3. Living in a fifth Wheel with 4 kids

What is it really like to live in a fifth wheel with four kids? In this episode, we're sharing our honest experience after spending a year and a half living full-time in our RV as a family of six.

From peaceful mornings on our acre of land, bonfires with friends, and watching our kids play with our chickens, to the not-so-glamorous reality of RV repairs, septic problems, and the challenges of living in a small space, we're talking about it all.

We also share what it was like moving to an RV resort for the winter, how we adapted through every season, the lessons we learned, and if we would do it again.

If you've ever wondered whether full-time RV living is for your family—or you're simply curious about what life in a fifth wheel is really like—this episode is full of the highs, the lows, and everything in between.

Happy to have my husband be my co-host for this episode. Join us for an honest conversation about one of the biggest adventures our family has taken.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, and welcome to the Opinions That Change podcast. I'm the host, Ashlyn, and I'm joined today by my lovely husband. Um, my favorite guest of all time.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Going round two on this one.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Yeah, we spent an entire hour recording this podcast only to realize that we started all three cameras and never started the audio. So here we are recording it for a second time, and I'm praying that hopefully this one goes better, and that's some reason why we had to start over. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

But I feel like the last one was pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

I know, it was really good, and now I'm bugged. It's fine. It's just gonna be, it's just gonna get even better. So it's gonna be great. Okay, today we're talking all about living in a trailer as a family of six. Because if you didn't know, we did that from April of 2023 to October of 2024. So we were in it for about a year and a half. We had we have four kids, and they were ages one to five at the time. So, yeah, we're gonna talk all about it because we get lots of questions about it. So we thought it would start off by talking about why we moved into a trailer, and I will maybe answer that one and then follow it. You can go into all the nitty-gritty details.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Um, so we had kind of a financial setback happen. Well, wait, wait, wait, let's back up. I have wanted to move into a trailer for years and years and years, and a year, so we had a financial setback kind of happen, and we're gonna do a whole podcast episode deep diving into that. So we're not gonna go into all those details on this episode, but it's important for this part of the story. Um, so it kind of hit us in December of 2022, but a year before that, we had his family owns this property, and we had gone up to it and we had looked at it, and I was like, Should we move here in a trailer? And Waylon was like, No, heck no.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Not happening. He was like four kids in a small camper for he was like, No way, Jose.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

And I've always been like, I just always like new things and adventure, and I'm like, let's do it, it'll be so great. Anyways, it was not the time, so we kind of tabled it, and then when this financial thing hit, um Wayland started applying to jobs, different jobs all over, and he happened to get a job interview up in Heber, which was where his family had this property, and you tell a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

So at the time, yeah, like like you said, I was I was looking for for a job. Um and I at the I had actually already gotten a job offer down in Springville, and so at that point I was really kind of set on that one. Uh, and then I randomly got a call from this opportunity up in Heber, and to be honest, I never even remember applying for it. I don't remember anything about it, but they called me and I wasn't gonna do I almost didn't go. I almost, you know, but I was like, you know, I I'll just follow through, I'll see what they what's going on. At the time, so this was December of 2022.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Well, you the the interview I think was in January, or maybe it wasn't.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

No, it was it was December because I didn't Yeah, yeah, it was December. Yeah. Um December I had the interview, and that day there was a blizzard, a big old snowstorm going up the canyon. So I was late to the interview. I was uh going up questioning why I even was going up there in the first place. I got in there, uh, and by the end of it, I actually I called Ashlyn after. I was like, you know, maybe I do want this position. I I really had a good feeling about about that interview and about the job. I felt like it went really well. I felt like the it fit what I wanted um in a career. And so we were talking a little bit about it, and then halfway down the canyon, uh coming back from the interview, I got a call from that company saying that they wanted to hire me.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Uh yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. And this this job was right next to the and when I say right next to it, I mean you can see his work from where his parents owned this property.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

It was a 30-second drive. Yeah. You know, it was super quick. Or I could, you know, bike or walk there, right? Yeah. Super, super close.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

So close. So at this time I was like, oh my gosh, we just had this financial setback. You're getting a job up in Heber, which is like crazy expensive to live on, but your family owns this property that nobody's using, and it had like all the hookups, and I always wanted to like live in an RV, so I was like, This is our time to shine! And um, I think that was the moment when Wylan was like, Okay, we'll do it. She convinced me that January. Um, we started in 2023. We started looking for trailers.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Was it January? I thought we s I thought we bought it, we bought it in December, I think.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

I'm pretty sure we bought it in December.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Was it January? Oh, was it?

