Our bus is one-of-a-kind because we started from scratch and had it built on a tour bus chassis. However, there are many different RVs on the market, at many different price ranges. Certainly lots of nice ones are for sale in the $100,000 range.

Your best bet is to visit a local RV dealer and look around. Look at both new and used ones, since colors and styles change from year to year. More important than surface issues like decor, though, is how well built and maintained the unit is. For more help with that, I again point you to the on-line discussion groups I mentioned two comments above this one.

Here’s one couple’s real life expenses:
http://www.adventure.1tree.net.....hreeyr.htm

Income in this lifestyle, just as in any other, comes from a variety of sources. Some folks work full-time, some work part-time, some are fully retired and living on pensions, social security, investment income, etc.

As for fuel mileage, many RVers manage that expense by modifying how far they drive on any given day. Some people travel only twice a year: once to their summer area, once to their winter home. Those two trips can be thousands of miles each. Others, like us, travel fairly constantly but only a short distance each time.

If you are interested in learning more specifics about how other people manage, I suggest two on-line discussion groups:

http://escapees.infopop.cc/eve/forums
http://www.rv.net/forum/

I often see that people who are free to opt out, are also “technical consultants” (whatever that means). I’m in the humanities. Guess I have to actually BE at work when I work. Otherwise I’d certainly “cyber commute” … if they’d let me.

So, how DO you pay for it? I’ll bet that RV gets very low gas mileage …

We’re right now considering upgrading to a much larger trailer… all the way up to a whole 17′. I can’t even fathom the space of a 39′ mobile home.. I’ve gotten so used to a very very small space.

– Cherie / http://www.technomadia.com

As for the laptops, all is revealed in the post linked by Louise in the comment immediately before yours, above.

@burro — We practice safe surfing around here. As a veteran information security professional of over 25 years, I can say that I have virtually no concerns whatsoever about crackers (in fact I’ve helped put several behind bars). Some of the security tools we use are outlined in the aforementioned post, as well.

-Sean

But you have created a very nicely uncluttered space that has gotten me thinking. You say you each have your own laptop. That certainly makes sense from a space-saving viewpoint. What make & model of laptops do you have, if you don’t mind my asking?

@Kristin: We access the Internet using a satellite dish that we carry with us on the bus. As long as have a clear view of the sky, we can get on-line. Very rarely, we use wireless. Sometimes an RV park provides the wifi, and sometimes an open network is close enough for us to use.

My husband Sean wrote extensively about how set up our computers, internet access and other techie stuff in this post:
http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com.....tment.html

You can clearly see the satellite dish on the roof in this post:
http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com.....oiler.html
Scroll down to the fourth photo.

Clutter can’t happen when you live in an RV. LOL! What’s worse is trying to keep that clutter from happening when you have children living with you. We home school our little ones, and it can be a challenge, but it is definitely paid off when the benefit of moving around freely.

The decision to go RV actually come about as a distant dream/wish, and then a horrible flood come in and wiped out our home and cars. FEMA come in and reimbursed us about %5 of our property’s worth and with that money we bought an old RV. Anything that we had left went straight to storage. We’ve been in our RV for about 6 months now, and really .. I can’t find a reason on why we didn’t do this earlier. It’s CHEAPER by far!!! Renting a house, or an apartment cannot possibly beat the expense of RV living. Honest!

The one thing that differs between you and I, Louise, is that you use organization drawers and I use velcro. LOL! Velcro is my friend! I use it to keep things like remote controls on the wall so they don’t get lost in a move, and I also put lots of things in the shower and close the shower door when we’re on the road. I use heavy rubber matting to pad breakable things, and I also use heavy cardboard with bubble wrap and foil on the outside. I’m sure there’s a name for it, but my husband gets it from his job, which they use to pack jet parts in and keep them safe from temperature changes. He brought home several huge sheets of it and cut them to fit the windows in the RV. We covered all the windows with it, so we stay cool in the warm, Texas, weather.

Although my husband does work, and we travel during his time off only, it’s necessary as we have small ones to care for, and a steady income is mandatory. However, I do make some small money on the side from time to time through soap making, and beading.

My mail is done through P.O. Box, as we have no “physical” address anymore. The one thing we’ve run into a very small dilemma over though is our drivers licenses. We don’t have an address to give most of the time, cause well… our RV IS our address … so we have to use the address of the Park we’re living at, at the time. That can be irritating. My internet service is solely based off of the park’s free available service, but we have been looking into different services that are unlimited and low cost. And of course, we each have a cell phone for communication with one another and family to keep in touch.

We don’t use diesel in this vehicle. It’s all regular gas. We haven’t traveled anywhere in about three months since prices have been so bad, but this June we’re going on a small trip to East Texas, and I’m looking forwards to it. It’s always really nice (and fun, still after half a year of doing it) to move in my home. LOL!

The others things we do to stay uncluttered … I took all of my DVD’s and put them int an album. I ditched the DVD covers. No use for them! I also have a full desktop computer, but it goes on the ground when we move, and when we’re not moving, it’s on a collapsible table top, that my husband built for me. So all I have to do is undo one hinge and it flattens flush to the wall.

We have a bulky TV right now, but soon as we save enough, we’re going to buy a flat screen and build a shelf over the cab area of the RV and mount it there. That will take up a lot less room. My computer’s monitor is flat screen and light, so that was a nice improvement.

