a lot of people dream of quitting the rat race living a simple life or to coin the modern terminology today a minimalist life and living in a small space such as a caravan and motorhome canal boat or simply downsizing to a smaller flat or studio apartment i have been full-timing in my airstream for many years and i was in caravans before that
so i thought i'd give you a tour of my airstream and show you that to live simply to live this minimalist lifestyle by no means does that mean going without and by no means does that mean roughing it. right now it's november so we're in the winter and i would say when your full timing during the winter two things are pretty essential one is a hard standing
pitch so you're not dragging mud into your caravan or motorhome the whole time the second is a mains electric hookup i find that very useful in the winter. in the summer i go off grid and i've made a video about going upgrading my airstream i'll put a card down here and i'll put a link in the description below right now i'll take you inside and show you
around my airstream. so this is a european airstream 532 sadly not made anymore but the good news is that all the major uk manufacturers swift bailey elddis lunar and coachman they all make this layout it's called the classic two berth end wash room layout and the main advantage of this layout is the fact you have everything from a huge lounge kitchen
and a big washroom at the end in a fairly compact body shell which means you don't need such a large tow vehicle and you can go more places with it of course the downsides are you only have the one living zone which might be an issue if there's a couple and one of you wants to sleep on if you doesn't and of course the second payback for that
freedom is the fact that you need to make up your bed every night from the lounge you can have two singles and a double. i make up the double every night people say to me do you not get fed up with making the bed every night sometimes i do but you know what every evening i have to go through a ritual of taking the dog to the dog walk cleaning
my teeth changing into my jammies and extra five minutes to make up the bed it doesn't make a huge difference and the advantage of having all this extra space and the maneuverability and tow ability of a smaller caravan to me far outweighs the disadvantage of making up the bed so staying with the lounge area i'm going to show you what's under this seat which
will be a huge reassurance to those of you who are worried that it might be a little bit cold in the winter well look at this this is the central heating and hot water boiler it's a system called alde from sweden and it runs just like a domestic central heating system with a boiler there's a hot water tank in here
and there we have radiators all the way around the trailer with a lovely soft gentle silent heat that permeates the entire fabric of the caravan it runs off mains electricity we're plugged in at the moment and it runs off bottled gas okay staying in the front of the trailer now just show you some of the places that i put things so you have a drawer
you here that's underwear you don't need to see in there this drawer is technology cables hard drives and as a little tip i've started putting all the leads and stuff in these little freezer bags which just makes finding the lot easier this is the shoe and boot cupboard under the seats you may have noticed we have
the bedding as we get to the higher level many of you who caravan will already know that you should only put lighter items in the upper lockers for towing stability and if you store things there permanently it just means you don't have to keep faffing around and repacking when you sell on the road so this is tupperware's
food containers plastic bottles this one is t-shirts and jumpers put the light on really shouldn't i and then this one here i've got saucepans to source and the milk pans also in this one and these i love because these were originally my parents these are 50 years old and still going strong and milk
and on the other side i've got the tea spare tea coffee and snacks like the prunes and the nuts health health health right turning our attention now to the central unit here in the middle is where i keep my tablet my phone i need to tidy that up actually kitchen towel dog biscuits now along the top i have the fruit basket clothes pegs and dog
biscuits here is the table the table comes out of there cutlery draw and i just have six of everything really and very minimal number of utensils this is dougal's drawer of dougal's bits and pieces from towels to balls to combs rubbish and recycling not very
interesting but we've all got to do it then this is where i keep my handheld vacuum cleaner few books hats and gloves first aid kit pens and garlic the general everything drawer matches spirit level torch that kind of thing and it finally in here is my blender and large frying pan and a few food items everybody asks what this cupboard is, it's
really boring it's just the extendable aerial if you watch tv which i don't here fabulous stereo here and then this in the cupboard i've got herbal teas insulated mugs four small glasses for those four large glasses and four little dessert pots and some little bits and pieces that's all i
need are not these glasses especially small ones they are wine glasses they are whiskey tumblers juice glasses you don't need a huge array of stuff if you can get stuff that is multi-purpose all the better and then on this side four bowls also got a couple of these larger bowl suitable for pasta. unbreakable cafetiã¨re
favorite mugs especially my favorite mug, calmac, love it four small melamine plates four large melamine plates and finally my chopping board and my cheese grater next to the kettle spices tea mugs tea pot and tea. when you're on the road you just need to do that. next to the fridge in here we have oils pasta my water jug and breakfast
cereal, bits and pieces potatoes cocoa peanut butter and finally colander and sieve. this is brilliant steamer, you can boil potatoes and steam vegetables at the same time spiralizer which i just bought which is brilliant a potato ricer for making mash without lumps and then a larger teapot for when we have guests will excuse me before we
get to the bathroom just need to get lunch finally on the go because i'm starving cheers right before i show you around the bathroom i've just come outside to talk about the car the car makes an ideal place to store items that are not sensitive to the heat and the cold and you're not
going to need very often so for example spare paper towels dog food things like that they can go in the car right and finally into the bathroom where i have my wardrobe and in my wardrobe obviousy clothes a box to put my wellington boots and the ruck sack in which dougal travels on the motorbike a nice area here for toiletries sink under the sink
normally that's for my second lot of bedding but is empty at the moment because the beddings in the wash and then cleaning stuff below in this recess over the toilet just cleaning staff laundry liquid things like that somewhere to hang the motorbike helmet behind the toilet is a laundry bin and finally the shower compartment which during the
winter kind of doubles as a storage area where i keep my rucksacks with my computer camera gear and stuff like that in the summer you can put it in the car but in the winter because it's sensitive to the cold and you want to have it fairly close to hand i keep it there it's not ideal but i can't really think of anywhere else to put my computer
equipment just now that brings us to the end of the tour of my airstream hopefully show you that living simply does not mean going without and it certainly doesn't mean roughing it i will admit now that i have a corner of my mum's garage where i keep some of my stuff so at the moment my kite surfing kit, generator,
my deck chair for the summer they're all in my mum's garage because i'm not using them at the moment some people might say that's cheating but where are the rules how can i be cheating if there are no rules you make up your own rules you set your own parameters i hope to be making some more of these videos about how to live simply
the rate of about one a week for the next few weeks months years alongside my regular videos my vlogs and things that people have been enjoying so far if you have any questions any subject you'd like me to cover about living simply not necessarily caravan related then please leave them in the comments below not the dog in the comments on
underneath you're looking if you enjoyed this please give us a thumbs up and if you haven't then don't bother and obviously i'd be very grateful if you want to see more if you would hit that subscribe button that would be super so just leaves me to say thanks for tuning in
