Author: trailergirlsguide

So, you have your rig and you’re getting ready to pack. How exciting! Isn’t it great not to be packing a suitcase? That is, until you look inside a trailer or RV closet and you wonder how the heck you’re going to pack it. Here are some tricks I’ve learned over the years mostly from closet fails. I hope they are helpful to you. Let me begin by saying we’ve never had a rig with one of those fancy 5th wheel type bedrooms that have a big closet and a dresser. We’ve always had some sort of funky closet situation that we’ve made work.

The picture above is not terribly unlike our current master bedroom. I would used my own, but the room is so small, it’s hard to get a decent picture. This is one hijacked from a trailer ad for a Kodiak trailer (same brand as ours). We’ll use this for our example of a “typical” closet as I’ve seen lots that are similar.

The first problem is, the closets are short. My husband is tall. So, if he wants to pack a dress shirt, the closet is too short for the shirt and it wrinkles at the bottom. So, if he packs a dress shirt (and by dress shirt, I mean something with a collar like a Hawaiian shirt – dressy is a relative term!), he hangs them in our bunk house closet/ coat closet that’s a little longer. If I pack a dress I fold it in half and hang it over the center of a hanger. I usually don’t bother with dresses though. I end up hanging up much more that I would in my closet at home. For instance, I hang up jeans, sweatshirts, etc because there are no drawers. Shorts are a problem if you need to stack them inside of your closet. During the traveling, they tend to fall over. I have been known to hang my shorts on skirt hangers. My family thinks that’s a little OCD, but it works!

Hangers are another problem. When you’re traveling down the road, you create an earthquake. Your clothes slide right off the hangers and make a big heap in the bottom of the closet – very annoying! I have found that the velvet covered hangers help keep clothes in place. You can buy these just about anywhere such as Target, Home Goods, or if you want a lot of them, Costco has a big box for about $10.

We have also had problems with our coat closet on the road. We would arrive at our destination only to find everything had fallen to the bottom of the closet including the hangers. So, we bought some hotel hangers from Amazon. Problem solved! Trailers should just come with these already installed.

Small items like socks and underwear are also a problem if you don’t have drawers. In our old trailer, I put small sterilite drawers in each closet. Our current rig has some storage over the bed and I put baskets over head. You’ll want to measure your storage space and find something that works for you and what you need to store.

Shoes are another problem. I love the show “Big Time RV.” It makes me laugh every time they have ladies on there that talk about bringing lots of shoes on an RV trip! I love shoes just as much as the next gal, but when I’m on an RV trip, my rule of thumb is bring the functional shoes needed for the planned activities (i.e hiking boots, flip flops for the beach, dog walking shoes, etc.). After that, for “outfits”, unless I have a special occasion (rare on an RV trip!), I make sure whatever shoes I bring go with multiple outfits. Stinky shoes can cause major closet problems! All stinky or potentially stinky shoes should ride in the storage under the trailer or use the storage under a dinette seat for things like that. We put our hiking boots, back packs, and trekking poles in the dinette seat … after they air out outside.

Sometimes closets take on a little musty smell. The sneaker balls you can get from stores that sell athletic shoes are a big help. Speaking of stink … let’s talk about dirty laundry. Don’t put it back in your closet! EEEW! We use the under bed storage area (Lots of beds lift up and there’s storage under neath. We had drawers built in to our storage area for the laundry. I don’t love doing laundry on the road. So, when we’re on a longer trip, we fold our dirty laundry so it doesn’t take up too much space. In our old trailer, we had a cool hatch to the underneath storage area that we put our laundry in. We could also send our son in to smash it down when he was little.

When packing our rig, we use collapsable crates. We keep them in the living room at home when we’re on the road and then, unpack with them too. We used to tell the kids they could only pack what fit in their crates. It wasn’t long before they figured out they could make more than one trip to the trailer and fill the crate up two or three times! They also learned, they’d have to crate it all back in and put it away after the trip. At a young age, we gave them packing lists and had them pack themselves. This taught them a lot about packing and being responsible for their own stuff. I won’t say that it was a perfect system. I think we’ve had to stop and buy underwear on the way to our destination for 3 out of 4 of us over the years. I won’t say who forgot their underwear!

I hope this has helped you deal with your weird RV closet. RV closets are weird and not really ideal. Thinking through your wardrobe and storage needs (i.e. do you need someplace to corral your socks and underwear?) and then setting up accordingly will make your camping experience less frustrating where clothes are concerned. I’ll take a weird trailer closet over a suitcase any day!

Next Trailer Girl blog post – How we learned that the awning was the most expensive part of the trailer. A lesson learned the hard way.