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Anyways, but we yeah, so we started looking. We were like, we want two bedrooms at least because obviously we want somewhere for our kids to be able to take naps or whatever, and we want a room for us, and so we started searching Facebook Marketplace, finally found one.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Didn't know anything about Fifth Wheels or campers or anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Yeah, we didn't know anything. We were just going and we looked at a few different ones, and we looked we had just looked at one that was like 23,000, and we were like, uh, so a little more than we wanted. And because we were really trying to like this was the whole goal was to save money, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Yeah, and so if we're buying an expensive camper, I knew somewhat about how they depreciate really quickly. I was like, I let's just buy something cheap. We don't even know if we want to do this for more than two months.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Yeah. So and then we saw the one that we ended up getting, and the stars aligned, and his dad actually had a truck that could pull the camper, and so he came and was nice enough to pick it up, and then his brother was nice enough to store it at his house for four months while we were waiting till we could move on to the property because we had to wait till all the snow melted. And so, yeah, we sold like all of our stuff, and we We literally had a s a garage sale in our house. Yeah, we put labels on all the furniture, and we'll go into more details on her and sold everything. Yeah, we had like some buckets of stuff, like games and different things that we ended up not selling, and there was like a little shop kind of thing on the uh it's like a three-car shop on the property that we were able to store things in, and I was able to keep a lot of the tools I had in there and everything. Yeah, so we get up there and then we gotta hook everything up, and like I said, we know absolutely nothing about trailers or hooking anything up, and luckily his dad and brother were so nice and came up there with us, and yeah, you can explain all the hooking up everything.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Yeah, so uh first thing was the the power situation. Uh there was power run to the pad that was on the site already. Uh, because growing up, like we went there up there all the time. We had like tent trailers and stuff. We'd we'd leave up there and we'd we'd hook them up to power. Uh but the breaker wasn't large enough to for that for that um for the camper that we needed that we had. And so I had to run uh an underground conduit and cable uh from the breaker in the shop out to that pad so we could hook up the trailer.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Which like who just like does that?

SPEAKER_00 7:56

What it was pretty easy.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

He's like, oh, let me just run a conduit or whatever the heck you said.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

Comparatively to everything else we had to do, that was the easy part. Um and then the sewer, uh, luckily there was a septic on the on the property right right there at the pad site, so we were able to hook directly to sewer, thank goodness. That would have been a nightmare to try to figure out if we didn't have sewer hookups. Sure. Uh so that was pretty easy. Electrical was pretty easy. Water was a little bit more of a challenge. We didn't have water uh at the property, we had uh irrigation for the sprinklers.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Actually, going back to the power, I kind of remember like the us flipping the breaker so many times at the beginning because we didn't realize that it needed so much. Do you remember that? Like anytime I would have like the microwave going, or like all of a sudden the breaker would flip and I'd have to call you at work and be like, uh, the breaker flipped and we don't have any power.

SPEAKER_00 8:54

Oh, yeah, that happened all the time.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Yeah!

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Well, that's because that was only during the summer when we're running the AC, and we would do the microwave and we do that other stuff. Okay, okay, yeah. That would break the that would flip the breaker, but that had nothing to do. We've we swapped out the the breakers before we even got the trailer. Yeah, all right, here goes. But yeah, that that was a nightmare.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

We had a lot of times where it was like, you know, 90 degrees outside, and the power just shut off and well and it it you have to remember that you had to use power in order to even flush the toilet because it used a pump or something.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Well, you could flush the toilet.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

But no water would go down.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Yeah, no water would go to fill it up. And if you don't have the water, then all the the gases from the septic would come up and yeah, and the poop just sa ew sick. We're gonna talk uh dirty on this episode. Not in the way you think. It's gonna be gross. Um I'll get into that. But anyway, so that was those are the easy parts. The the hard part was the water. We didn't have uh any potable water or any any water source on the property. So what we ended up doing, and I don't know how I came up with this idea, we got three of the two the 250-gallon tanks, uh, two of them we put underneath the gooseneck in the trailer, and those two were linked together into one pump, and that pump would then pump the water into the trailer, uh, and we just put the trailer on city water so uh as long as the the lines inside the trailer were pressurized, the pump would not continue. But then as soon as you turn on the water, flush the toilet, then that pump would kick on and it would keep the pressure.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

