-law for nearly 13 years. Now we are finally getting hitched, and planning a wedding reception right outside our RV. Which takes place next month.

From birthday parties to holidays we have made it work, with way less space and had a blast doing it. We do plan to do more traveling so when doing that the family can experience so much more such as culture, food and history.

We hope to do all of these things in the very near future, such as visiting the capital of Texas, here in Austin and explore some nature, such as surrounding state parks and rivers and lakes. I believe just getting out in nature is good for our soul. Do you like to go out in nature? What family activities do y’all like to do? Please share in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

Thank you for stopping by and reading. Stay tuned for more content. Hope y’all have a blessed and fulfilled day!

Some things we did as a family. Beach time to birthdays to holidays.

Health and Fitness in a RV

So this was, and sometimes is my major obstacle, exercising in a RV. I mean its on wheels, imagine exercising in something like a van or a truck. The whole thing is gonna bounce. Even though we have stabilizers, it still bounces. Even with regular activities. Walking, kids playing, falling (if that happens often for you, it does for me)…ummm….adult time. (Of course, that too!) To the outdoors I went, it took me awhile to gain up enough confidence to go exercise outside. That was just my own insecurities that I have grown past. Yay me! Ha, ha! Even with it raining outside I pull out the awning and still jump rope. If was really bad outside, I will just do some floor exercises with my girls inside the RV. Exercises are short but it is also time spent with the my kids, usually always ends up in a giggle party. Other days I skip the exercise. My house work then becomes my workout.

I started mainly jump roping and taking supplements. The supplements that I have started are called Plexus. I don’t know if you have heard of them, I encourage you to take a look, they are amazing. I know that there are others out there but, these have not disappointed me at all. I have been able to lose a lot of weight and also get my energy back, especailly for my two young ones. Plus they have supplements for the entire family. Kiddos, too!

With taking these supplements and sticking to just jump roping and stretches. I have been doing amazing! I never felt better in my life! If you are one that may struggle with this or your health. I would love to help you! Reach out to me. I still have a ways to go but I know I am on the right path, would like to join me? We can provide encouragement and support for each other.

These are the supplements that I started and have changed my life.

If you already use Plexus, I would love to hear your testimony, and what you accomplished so far. Please reach out to me. Again as always thank you so much for reading and until next time. Be well!

Now I Got My RV, Now What? Part 2

Welcome back! So here is part two of the essentials to RV living. All of these items are important so you can maintain your entire RV. Also I have more to come, I have some hacks and DIY things that you can do to save money as well, but will save that for another post. So stay tuned. If you missed part 1 check it out!

So let’s continue with some more important items.

Black Water Hose Having this water hose will help distinguish between your drinking water hose and your water hose for the black tank flush or other variest things you need a regular water hose for. ie. watering plants, yard or just some water fun.

Then we have your Water Hose For Drinking Water this is the hose that has be safe for drinking, which are mostly white or blue in color. As before it is important to get a little more than you need in length because all sites are different, one place you maybe need a 25 ft hose and others you may need 50 ft, so I would recommend that you get the longest just so you don’t have to purchase another one down the road.

It is also important to filter our water, but this is where things get tricky, because in this aspect of RV’s the water filtration varies, but can be the same in some. So with ours we were able to find our RV Water Filter in a 4 pack instead of buying individually at Camping World or Walmart. Money saver there. It also advised to change those water filters every 3 months or so. Especially if you live in a place that has crazy weather like Texas. It’s important to keep your drinking water safe for drinking.

So I am going to go more in depth with the tanks on board the RV. There is a black tank and a gray tank. The gray tank is where typically your shower and sink water go to and your black tank is, well black and stinky. If you catch my drift. If you didn’t then its where the deposits made in the toilet go. Some RV’s have outside kitchens and they have separate valves to pull on to release to dump. With the black tank, it is recommended that you do a black tank flush regularly, to dump anything that is sticking to the walls of the tank. When performing a black tank flush is also advised to add a RV Toilet Treatment to the tank to help break up toilet paper and any other things that need to broken down to dump. We use multiple of things to help, but the main one is the black tank pods.

RV toilet paper, is the last thing that is an obvious essential. We ourselves use Charmin but it is recommended to use RV toilet paper which entails 1-2 ply. Not a fan so, I will leave that to your discretion. Just keep in mind, you black tank flushes pretty regularly with the drop in treatments. We haven’t had any issues, yet. If we do I’m sure I’ll be writing about it to y’all. But I hope not, because that would be a really expensive fix.

I believe I have covered all the essentials to get you ready to go full time in your RV, I hope this information has been helpful. Thank you so much for reading.

Our Reasons Why And What We Accomplished So Far….

So it wasn’t our initial plan to live in a RV, but with pricing everything we learned that we would honestly be saving money. So I immediately came up with a goal, in 6 years in the RV we will be debt free, so that’s 3 more years. Yes, living in a RV full time can be way cheaper than buying a house. I have read about many of couples and families that have became DEBT FREE living full time in a RV for a few years or more.

So obviously there are ways to do this. One way is buy new and make payments which depends on your down payment and your credit score. Most RV payments don’t really exceed $500 a month. Then there is the cost of where you are gonna put it and pay that fee as well. Which most RV parks costs are, you pay for the lot and electricity and water and cable is included. Others you have to pay all utilities. They all vary in how they charge, what they charge.

There is also boondocking, which means you fill your water tank and go out into the wilderness and only come back into civilization for dumping and refilling tanks. We haven’t done any boondocking but maybe one day! I would like to experience it. What are your thought on boondocking? Would you try it?

