Dreaming about vanlife is all fun and games, until it’s time to downsize. These 8 steps to downsize for van life will make the transition straightforward and much less stressful!
By Bekah Whitney
Do you know how much stuff you have? When I first started down sizing, I sure didn’t.
How on Earth did I get all this crap!? I mean seriously, stuff I didn’t want, stuff I did want, stuff I paid good money for but never used, stuff I loved but wouldn’t make sense bring into a tiny house with me. You don’t think about it until you try to pare it down.
I don’t care how neat and clean you are, when moving into a tiny little box with two animals and a significant other, things gots to go.
So how did I do it? One day at a time.
First I of course watched Marie Kondo’s Netflix show and took all her advice, then I read multiple minimalism and decluttering books, and thirdly, I got serious.
My closet is 15 inches wide and 20 inches long, so I started with clothes first, I purged the easy stuff first (things I never wore anyway), tried on everything, got rid of anything that could be considered a duplicate and tried and tried to get my current closet down to 15 inches worth of clothes on hangers. Sawyer wears the same 10 flannels that he has for years, but he has an insane amount of jackets, so we fought different battles. Sawyer installed a bar in the back seat of his truck and hung jackets behind his driver’s seat.
Next was the “stuff”, Why did I have so many bottles of half finished lotions and face masks and you name it? Luckily my roomate at the time loved lotion so she got the bulk of that, I also bought items to my places of work that I knew could be used.
After you are excited to downsize and really feeling ready to tackle it step 2 comes into play: Sectioning. If you took all your belongings and threw them in a pile, it would be absolutely overwhelming. This is where sectioning comes in. Get out a notebook and map out where your belongings are presently taking up space.
For example, I lived in a shared apartment before moving into my trailer so I mapped out my belongings in the following way:
I made sure each section was not too large or overwhelming. For many people “Dresser, Night Stands, and Closet” & “Under the Bed” could’ve probably been in one category of “Bedroom”, but since I lived in a shared space, my bedroom had to act as a home for some of my extra belongings. I also made a category of “Clothes” separate from “Bedroom” since I knew that was going to be an especially hard one to tackle.
You can have as many or few categories as you want. It’s really about sectioning out your belongings into manageable portions of stuff.
Downsizing and getting rid of belongings is really hard for a lot of people and takes practice. I would love to tell you that you will go through each section once, purge everything that you don’t need and pat yourself on the back.
Unfortunately, it does not work that way, especially when moving into such a small space. Why? Well for one, we are not good at getting rid of items. Thoughts like “Well I wore it that one time”, “I spent money on this,” and “What if this becomes handy in an emergency” will pop up a lot when you first start down-sizing. Don’t worry though, you will get better!
I personally liked having 2 boxes around while downsizing as I want to be as eco-friendly as possible. One box was items that I could donate and the other was a free for all box that my friends could go through. This free for all box included items that couldn’t be donated, but weren’t necessarily trash. For example, a lightly used fancy bottle of lotion went to my work. A natural toothpaste I used a few times and gave up on went to a friend who had a lot of success with that brand. So on and so forth. Sawyer took his box of items he couldn’t donate and put them in the locker room of his work with a sign that said “Everything $1, don’t be a dick.” which worked out very well!
If you are like Sawyer, you will just start on this task. If you are more like me, you will want to schedule out times for your first go-through of each section.
Choose which section you are going to work on and pull-out, dump, and place all the items in that section in a pile. This way you can really see how much stuff you have in that particular section. Then start digging through. Hold each item and ask yourself the following questions:
“Do I need multiple of these?” “Will this be useful when living a van life?” “Is this irreplaceable, if I end up regretting getting rid of it?” and Marie Kondo’s favorite “Does this spark joy?”.
If the answer is no to one or multiple of these questions, ditch it!
Each day I worked on one section for about an hour. Some sections bled into the other days, but after 2 weeks I had gone through each section and down-sized a lot! I was really proud of everything I had let go of and if it was just a spring cleaning exercise I would have patted myself on the pack and called it a day!
You are going to have to go through the sections you mapped out again and again. I ended up donating a bag of items every week for 2 months to our local charity shop to downsize to fit all of my items in our trailer. Everytime I wanted to keep something extra, such as another phone charger, or the hundred bandaids I had somehow acquired, I told myself “I am moving into a 16 foot box, I don’t do extra anymore. It was difficult, but my prize was living a life of freedom and it really kept me going!
Another tip that really helped me was to measure the space I was going to have once inside the trailer. Sawyer and I both have 15 inch closets with 2 little drawers for our everyday clothes. I measured 15 inches in my closet and marked it with tape. My goal being that I wasn’t done down-sizing my clothes until they could all fit into that 15 inches and the 2 drawers
Moving into your new home, van, trailer or RV, is going to be your last purge. You’ll find that some of the items you just couldn’t part with while in your much larger home aren’t going to make the final cut. This part was actually the easiest for me because I had gotten so used to getting rid of items that letting go of just a few more items didn’t matter too much. Plus I wanted my new home to be organized and clutter-free so much so that the things I thought I didn’t want to part with were easily let go. No matter how much storage you make, you’re still reducing the cubic volume of your home dramatically.
When you live in a tiny space, you are never really done down-sizing. People will give you gifts that you just don’t have room for. You will see something cute and impulse buy it, just to get home and realize it has nowhere to live! Your favorite shampoo will be on sale, but you don’t have the room to have 4 extra bottles. Saying no and practicing discipline will be challenging, but you will get used to it and learn to be the gatekeeper and keep items from entering your new tiny home.
Stuff will pile up again. That’s just life. You get sick and buy a bottle of medicine that never gets completely used. Your favorite jeans start to wear out and you get a new pair, but aren’t completely ready to get rid of the old. Don’t fret! You are an expert! Make it a priority to down-size while you are living on the road. At the very least I suggest once a year, but you might need to do more at the very start of your journey as you might need some practice on your gatekeeping skills.
I hope you enjoyed and got ideas from this post. For me, downsizing to a tiny space was absolutely terrifying at first, but living life with less belongings is truly freeing and you will be happier once it’s done.
If you are currently in the process of down-sizing let us know what the hardest things have been for you to let go of. If you are already on the road, share what is the hardest thing to gatekeep!
Hi! I’m Bekah, but you can call me Beks, all my friends do! I travel full-time in a tiny home on wheels that my partner, Sawyer, and I built from a cargo trailer shell in 2019. We started out in beautiful Colorado and have been all over the United States over the years. This space is designed to inspire and guide the nature obsessed nomad, weekend warrior, and future roadlifer. I’m so excited you’re here!
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