If you understand what he just said, congratulations because I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

And so so so that actually worked really well, and I was actually really surprised that that worked because I just grabbed a random pump off Amazon and and we made it work. We were just winging it, and so that worked great, and then I had one uh tank in my truck that I would fill up. Uh there was an RV resort just down the road that we would uh get water from. I think they were charging to fill up the the three the tank. I could only fill it up halfway or else it would be too heavy for my truck, but to fill it up halfway uh they would charge me five dollars. And I think we went through four of those half, so twenty bucks a week is roughly what we we were able to do.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

They went four through four of the four half tanks. Oh, half tanks.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

So two full tanks usually a week is what we ran. Okay, yeah. Uh but then then I had a second pump where I'd bring the water back and I'd pump it from my truck into those tanks. Um and that's how we got water. It was a whole process. It was a whole process. And there were and that was a learning process too, because we had issues along the way. Um during the winter, uh, we had the risk of freezing, um, the lines freezing, so we got heated hoses. We had to put a thermometer in the tanks to keep the water from freezing. Uh not a thermometer, uh a heater in the tanks to keep it from freezing. Uh in the summer it was an issue because Ashton loves this part. There was mold growth. The the tanks were semi-transparent, so the UV rays, I guess, from the sun, I don't I don't know the science behind it, but the sun would get in there and it would cause mold to grow inside the tanks. So I ended up purchasing these uh uh covers, they're like UV blocking covers that would go over the tanks, and that kept it from the molding.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Scrubbed it my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Restart, yeah, it was rough.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

So oh my gosh, so many learning.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

So that that's how we got started.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Okay, let's think about laundry, because I get that a lot. How did you guys do laundry? Okay, so when we first got married, we had like we also had an apartment that didn't have a laundry unit in it, and so we got one of those like little mini washers that you just hook up to your bathroom sink and then it like drains in the toilet or whatever. So we were like, we could just do that, we could just hook it up to the RV sink, and yeah, so that's what we ended up doing. We got one of those, we put it in we had two bathrooms in the trailer, so one of them we just converted into like a laundry room, and then we got like this mini dryer. But the thing about the dryer is it only like dried like three items at a time, which obviously when we first got married, there was only two of us, and now there's six of us, and kids go through a lot of clothes. So we would often wash stuff and then hang dry it, or if we were in a if we needed it fast, we would use the little dryer. Um but that also like we just would fall behind pretty quickly, so we a lot of times had to go to the laundry mat or whatever, which guys, the laundromat up there is just run by the cutest old man who like lived in the and we would like talk to anyways.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

It was pretty fun.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

He he lived like right next to it, so we would often come in and we'd see him, and anyways, he was so cute and nice. Um, and we heard all about his family.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

But anyways, I would say, yeah, no, I would say that if if I'm thinking about some of the hardest aspects of living in a camper, I think one of those would be laundry. I think that was one of the hardest aspects.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

That's the biggest pain. And I mean, just honestly, we just hate laundry in nor in normal life. Like I complain about laundry every day, and we have a real washer and dryer now.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

And and I mean we would we would hang dry our laundry and we would just cover our trailer. Every drawer, every cupboard would be open and laundry hanging out. I would cover the trampoline outside.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

The trampoline hanging stuff around the trampoline. I'm like, what do our neighbors think?

SPEAKER_00 14:40

We're just over here clothes everywhere, just drying, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Oh my gosh. Okay. So we did that. Um, and then when we moved, we did move over to the RV resort during the winter, and they had a laundry unit in the resort. That's really nice. So, well, let's just talk about And actual showers.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Do you want to talk about the showers?

