Being on the road for months at a time challenges us to be organized. We start by making our dining room table our staging area. Everything we know we’ll need in the RV, we’ll put there.
As we plan our trip, we make sure we have enough of our everyday items so we don’t have to buy them along the way—especially since we may be in areas without a Walmart for its good prices: prescriptions, OTC items and supplements, cosmetics, deodorant, toothpaste, shampoo, and razors, just to name a few. We also stop at the bank for rolls of quarters for doing laundry on the road.
We also make a list of birthdays and anniversaries we want to remember and buy cards and gifts, wrapping them ahead of time, so we can mail on the road. On our Canadian trip, we’ll be mailing birthday packages before we leave.
clothing
Clothing is a challenge too, especially if we’re going to be changing seasons while on the road. For me, figuring out what I’ll want to wear for the next 2 months is my biggest challenge. We’ve always taken clothes we never wear, but Barney tells me not to worry, we have lots of space. For storing unneeded clothes, we have these storage bins that we can store under the sofa.
boxes to fill 
boxes filled and ready to go
Bulkier items, such as coats and warmer blankets, go in larger bins that have a home in the truck.
Shoes are stored in this divided footstool that we found at The Container Store.
food
The week before we leave, I start cooking grocery shopping and cooking. Our goal is to have ready a good supply of food ready to warm up or eat cold, especially my breakfast vegetable meatballs and sweet potato muffins. We know we’ll be cooking as we travel so have pans available to cook our basics, but we don’t want to be cooking the first week or so.
Also, we stock up on our cooking staples before we leave, especially our favorite Greenwise organic salsa from Publix, our local grocery store. For our seasonings, I put small, round labels on the lids and then print the seasoning name on the labels so I can find them easily when we cooking. We have these bins for storing dry items in the kitchen pantry. They stay in place because they sit on sticky pads on the shelves.
For traveling, we have kitchen items that stay in the RV, many of them we bought at a restaurant supply store: pots and pans, silverware, cooking utensils, measuring cups and spoons, paper towel holder, and cleaning supplies. While we do carry a couple of glass plates and cereal bowls, most of our plates and bowls are heavy duty paper so we can throw away and not have to use fresh water to wash.
What we do bring with us from home are our iced tea maker, along with bags of loose tea, and my Keurig coffee maker. Barney suggested I buy a Keurig for the RV, but I’m not ready for that unnecessary expense yet. I also stock up on K-cups of favorite coffee (dark roast) and Starbucks hot chocolate K-cups. Target often has the best buys on large boxes of my favorite coffee.
roasting marshmallows
My other food love that goes with us on trips is marshmallows for roasting over an open fire. Barney doesn’t appreciate them but bought collapsible sticks for me to use. Sometimes we have wood so he builds a fire for me.
But usually I ask other campers if I can share their fire since we don’t carry firewood with us. I always offer to share our marshmallows and sticks, but usually they don’t take me up on the treats. This has been a great way to meet other campers around us!
storing RV between trips
While we’re home and need a place to park our RV, some dear friends, Tom and Sintya, let us store our RV on a corner of their property. Sometimes we come up with excuses to go to the RV just so we can see them more!
When we were visiting Matt and Peggy in Truckee, Ca., in June 2019, we needed a place to park our RV while we stayed in their home. Some long-time friends from Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, Ca., Bill and Joanie, let us slide in our RV next to their motor home at their home just outside of Truckee. Bears in the area looking for food meant we had to remove anything with a smell from the RV—including spices and my marshmallows!
We are so grateful for these generous friends who share what they have with others.
