So we’ve been at this road life for about two weeks and we’re already finding a few things that are working fine and a few that are not working at all. We know it will be a constant learning experience with this many living things in a tiny space, but it can be done!

WIN: One major thing that has really worked out well is the pop up dog kennel. At the house, all 3 dogs had their own wire kennels to sleep at night or when we’re gone. We knew we wouldn’t have room for that on the camper so we looked for a new solution. I may have mentioned it before, but we settled on a soft-sided pop up play pen structure. We put a washable potty pad along the bottom just in case (the dogs are all elderly and have varying grasps on their bladders), put in a no spill water bowl and a big cushion dog bed. They go right in and can still move around and go right back to sleep! During the day it folds up and tucks neatly between the couch and the wall and they can still use the dog bed to lay around. (BONUS: due to the dogs’ potty issues, these dog diaper bands and the on board washer/dryer have been a life saver ! Throw them in the wash with a squirt of this stuff and it helps keep the small space from smelling like one big bathroom and we have less stress letting the dogs roam around. I don’t think we could have brought them along without either of them.)

Fail: In a short period of time we have already gone through the kids’ stuff at least twice to pare it down even more. Even so, there was still way more than we comfortably had room for them to keep. After tripping over several of them for a week at the Orlando KOA, we decided something was going to have to change. Thanks to Less Junk < More Journey’s latest video, the kids’ saw the storage they used in their midbunk and wanted some cubes of their own. We talked about it and ultimately decided that the chances of needing the sleeper sofa in David’s room were a lot smaller than the need to be able to actually organize and move around. We are living in here after all, so as soon as we rolled into Thousand Trails Orlando, another full time family met us at our site and graciously took the couch to its new home down the street. We picked up two sets of 6 cube shelves, and these cute wood front cube baskets and voila! With 2 beanbags thrown in for the kids to sit and watch tv, you can actually move around in there again with the added bonus of getting mom’s set of plastic craft/exercise filled drawers from the side of her bed and tucked into the corner by the cubes. The kids love it because now they can keep their stuff together and have an actual hangout place. For now, the main couch is still a queen sofa, but they may eventually disappear too and be replaced with a Home Reserve storage couch. Only time will tell.