Another way is to buy your RV used, then you don’t have to worry an RV payment you just have to worry about the fee for having your RV at an RV Park. Or pay nothing at all and boondock, or if you have family that has some land that you can hook up to then that’s a money saver as well. I would give family a little something though.

So in the three years we have lived full time in the RV we have eliminated and paid off 3 credit cards, that were pretty high limits. So that is hundreds of dollars saved. So that money saved is now going towards paying more debt off. The RV loan and the car loan. Then we are done with debt. Even by paying off the debt credit scores go up so our next steps would be to save up for a house. So it is obtainable living an RV just because everything is cheaper in cost. What we have paid has been so less costly then a mortgage, that we could have struggled to pay, just due to all the accrued debt. So we have something to look forward to and to pursue with way less anxiety about being able to afford it. YAY to being debt free!!

So I would love to hear your thoughts….if you could, would you go full time RV living? In your opinion, do think becoming debt-free is obtainable for you, if you went full time living?

Please leave a comment and share your thoughts, and as always thank you so much for reading and I look forward to hearing from you. Hope you have a blessed day!

Weather Conditions in a RV

So being in our RV during crazy weather definitely has happened, I mean we live in Texas, weather here is like a bi-polar Mother Nature. From to heavy rain, flooding, hail to ice and snow we have nearly seen it all. With rain it gets super loud inside the RV, like extremely loud. Thunder and lightning strikes are like mini earthquakes. I wouldn’t say all the time, but it has happened a few times. If you know Texas storms then, you know what I mean.

With flooding, we didn’t get it that bad, we didn’t float away anywhere. Snow and ice was crappy. So side note those people that do full time in cold states or countries. I tip my hat to y’all. We have had one extremely cold winter in Texas, others have been more bearable.

This was one of the hurricanes that pushed inland pretty bad, I honestly don’t remember the name of it. My apologies. There have been many.

Winter storm in Texas had in February 2021

So this winter storm I mentioned right above was our coldest winter in the RV. It was insane. Good thing is that we didn’t lose power, like at all. We just lost our water and we also had to make sure we did not run out of propane. Propane fuels the furnace. Luckily we stayed warm. We had no running water for a week due to the water hose freezing. We had drinking water, so that was a good thing. Downfall was everyone was starting to smell. Let me tell you that when you lose any basic necessities for a little bit, and you get it back, you feel a bit more appreciative of the simplest things we at times take for granted. We had put a heated water hose so we were able to get back in the water business so the family can bathe. Lord knows. We recommend them completely. It saved us. If you are full time already and don’t have one, you should get one, just for the what if. You know? Also since we didn’t lose power, we were still prepared for the what if. We had plenty of rechargeable batteries and also solar lanterns.

Moving the RV to the RV Park

So when my husband took his new job in Houston, that’s where we purchased our RV, luckily there was an RV park right behind his work. It was super convenient! He could have literally could have walked to work. HA! So unfortunately we did not have a truck to attach it to transport the RV to the park, so we had to pay someone to move our RV. It was about $300 to move it. We got a spot and had it transported. One major thing that really sucked was that the park was a “adult oriented” park so in other words, they don’t like children. They didn’t allow school-aged kids at the park. Our daughter at the time was 4 years old, so not quite ‘school-aged’, so we knew we had at least a year to find somewhere else to live. So around this time Houston was still dealing with the aftermath of Harvey. Most of downtown Houston was underwater. It was crazy. There was quite a bit of FEMA travel trailers there for people that were getting help from FEMA, so that was a good thing. Then they got tired of kids being on property so they told FEMA to pick up the trailers. Kid-haters, I suppose. People, am I right!? I mean, when you go camping or “glamping” (camping in a RV) it is a family thing, not just an adult thing, you know? What are your thoughts on camping? What is it to you? Do you think it’s a family thing to do? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Anyways, so some parks have amenities, which is awesome! Some are more family oriented, and it can be a blast every weekend. But, this park, eh! Definitely adult oriented. It was nice though. They did offer cable and WiFi, but it wasn’t very good. Honestly, they really didn’t have the equipment to make it accessible, and they didn’t care to fix it. Funny thing is as soon as it was my daughters 5th birthday in October, they went ahead and put a move out date on our account. SMH, it wasn’t even a new school year, she wouldn’t start until that following August, so we had a little more time to find a new place.

I do have to say that living full time in a RV you come across some amazing people, from all walks of life. It has been so enjoyable. I would even say refreshing, just to be around more like minded people, especially people that have made the choice of living full time in a RV.

Which we did up finding, and it was not behind my husbands work. We ending up moving further out which in my eyes was better. I am not huge city girl. I like small towns. Makes me think of that one Journey song. “Don’t Stop Believing”. Houston/Katy area honestly scared the crap out of me. More Houston, than Katy. We moved to Brookshire, Texas. The RV park was AMAZING. The other residents and the ladies in the office were really great people. I was sad when we decided to move yet again…..this time is was to Austin, Texas. Still here now and no complaints, besides price, but Austin is an expensive place to live.

Houston West RV Park
Another park we lived at after our oldest turned ‘school-aged’

The Video Tour

Here is the video of when we were still at the dealership, checking everything inside. We decided to go through a dealership because it was more convenient for our needs. Plus you get warranty on the darn thing. You can also buy used and use it as is, or even buy used and completely remodel it. I have seen some amazing transformations. I also have been considering doing the same. I hope to one day, honestly. Add more comfort to this home on wheels. So without further ado……here is our home on wheels.

Side note: don’t mind my silliness.