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Let's just talk about the RV resort now.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Okay, let's talk about the RV resort.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

So we we knew we couldn't probably live, we we had debated like, oh, maybe we could put gravel down or do this or do that and make it work on the property. But ultimately we just decided we need to just move to the RV resort. This is gonna be too much. We're already both overwhelmed. We were working several jobs at the time.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

So And that was great, I think, for just the aspect of I think they refilled our our uh propane every other day.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

Yeah, you would set your propane out and they would come pick them up and refill it. They we had water hookups at the RV resort, and you could just set your garbage outside your door and they would come pick it up. Where before Wayland was going to the dump everyone.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

I would try to hold off as long as possible.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Yeah, so we would just have trash piling up and then he would have to take dump runs and or yes.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

Yeah, and so I mean that there I found other ways to dump it sometimes, but I mean a dump run is twenty dollars. Yeah, you know, and so we're paying twenty dollars every, you know, couple times a week to Yeah, it was ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

It was not a couple times a week. We would let Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Ideally it was supposed to be a couple times a week.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Right. Yeah. Um so the RV resort was really nice though because we met a lot of people that were also living in RVs, and it it was fun because a lot of people had really cool stories because they were people who were traveling, so that was also hard because we'd like our kids would get attached to certain people and then they would leave and go to their next place. But it was kind of fun because they had like a a clubhouse there, they had a pool there, the pool was closed, but the hot tubs were open open, and then they had bathrooms with showers, and honestly, that was amazing because our shower in our trailer was so small, and when we were on the property, we only had limited water, obviously, and my kids would get in the dirt and get dirty within like five seconds, and so we were constant like literally I would look over at them in church, and there's just dirt caked in their hair. Oh my gosh, we're gonna get CPS called on us.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Like a well, we'd give them showers in the morning, and then we'd get ready for church, and they'd go outside to play because there's nowhere to hang out in the trailer. We lived outside, we didn't live in the trailer, and so while we're getting ready, they're playing in the dirt after the showers, and then we gotta go to church. So it's just this.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

And it was just so hard to like put all of them in the shower and like it's teeny, and then like scrum it. Oh, and we didn't have the water, so you had to be fast and a little.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Yeah, fast. For me, it was hard because getting into it, I would bump, I'd bump my head on the thing going in, and then the shower head itself was about four and a half, five feet tall. I'm six feet tall, so I'd have to like uh break my back to try to get into it.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Oh my gosh, so needless to say the showers at the RV resort. No, at the RV resort was amazing.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

I got a gym membership uh when we first got there, and that was probably the best thing I could have ever done because I'd wake up at five in the morning, I'd go to the gym, and then I'd take showers at the gym just so I could avoid our showers.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Yeah, that was very nice. Okay, let's talk about like the property itself and like let's talk about all the good things about it. There's a lot of good things. Yeah, our like I'm not kidding when I say that our kids will still ask if we can move back to this property because blows my mind that they do that. Oh my gosh, seriously, because I think back to that and I'm like, that was such a traumatizing experience for everyone. I'm like praying my kids just remember the good parts, and the fact that they keep asking if we can move back gives me hope that that's what they remember. But um, so let's back up. So, ten days before we moved into the trailer, so we had a rabbit, and this rabbit we would leave our garage open just a little bit, and it would leave during the day and it would come back at night, and one day it came back with a little fella and little boyfriend. About I don't know, two weeks before we moved, Wayland goes, I think our butt I think Rose is pregnant, and I was like, What? I'm like, How? What? And I was like, Why do you think that? And he was like, Well, she's building a nest, she was building a nest in our garage. Anyways, a few days later, there she was, had seven babies, and uh we just picked up all seven babies and took them with us to the property, and we ended up getting a chicken coop from a friend's parents, and so we got chickens, and they were the cutest little things, and we had the chickens and the rabbits living together, and they would just like play together, and then our kids would go in there and hold the bunnies and the chickens, and and then our neighbors had horses when we first moved in, and the kids would climb the fence and like pet the horses or look at the horses. It was a good time.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

We had the bison in the back.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Yeah, and then well those neighbors moved, and we ended up getting cows there, and it was Milford and then Milford, and then Milford had a baby well, I don't know if it was they just bought another cow. They just bought another cow that was like a baby, and then they had bison, and so it was like And our chickens just ran free.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

They were just free roaming chickens, which was great until um we because we we had to eat dinners outside most of the time because our trailer was so compact. So a lot of our meals would be outside, and so the chickens would just harass our kids trying to get their food constantly. So that was fun.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