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat. I have no intention of telling you how to get your rig ready to go where hitches, sway bars, or vent covers are concerned. You can find plenty of good information about that just about anywhere! I’m all about the inside of the rig! No one tells you anything about that!

First of all, you need to put yourself into the mindset that you are preparing for a giant earthquake every time you drive your rig to a new place. You know when they say on the airplane, “Contents may have shifted during flight?” Your contents WILL shift during travel! So, figure out ways to store things where they won’t slide off of counters and spill, break, or get destroyed. For instance, I have a spot on my counter where I can wedge the coffee pot and the utensil holder in between the stove and the window valence and it doesn’t move at all. Inside my cupboards I use “cabinet binz” (available lots of places like the Container Store, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Home Goods) and put things that might spill like wine, olive oil, etc in those. My avocados ride in my napkin basket, and my bananas ride in the sink. Think about your stuff and how you’ll keep it from causing you extra work when you set up. Refrigerator bars and cupboard bars from Camping World are a big help too!

I have heard that Corelle dishes are supposed to be tacky. Whatever! They are the bomb for RVing! They stack nice and they are pretty hard to break. Although, we managed to put them into our new rig wrong (plates on a little shelf – don’t do it!). They slammed into the cupboard door and the door opened and they didn’t just break on the floor. They shattered! We lost 2 or 3 plates out of 8 or 10. We still have plenty, we rearranged them and haven’t had any problems since. We’ve been using the same ones for 15 years of earthquakes! In our newer rig, our mugs are in a cupboard. They have gotten more chipped. In old rig, they had a drawer and they fared better. In my next rig, I’m going to find a mug drawer and get new mugs! I figure after 15-20 years of use, it’s probably OK.

Line your cupboards and drawers with the rubber stuff from Walmart that keeps things from sliding. I forget what it’s called, but you can find it by the contact paper. (Also near by – the Corelle dishes!) It doesn’t actually stick down with adhesive so you can adjust it. It helps keep things from sliding all over the place.

There will be things you’ll have to straighten up every time you travel. For us, it’s the medicine cabinet and I’ve been deemed, “The Straightening Up Fairy” because I usually am the one who cares the most about things standing up straight. My OCD kind of works for other people sometimes!

When you are putting things into your rig to set it up, think about lessening your work load. You don’t want to spend a ton of time packing before a trip! All you want to have to load is clothes, food, and things you’ll use on that one particular trip. You don’t want to load pots and pans, towels, etc every single time. What a pain! It’ll suck the fun out of your trip!

Also, you’re going to be camping, or as we like to call it, “fake camping,” but that’s no reason to rough it! You just bought a nice rig so camping would be more comfortable. Don’t make it too much work or uncomfortable.

For instance, don’t put your hand me down beat up pots and pans in your rig. Most likely you’ll be washing by hand. The last thing you want to do is have to scrub stuck on scrambled eggs or some other stuck on food out of your pan. You don’t have to spend a ton of money on fancy name brand pots and pans, but do invest in some decent non-stick cookware. Also, make sure you have utensils you use frequently like your favorite type of cooking knives, garlic press, etc. – whatever it is that works for YOU! Cooking shouldn’t be more work than it is at home because you don’t have the right stuff! A lot of RVers use slow cookers. I have yet to have a rig where I have the space for one, but it can be a great way to have your dinner waiting for you after a day of exploring. One caveat to my “don’t use beat up pots and pans rule” is if you’re going to cook something like clams that will scratch up your pot. Then, put your most beat up pan under a dinette seat or in the storage underneath your rig, and get it out when you’re going to cook something that will wreck your nice stuff.

You know how you take your old, crummy bath towels, and turn them into garage towels? Don’t make your rig purgatory for garage towels! Spend the extra few bucks and get some quick drying bath towels. Whatever you do, don’t go buying some thick, luxury Egyptian cotton towels! You’ll never have a dry towel after your first shower! RV’s have a way of retaining moisture and it’s really hard to get your towels dry! Also, buy extra hand towels. When your entire family is using one trailer bathroom, you’ll be amazed at how fast it’s wet and clammy! YUCK! I live in the Pacific Northwest and do much of my RVing here. It is the land of cold, wet, clammy towels! An old RVer once told me, “Buy cheap towels!” I had no idea what she was talking about and totally dismissed it. It took me a while to figure out that she was trying to tell me that cheap towels dry faster. Now, they’ve invented quick dry towels that are a little softer and thicker than cheap towels. And, they’re not all that expensive!