We also travel with a kitty. He doesn’t care for the moving RV at all. But he’s grown used to it. He likes to sit with me on the couch when moving, or hide under the passenger chair in the cab area. LOL Poor lil’ guy. I’m sure it sounds like a huge growling monster to him when it starts. LOL!

I have only four cups, bowls, spoons, forks, knives, and plates and I take most everything I buy from the store OUT of the box and put it either into baggies or another storage container. That saves space in my cabinets. I bought a light weight vacuum with a detachable mini vac (built into the vacuum) that mounts to the wall, and is on a battery charger (cordless) so I can clean up easily and it takes up very little room. And in my bathroom, I bought one of those fruit baskets that hang from the ceiling and I put it in my bathroom. It holds my lotions, face washes, deodorant, girly things, hair brushes, medicine bottles and so forth. When we get ready to travel, I unhook the basket in the bathroom and move it to the towel rack in the shower, and hang it there. That way, if we hit a hard bump and the basket falls, all that stuff just falls into the shower. LOL Easy to clean up, but most of all – because it’s suspended from the ceiling, and easily movable, it saves a WHOLE lot of for me.

So far, this is what I’ve learned about living clutter free in a small space. But really, my life isn’t too terribly different from you! Our whole family REALLY enjoys living in an RV and the kids are constantly meeting new people, making new friends and have more penpals than I ever had in my life. LOL!

When someone asks me why I chose to go RV – I just say to them …

“Ever had an annoying neighbor? So annoying you wanted to move, but it cost too much to do it, and then there’s the packing an unpacking? Well, if someone/thing annoys me … I can drive away!”

ROFL!

The short answer, though, is that we are “retired” (whatever that means). It turns out that if you sell everything you own (almost) and do away with a fixed dwelling and all that entails, it’s pretty easy to live full-time on the road. It helps that we don’t have any children, and both of us worked our entire adult lives prior to hitting the road.

We can’t rule out the possibility that one or both of us will return to the workforce at some point in the future. But too many of our friends and family never made it to retirement, or at least were not retired for long, and we decided to “just do it,” as a popular advertisement went. Louise recently posted about this: http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com.....do-it.html

We don’t miss working much, and all of those intangibles that people claim to derive from their workplace come to us in spades through our volunteer work, which is very rewarding.

-Sean

@Jane — Regarding fuel mileage, we get about 7 miles per gallon of diesel. While that doesn’t sound like much, remember it’s our whole house we’re moving around. We keep fuel costs (and environmental concerns) down by not moving very far each day, spending more time at each stop if we can, and driving at a much more relaxed pace than the average person. I posted extensively about our environmental impact here: http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com.....n-day.html and here: http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com.....h-day.html

@Lee — No, we don’t generally crate the animals while traveling, although there are exceptions. The cats are very adept at moving around while underway and also hanging on when necessary. The dog usually sits on the cockpit floor at Louise’s feet, so there’s really no place for her to go if the ride gets bumpy or I have to brake hard. The fish tank gets its lid bungeed down, and rides in a tray with some microfiber towels to absorb any slop.

@CoffeeKim — The way I handled my sentimental stuff, and I had a lot of it (unlike Louise, I did not move frequently as a child, or an adult), was to photograph it before sending it on its way. Truly sentimental items were given to family members or close friends, and I have the pleasure of visiting it from time to time. I now have dozens of digital photos of plaques, mementos, souvenirs, awards, and even cherished furnishings and family heirlooms. I go through them periodically, and find that the memories they trigger are just as satisfying as having had the article to begin with, but without the clutter!

@Cate — We spent about two years “getting ready,” which, in our case, included design work and supervision of the conversion of our German-built tour bus into our dream home on wheels. I had the lion’s share of preparations, relieving myself of a lifetime of accumulated possessions (see above). But there was also work to be done in settling on a “domicile,” setting up mail forwarding service and the bill-paying service Louise mentioned above, stopping all the mail we could, etc.

@Daus — Diesel is our biggest expense. We use an average of about 3,500 gallons per year, which includes driving as well as running the generator and heater (see the posts I linked above). Perhaps 200 gallons of that is related to our Red Cross disaster relief work, and is reimbursed. With diesel now over $4 per gallon, that works out to around $13K per year or $1,100 per month. We spend very little money on camping fees, preferring to stay on free public lands whenever possible, and inexpensive state and federal parks, Elks lodges, and even commercial parking lots as needed.

@Anne — we think the absolute best gift for folks like us, living on the road, is a gift card to a retailer that the recipient likes and uses frequently. We’ve got our friends and families “trained” to send gift cards to Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Olive Garden, three places that we can find anywhere in the country and which we patronize often (something always needs to be fixed on the bus, and Olive Garden is our favorite chain restaurant).

-Sean
(Louise’s more cluttered, but always working on it, husband, bus driver, mechanic, and cook.)
http://OurOdyssey.BlogSpot.com

My dream is to someday live in one of these. I’m not sure yet that I’d want it to be mobile, though … I’ve moved about 15 times in my 25 years and there is something about the idea of actually staying somewhere that is incredibly appealing to me, even if it’s a long way off yet.

In the meantime, I’m starting to understand unclutteriness — I’ll be going for 3 months of camp with less than a car trunk full of stuff, which is something of an accomplishment for me