And Wayland loved when we would eat chicken nuggets and the chickens would try to eat the chickens.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

So terrible. You'd attack our kids to try to get the chicken nuggets.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

The property was just so beautiful, the sunrise and the sunsets, and we had a hammock set up, and our kids would climb the trees, and there was this little hillside thing that the kids would like attend around a drive. A fireplace and in the trees where we would uh cook our dinners and yeah, and we would have friends up for bonfires and like you know, I do think back to that and I'm like, okay, there were some good memories. It was a good time despite all the hard and chaos and all the things that came with living in a trailer. And so, um, I feel like it was a very like obviously it was a very hard time for us, but it was also a a huge growing experience time for us. We grew, we both grew a ton during that time. Right. But let's talk about what our I because I always get asked, um, how did your family feel about it? And let's just say they were not a fan. Just getting a They they were supportive.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Every one of our family members were very supportive. But they were taking bets on how long we'd be there.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Um my family tried to talk me out of it so many times, and to be fair, they were not wrong for doing that. Like, honestly, if you think about it, they're like you literally have four kids between the age. Of one and five, and you're gonna go live in a tra like what are you doing? And so I don't blame them for it. But yeah, I didn't know this at the time, but apparently they had all placed bets on but one of my sisters thought we'd last two weeks, one of them thought we'd last like two months, and then Weyland's brother was like, You're not making it through the winter for sure. Um, I think Weyland's dad and his brother Stetson are the only ones who were like, This is awesome.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

They're like, We should do this.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Yeah. They're like, I love that you're doing this, this is so cool. So, um, but they I mean they still obviously were supportive and helpful and helped us in so many ways because we needed we needed our kids to be babysat a lot during that time because he was working 24-7. I was decided I was gonna run a marathon that year and then we were moving and it was we got our kids got sick constantly, and yeah, they they helped a ton with watching our kids and moving and making us dinners and all the things. So they were like very helpful. Um, but yeah, they they they did not think it was a good idea at all. Um, so and oh another thing that we loved doing was we didn't have internet or anything, but there was a TV with a DVD player in the trailer, and so we got a library card, and we would go to the library, and it felt like going to Blockbuster, you guys. We would go, and they just had an up in Hebrew at that library you can check out movies for free. So we would just go and we would look at all the DVDs, and the kids would pick out some movies, and we would pick out some, and uh, it was so fun.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Lots of little house in the prairie, and honestly, our kids had a great experience, and I can like looking back and like talking about it, like I understand. Like, I it was fun for them going down and like to the library, and uh we gotta pick their own movie every week, and then we gotta watch it, and I playing in the dirt, playing in the dirt all day. I mean, it's a kid's paradise.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Yeah, you know, and with the chickens and the rabbits and the oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

In fact, you know what's I think back on this, and we've talked about this before. Our boys, that's all they had ever known up to that point, because they were like little little when we moved. Well, they were one and a half, they were one and a half, so really their core memories started in that in that uh in that trailer.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

I don't know, they probably don't remember it at all, to be honest. I don't remember anything before the age of like twelve. Well, I know you don't, but you remember seven when you were one and a half?

SPEAKER_00 24:38

No, but like two and three. Three. I remember separate when I was three.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Yeah, but that's when we moved out. That's true. So I don't think they remember it, honestly. We should ask them. We our girls definitely like it.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Our girls constantly ask us to move back.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

Yeah, yeah. Um okay, let's talk about fixing things.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

We had s this should we talk about the the layout first?

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

And I well I guess I guess we already talked about like the fact that we had two we had two rooms, right? Oh yeah, and the the sleeping arrangements and like the bathroom issues and Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Oh yeah. Okay, so we had two bedrooms and one of the bathrooms was attached to like the master bedroom. That was the only bathroom that we were like using. And then we had I mean we tried lots of different arrangements. At the beginning, we were like, oh, we're gonna sleep in the living room so that way we can make sure the kids don't go out the RV door, and then we put the the girls on one side in the master and put the boys in that back bedroom, and that way, you know We thought this was brilliant until we pulled out the couch and realized, oh, this is a twin sp like spring mattress.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

It was bad.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

We slept on it one night and we were like absolutely not.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

We ended up getting rid of that couch completely. Yeah. We ripped that whole couch out and then we put in a futon instead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