Many trailer mattresses are funky sizes. You might think you’re stuck with whatever sheets are available at RV shops and dealers. I hate those sheets! They’re microfiber and feel horrible! If you’re a microfiber fan, cool! Skip this paragraph! I am a big fan of jersey sheets. They stretch and fit odd sized mattresses. On my short queen, I use full size sheets and the bottom sheet is nice and tight instead of being all bunchy. For the longest time the best ones I could find were at Walmart. (I hate going to Walmart! It is a necessary evil if you have an RV, I think!). My daughter recently found some at Macy’s in their Martha Stewart section. If you’re avoiding Walmart, check out Macy’s. The mattress itself is a whole other blog topic and we’ll get to that later.

When decorating/personalizing your rig, think about things that make you happy such as pictures of your family or places you’ve been. Think about things that will make you more comfortable like throw pillows or throw blankets. I think it’s hilarious that trailer brochures tout their bed spreads as selling points. They are the first thing to get thrown out the door for me! I love quilts, pillow shams, cozy throws for the end of the bed. The big thing is, your rig needs to be YOUR happy place! Anyone in my family will tell you that as soon as my trailer is set up and I’m sitting inside, I’m in my happy place and it doesn’t really matter where it’s parked. I know I’m away from the stresses of home and work and I start to relax just by sitting there! Part of that is because it’s set up how I love it! Do the same for your rig! Have fun! Happy set up!

Next blog post: What to do with your clothes in those weird RV closets!

I love RV shows!  You might say I’m an RV show geek!  My husband and I go even when we aren’t in the market.   We love looking to see what’s new and are always on the hunt for what might be our “old fart trailer.”  The “old fart trailer” is the ultimate travel rig that will be the one we travel in for months at a time without kids.  Suffice it to say, we’ve seen a lot and we’ve noticed a lot of funny mistakes made by RV and trailer makers.  For the purposes of this article, I’ll refer to the RV/Trailer/5th Wheel as a “Rig.”  

Here are some things to think about before you begin your search:  

1.  How will you use your rig?  Are you going to be a football game tailgater?  Are you planning on Boondocking (no hook ups camping)? Are you planning to go to cities and stay in RV Parks?  Are you a State/National Park Camper?   If you are a State/National Park camper, be sure to check the RV sites lengths and amenities at your favorites.  Yosemite is one of my favorite places on the planet.  However, it’s hard to get a trailer in the park – especially in the summer.  (We found other options for this, by the way!  We still go!)  
2. What will you be towing your rig with? This will dictate what you’re able to even realistically look at.  For instance, if you’re planning on towing with a mini-van, a pop up tent trailer may be the ticket.  If you have a one ton diesel truck, your options are much greater.
3. Where will you be storing your rig? How much space to do you have to store your rig on your lot?  Are there HOA rules about storing  RV’s in your neighborhood? Will you need to store your rig at a storage facility?  One RV dealer actually tried to sell my brother a trailer that was longer than the space he has in his driveway.  He had to keep assuring the dealer that he measured more than once and that the trailer the dealer was trying to sell him wasn’t going to fit and could he please see the one that was the right length?  
4. Are you camping with kids? – They’ll need a place to sleep!  How big are your kids?  Our first trailer was perfect for our kids when they were 4 and 8.  Then, when they were teenagers with longer legs and bigger feet, we were kind of cramped!
5. What do you plan to eat when your camping? Sounds like a question for after the shopping, but NO!  When shopping for our first trailer, we found that many of the trailers we looked at had room for food or clothes, but not both!  If you’re planning to bring boxes of cereal for the morning and eat out the rest of the time, that might work for you.  
6. All the other stuff that they tell you in the RV books, magazines, etc about hitches, wheel bases, scissor jacks, blah blah blah!  That’ my husband’s territory!  I’m mostly in charge of making sure the inside is going to work for us.

So, you’ve decided what kind of camper (or as we like to call it, “fake camper”) you’re going to be.  Now it’s time to shop!  I can’t recommend highly enough going to an RV show.  This is how you can get the best overview of what’s out there in the shortest amount of time.  Here’s how to do it and not get completely overwhelmed.

1. Take the bag they hand you when you walk in!  You need it for all of the brochures you’re going to grab! 
2. Look only at what you’re interested in – That seems obvious, but if you’re looking for a 23′ trailer, don’t get distracted by the $200K motor homes.  While it’s fun to look at the crazy stuff they put inside of them, it’s going to suck up a lot of your time and energy.  
3. Take pictures of the make and model of the rigs you like along with the paper they have on the counter with the “show price.”  By the way, “Show price” is kind of a lie.  You can negotiate that price on the lot later.

Now you’re focused and have a plan of attack.  Now, climb aboard the rigs that fit your criteria.  Here are some things I look for when we are out looking for our ultimate rig and my system for inspecting and trying to figure out if the rig will work.  So, far I haven’t found the perfect rig!  The trick is finding out what your deal breakers are and how much you’re willing to bend on your plans.

