5 Disadvantages of Living in A Home on Wheels
If you clicked on this page, there is a good chance you know about our school bus conversion journey. We bought a used short school bus and redesigned it into a tiny home. Even though the time living in this skoolie has been short of a month, and we have not hit the road yet, there are still have a few disadvantages worth mentioning about tiny home living.
Whether you’re looking for advice or an in-depth look into this way of life, you came to the right place! Here we break down everything having to do with our experiences living in vehicle, even the downsides! Whether you’re here because of curiosity or you’re looking to live in a van, skoolie, or tiny home yourself, it’s important to weigh out the pros and cons. Although we love this lifestyle, there is definitely a fair share of downsides to consider. This is our list of downsides, from our short time living in this skoolie thus far.
1. Lack of space
Lack of space is obviously the major thing that dissatisfies people away from this way of life. This small space is so easy to get cluttered and not being on top of it leads to my insanity. Most of the time when you come into this lifestyle, you are downsizing your space, so purging everything that is not of use to you is the first step. It took me a while to get comfortable with this, because I had many attachments to things, especially my clothes! There came a HUGE headache living my first week in the bus with things I didn’t actually ever see myself using at least a few weeks ahead. Selling, donating, giving away, or just straight up throwing stuff away got much easier once I moved in. .
There is going to be quite a few things you deem useful, and that’s when organization comes in. It’s surprising how much you can fit into a tiny space with enough organization and mindful efficiency. If you’re a neat freak like me, then this will be a breeze for you. Think of your daily routine, and customize the living space accordingly. If not, you’ll quickly find your separate living essentials intermingling which becomes chaotic. This is why designing your space efficiently truly matters!
2. Prior conveniences now are a consistent responsibility
Living in a traveling tiny home, you become much more aware of your water usage and energy consumption. A standard American household has many automated comforts. Not having to worry about your waste after it’s flushed, heat in the winter, air conditioning in the summer and seemingly infinite amounts of water and electricity at your disposal. Living in a rig changes this completely. Currently, we have a casette toilet which requires dumping a few times a week along with a weekly deep clean. Our electricity comes from the sun, which can prove to be quite unreliable when weather conditions are not ideal. We fill our fresh water tank a few times a week from the house on the property where we currently reside. Although this makes things easy, there is the added task of running a hose to fill it rain or shine.
To note, all these new responsibilities are 100% worth the hassle because it’s cheaper than what you might pay in an average household, it increases knowledge in self-sufficiency, and there forms a deeper connection to nature. Though there are many advantages, we are focused on the disadvantages in this list.
3. Requires a decent sum of money to get started
A skoolie is considered the cheaper and most durable option of the nomadic traveling vehicles. But when it comes down to purchasing tools, materials, appliances, and home fixtures, this is where things can get pricey. There are most certainly ways to budget effectively. Creativity and planning can go along way to ensure the tiny home build is both comfortable and affordable, but generally the higher in price, the better quality of the product. We utilized money-saving practices as much as possible, but there were still large purchases that we just had to make.
As soon as we understood this path was for us, we saved a little from each paycheck until we could afford it. Once the time came to finally move in, there presented an opportunity to save more being no longer tied to rent and utilities.
4. Requires a lot of patience, learning and resilience.
Building a skoolie/van is like being a beginner plumber, woodworker, mechanic, and electrician all in one. It all comes down to research, utilizing your own technical thinking, then trial and error when applying these skills. There is an incredible amount of knowledge to acquire, and many mistakes to be made. Often times we had to scrap tedious work to start over, and redo the process in a way that was better functioning. It is easy to lose hope when things don’t go as planned, but hope is the driving force of your motivation. That is where patience is key.
Patience is like having no firm expectations on a particular outcome, and will keep you feeling prepared when things don’t work out accordingly. Resilience will help transcend those wary thoughts, and solidify your certainty that it may not work exactly as planned, but that it always will work somehow. It will keep you strong through the punches that come with building any big project. Look at this opportunity as building a foundation of important knowledge, then your mistakes become learning tools. Sometimes I even strive to make mistakes, because it shows that I am getting first hand experience and that I am growing.
5. Tiny home living is just simply not for everyone, and that’s okay.
Living in a school bus is surely unusual, that even some family members will look wide-eyed at me when I talk about this dream. There are many types of people out there, each with their own solution of getting to their unique destined paths.
A lightbulb went off when I discovered that people were successfully living in a home on wheels, and I knew deep down that it was something I deeply craved. The space being tiny was an added benefit so that I could take only what I could carry, that I was not owning excessive things which distracted me from my true purpose of life. It is a quiet, desolate lifestyle that I craved being an introvert. It provides a way to see and experience this big massive earth in the short lifespan given to us. Every new day can be wildly different which was alluring to my restless spirit, who couldn’t stand the monotony that a typical lifestyle brings. Lastly, bus life is a way to build important life skills, and knowledge pertaining to self-sustainability. Taking control of my own life, that even if society crashes and burns, I’ll still be able to keep moving.
I hope that I have shed more light into the disadvantages of living in a home on wheels. Although these notes are important to consider, do not let them deter you from the life your soul craves!
Namasté
The Road We Wander