So we ended up getting the master, and then we had for a long time all four kids sleeping in the back room. Um, and then we as they got bigger, we ended up having just the boys sleeping in the back room and the girls sleeping in the living room. Um so we tried several different things, but yeah, it was it was so bad though because the because the bathroom was attached to the master. Honestly, it probably didn't matter because the trailer's so small anyways, but but oh my gosh, you guys, the smell was so bad. Anytime someone had to go to the bathroom, and there's six of us, and I don't know about your kids, but my kids poop a lot.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

So it'd be such a great night. We'd be laying in bed, and then we'd one of the kids gets up to go to the bathroom, and we're like, dang it. Oh my god. Open the windows. It's terrible.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

It's so bad, you guys. And so I'm just like, oh my gosh, I don't know how we did it for so long. I feel like I got claustrophobic from smells.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Like claustrophobic in general.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

Me out of here. But that was one of the things, and we had several things like break during the time. Oh, actually, let's let's talk about a lot, um people ask if it's a good way to save money. And I would say no, unless you have very specific circumstances like we did. Like, I think the big reason we were able to save money is because first of all, the land we were on for the majority of the time, obviously we went to the RV resort for part of it. But the land we were on for the majority of the time we obviously weren't paying for. And then we had septic hookups, the electrical, and then the biggest thing I think was the fact that Whalen fixed everything himself. Like, I cannot imagine how much we would have had to spend if we would have had to send the trailer in to get all those things fixed.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Well, and let's just talk about trailers in general or campers in general, right? I the thing about the about campers or fifth wheel, whatever, you know, some they're not meant to live in full time, they're meant to be recreational vehicles when you're out camping or whatever. And so, yeah, our our RV was older and had a lot of things break and a lot of issues, but we talked to a lot of people in the RV resorts that had the same issues that had bought brand new, you know, $100,000 campers. I mean, things just break, right? It's it's a mobile house that's things are constantly shifting and moving. So we had a lot of issues come up. Um, one of which being uh we had a few electrical problems. Um uh one of the electrical uh not the converter, the uh one of the electrical things went out, and I still don't know, I don't even know how what they're called now, but I I just YouTube'd it, ordered the new part, and had a blocked it from his memory. Blocked it from my memory. I I ordered the new part, get it in. That I mean, the most expensive electrical repair that we had on RV was $2,000 for the part. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

And then that was just for the part. That was he fixed it.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

And then I had to fix it. So I pulled out the old one, undid all the wiring, rewired it.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

How much that would have been if we had somebody else come figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Oh yeah, it would have been a lot. So that was that was probably the most expensive uh one. We had the heater go out, and then you you had to go live with your parents with the kids for a few days while I fixed the heater. Um, I was living with just a little space heater in.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

It was in the middle of winter that our heater went out.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Yeah, and it was it was pretty bad. So we so I had to fix that. Um my kids loved the the toilet of all things. They loved the fact that there was a pedal, and whenever they pushed it, the water went down, and so our kids would um put their toys down the toilet.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

It's super fun.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

And that created a clog. I didn't realize they were putting toys down the toilet. Then it created a clog, everything got backed up, and the only way to fix it was to open up the pipes from underneath and get the clog out. Oh I'm I'm still trying to- I blocked this one from my memory. This was terrible. I so I knew I needed to get the clog out, and I knew what I was getting myself into.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

So I got an old- I knew I didn't want to spend the thousands of dollars to let someone else do it.

SPEAKER_00 30:29

Yeah, so I I had a pair of old sweats and an old hoodie. I put them both on, I put my socks up like over my sweats, and I put gloves on, I put my hoodie over my head and cinched it up, put plastic bags over me, and I went down in there with my gloves on and and I had a Home Depot bucket sitting right by me, and my plan was, and I thought it was foolproof, my plan was to open it and move the bucket at the same time to catch everything. I and first of all, that would I mean it if I even worked, which it didn't, it would have filled the bucket and then just kept going. I mean, there was so much. And so what happened was I went to go grab I I I undid it, I went to go open it and went to grab the bucket, but the bucket like tipped over and rolled out the other way, and everything just came down all over me, all over the place, and I freaked out and like jumped out of there as fast as I could. I mean, I'm underneath the camper, right? And so I don't have that much space. So on my way out, I like smashed my arm into like a screw or something up in the camper, and I still have a scar on my arm from it from doing that, but oh my gosh, it was the most disgusting thing. And I will never recover. I remember that.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

I was like just in so much shock as he comes out. I'm like, It's so bad. So I'm like, what do I do?