1.  First stop, the kitchen – I don’t need to go any further if the kitchen doesn’t have proper storage and enough counter space.  I need room for dishes, pots and pans, and food.  I don’t need a fancy residential fridge or anything super fancy.  But, I like to cook.  If there’s not enough room for me to cook, I move on!  No need to look any more at that rig.  I call those “Cracker Barrel” kitchens because you have to go eat at Cracker Barrel since there’s no room to cook.  This term is not catching on….
2. Next stop, the bathroom – I can’t tell you how many rigs I’ve been in where there’s no place to hang towels!  To me, that’s just stupid!  In our first trailer, we hung a towel bar with 4 rungs over the bathroom door, which was fine for the 4 of us … until they were wet and in your face when you’re sitting on the toilet.  I recently looked at a 5th wheel with a huge bathroom and guess what – no place to hang the towels or toilet paper within reach of the shower or the toilet.  Ridculous!  Deal breaker!  Move on!
3. The living area – How are you planning to hang out?  For my husband, it’s all about TV viewing.  Is he going to be comfortable?  Can he stretch out after a long day of driving?  One mistake we made with our current rig was not flopping out on the couch when we were shopping.  As it turns out, neither of us (and I’m vertically challenged) can stretch out in the living area.  In our “old fart trailer” hunt, we’re paying much closer attention to this!  
4. The kid area (Bunkhouses)– If you are going to be camping with kids, do your best to find them beds in your rig.  I know that sounds obvious, but you’d be amazed at how many people try to fit 6 kids into a rig without a bunkhouse.  We love this show called “Big Time RV.”  It’s like “House Hunters” for RVs.  Time and time again, we’ve watched them sell little rigs with no bunkhouse for big money to people with kids.  It’s ridiculous to think that your 6′ tall 15 year old is going to fit on the dinette folded down.  I promise, he won’t!   For us, it’s important that one of the rooms, either where the parents sleep or where the kids sleep have an actual door that’s made out of wood?  We laugh at the curtains they put up and call them “curtains of ultimate privacy.”  They’re not private at all.
5. The “master bedroom” – for lack of better terms – where the grown ups will sleep.  One HUGE mistake we made when we bought our current rig was not laying on the bed.  We had a short queen in our first trailer and it worked fine.  Being vertically challenged, I never worry about the length of a bed.  Well, this rig has a short queen too.  But the difference is, it’s bumped up into the nose of the trailer giving us a curved sort of headboard and making the short queen a little shorter.  My husband has to sleep all scrunched up!  A real queen is on the list of things we need.

After you’ve approved of all of all the major parts of the rig, now look for the fine details and make sure you can live with things like:

1.  Where you’ll have to put your trash can? – That’s a much bigger deal than you might think!  For us, we had to figure out how to keep our hound out of the trash which meant we had to find a little waste basket sized trash can to fit under the sink in the kitchen in our first rig.  Luckily, we had kids and it was their job to take out the trash.  We kept them really busy!
2. Does the kitchen have a oven? – This is a deal breaker for me.  When we were shopping for our first trailer, we were amazed at how many rigs didn’t have ovens!  They tried to tell us we could use this microwave/convection contraption and that people only use real ovens on Thanksgiving.  
3. Where will you put your coffee maker? – I must admit that I am completely and totally caffeine addicted and can’t start my morning without my coffee.  Luckily, it’s the same for my husband.  We were delighted with our current rig that we were able to purchase a full sized coffee pot and leave it on the counter when we’re traveling!  The first trailer only had room for a little 4 cup coffee maker and we had to make two pots because every coffee monger knows the number of cups they advertise on coffee pots is a lie.
4. Where are you going to put your toilet paper? – We have yet to have a rig where the toilet paper can hang on the wall like a normal bathroom.  But, we have a cupboard that’s close enough that we can keep it in there.  

Now, LEAVE the RV show!  Take your pictures, your brochures and GO HOME!  Look through everything carefully.  Talk over what you liked and didn’t like.  Then, after you’ve had some sleep, go back to the dealer (You’ll have a business card if you spent more than 5 minutes in one rig.  Try to get out of the show without it!).  Look through the rig again and decide if you still like it.  Maybe look on Craig’s list or RV Trader and see if you can find the same thing a year or two old.  You’ll save a lot of money if you can find something gently used.  

That’s a lot of information and a lot to think about, I know!  I’m sure your brain is tired.  You should probably take a nap before you start looking for your next RV show!  Enjoy the search!   Maybe in the meantime, find some “Big Time RV” re-runs.  

Next blog post:  Getting Your Rig Ready to Roll!