This blog post describes the content of the video, which you can see below:
In this video, we show you around in our camper to talk about what we packed for our Europe road trip with our motorhome. What did we pack and haven’t used? What did we forget?
Why do we care about what we bring?
As we plan to spend 6 months in our camper, we have to think about what we need in that time period, during different seasons and in different countries. And we can’t just bring everything we might need. Not only because we wouldn’t have enough space to leave everything in our camper, but also because in Europe, your motorhome has to stay under 3,5 tons if you want to drive it as a normal car. If you want to have more weight, you need a particular driver’s license, your vehicle needs a new registration, and there are all kinds of limitations when you change your weight permissions to ‘truck’.
As the camper weighs about 2.9 tons, we only have 600 kilos for all our things, including ourselves and Isa (our dog), water and fuel.
Our Motorhome Kitchen
We brought 4 of all cutlery; knives, forks, spoons, and 8 little spoons. We also took 4 dinner plates, 4 deep plates and 4 bowls. Another thing we have 4 of are our glasses and cups; we own 4 teacups, 4 coffee mugs and 4 soda glasses. This is more than enough for us and even allows us to have someone over if this happens.
We have some other utensils in the kitchen, like things to stir with, scoop with, etcetera. We try to keep this to a minimum but we forgot a bottle opener and quickly realised we really missed that.
We have quite a few pans with us (maybe too many):
- a small saucepan
- 2 normal pans
- a sauté pan
- a small frying pan
- a flat pancake pan
When we started the journey, we did not have the frying pan but quickly realised we had missed that. We might be able to leave one normal pan at home next time, but the others are quite useful. We also have a kettle to boil water and our percolator to make coffee.
In our big cabinet, which used to be the wardrobe, we keep all of our food supplies: long-lasting and vegetables and fruits. The main things we always wanted to keep in the cabinet were basics we could use if we ever got stuck like pasta, pasta sauce, rice, wraps, and flower, as well as a few canned goods.
We store our tea up above the stove. And of course, anything that needs to stay cold is kept in the fridge.
Another thing we keep in the kitchen are cleaning supplies. We try to have our cleaning supplies biodegradable, so our dish soap, as well as our all-purpose cleaner, are from a brand that offers that. We also have laundry detergent with us. We have a small sink to wash dishes or do a small wash of clothes, and a few clothes for cleaning. We bought bamboo cloths, so they keep longer and smell less, as well as quick-drying towels for drying off the dishes.
The last things you will find in the kitchen are for the dog: her dog food, her bowls, any treats, a scale, brushes and medicines.
The Wardrobe in Our Camper
We use the main closet in the RV, which is meant to be a wardrobe, for our kitchen supplies. This means we don’t have a lot of space for clothes in the camper. We use the three cabinets in the back. One is for Marten, one is for Natalie and the middle one we share. We keep our trousers, shirts and sweaters folded and have small travel bags for socks, underwear and so forth.
We also have packing cubes below our beds where we keep clothes we don’t often need, like workout clothes, bike clothes and swimming gear.
When packing our clothing for the trip, we had to try and get clothes that work well together that we could layer or use separately, depending on the weather. And we notice it’s easier than we thought to have only a small wardrobe.
The Living Room of the RV
We store anything that is work-related or leisure related in the living area of the camper. We have our laptops, mouses, chargers, camera gear and such in the cabinets. We also brought two cordless keyboards but do not use them, so those will be left at home next trip. We try to keep all chargers of phones and other small equipment together in a bin, so we don’t lose that.
We also have e-readers, an iPad, a boombox and Natalie’s watercolour paint supplies in a cabinet. She has a lot of yarn for crocheting which didn’t fit in the cabinet so that sits in a bag with the extra clothes underneath the bed. Only the project she is working on is in the living room.
In the front of the car, above the driving area, we keep our blankets, leashes for Isa, and any season-related gear that we need, like scarves, mittens and hats for cold weather and caps and sun hats for warm weather.
Our Small Bathroom
Our bathroom is big, but it doesn’t have a lot of storage capacity. The cabinet underneath the sink has our toothbrushes, shampoo, and anything that is bigger, while the small cabinets on top have medicines, makeup, and some smaller daily used bottles like moisturizers.
Since Natalie’s skin needs special care, we had to bring a six-month supply of some creams and had to leave that somewhere. So we put a big basket in the shower where we leave all of those extra bottles and anything that is extra stock.
In the shower, we also have a stack of our towels, which is more than enough for us. And it holds our laundry bag with the dirty clothes for the next time we go do laundry.
Garage
The back of a camper is called a garage. And anything that is big or not something we need IN the camper goes in there.
First of all, the biggest items in the garage are our bikes and the table and chairs. We have our bikes in the camper. We felt this was safer than having them on the back of the camper and they are also safe from any weather. Marten has an e-MTB so he can mountain bike in any area we might come through, and Natalie has a trekking bike. This special e-bike is not just made for roads but can also drive through forests or on gravel. Both bikes have the option to attach a dog car behind them where Isa can sit in. She doesn’t love the dog car, but it really helps us to be able to travel to different places.
We have 2 really nice chairs that we bought specifically for this trip and two tables. A big table that we can eat dinner at, or do games, or work on. And a small table for drinks or just to put something small on.
There are also some plastic boxes in the back with tooling, and ropes, and you will also find extra dog food there. We have a small gas barbecue, the blocks the camper drives onto, and many other items.
We also attached a shoe bag to one of the doors to hold extra shoes.
Things we forgot
There are some things we forgot that we want you to keep in mind when you start travelling. First of all, we left without a sun hat and cap. This was a bad idea because you need to keep your head cool when it’s sunny.
As you can see before, we were careful with how many clothes we brought. And it turned out we could have packed some more underwear and socks. What we hadn’t realised is those two categories now dictate when we need to do laundry, and buying some extra might give us some extra days on the road without a washing machine. Maybe we could have brought an extra one or two shirts too, but it was fun to buy those on the road so that kind of worked out.
Marten forgot to bring his tight swimming gear. In France and some other countries, you have to wear a Speedo to a swimming pool. Though he had one at home, he didn’t bring it, so he can’t go to the swimming pools (once they are open). He might need to buy one.
As discussed above, the frying pan is something we bought on the road. We didn’t bring it as we thought the sautéing pan would do, but frying meat turned out to be nearly impossible. So we bought a lightweight small pan to bake our meats in.
The last thing we missed was a way to filter water. We didn’t expect to need that at all; we thought we would just use the water from the campgrounds. But it turned out that our water would get foamy, and we didn’t want to drink it without filtration. That meant we had to buy bottled water until we could get a water filter, which is not ecologically friendly, so we were happy to buy a Brita filter when we could.
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