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Gosh, but finally I got it all cleaned, sprayed down, cleaned myself, got it all fixed, and then we were just a lot more strict with the bathroom.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

I remember there's also those things you had to pull in order to get the sewer. We did have to fix things. And you had to fix those because I couldn't, they were like Well, we snapped the the cable, the cable snaps.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

And then when we first moved in and we first started the laundry, we had flooded the bathroom. Yeah. Like, and that flooded out the battery.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

That was a big thing. Because one of the things is is you keep the the tanks closed and then you just open them as they fill up. You don't want it to just continually run down because then you have the the residue that sits while the water goes down and then you just build up. So you gotta keep them closed, then you open them all at once. So that's what we did with the the back one with the laundry. But uh unf that had its own tank, thank goodness. Um, but it filled up faster than we thought it would, and then it overflowed. So we ended up just keeping that one open at all times since there was no other like food residue or like toilet paper or anything like that going down. It was just water. It was just water. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

Yeah. Oh my gosh. And then I remember one day I I had gone out of the door and the girls were outside, and somehow the twins had figured out how to lock the door. That's right and they locked the door. They're like not even two, or maybe they were two at this time, but they were really little.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

Well, it was the worst because it was easy to lock, but it wasn't easy to unlock.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Yes. So I'm outside the trailer with the girls, and the boys are stuck in there, and I'm like, We're screaming at him, we're like, move it up, move it up. Waylon was at work, but I'm like, okay. I'm like trying to explain to him, hey, there's a red lever on the door. You just have to push it. And obviously, that had no clue. So I'm sitting there trying to explain it to forever. So I call Wayland. I'm like, Waylon, I don't know what to do. Do I need to call a locksmith? Like, they're stuck in there. I don't even know what they're doing in there. And they were like sick at the time too. So I was just like so stressed. I like called a bunch of locksmiths. They're like, Well, the soonest we can get there is in like an hour or something. And I was like, An hour? I can't have my twins in there for an hour. So Wayland luckily came home and he was like trying to find any way to get in. And luckily, there was a window that you could unscrew from the outside.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

It was the emergency wind exit window. Yeah. And so the screws were on the outside.

SPEAKER_01 34:22

There was like 40 screws.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

40 screws all the way around the window. So I took them all off. The window came off and I was able to get in.

SPEAKER_01 34:30

And then he climbed in and we got him. But I was like, oh my gosh, what is happening? I felt like it was just thing after thing after thing. Like before we moved in, I was the one that was like, this is gonna be awesome. And then I feel like we switched places real fast. I was like, what did we just do? And was like, this is great. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

So I guess we're we were talking about if it's worth it. Oh, right. And so I guess I guess I can give I my my opinion on if it's worth it, and is it depends, right? If if I mean from a financial standpoint, it worked for us, I feel like. But I think in general, no, you're not gonna save money living in a camper. Uh if you're not gonna fix things yourselves, if you don't have a piece of property to s to be on, because when we did go to the RV resort, we were paying $850 or $900 a month. Something like that. And that was in the winter. During the summer, I think it was double.

SPEAKER_01 35:33

Yeah, and we were only there in the winter for a few months, so it made it worth it for us because then during the other months we didn't have to pay that.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

Plus, I mean I mean during the winter we were paying $300 a month for for propane.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

Um we were I think that the aspect of like you're living in a trailer, so you don't have space for things, so you spend less money. That's that's true. Unless you're like traveling, then obviously you're gonna spend more money because you're buying things and paying for gas and you're buying experiences. Oh yeah, traveling you're not gonna save money. Yeah, it depends on your lifestyle with it. I also think is it worth it? It depends on your goals, right? If your goal is like, oh, we want to build these experiences and travel the we've had friends that have traveled the US with their kids and had amazing experiences, but they also were people who could pay for a hotel when they needed to send their trailer in to get fixed. They weren't saving money, they were spending a ton. I remember the we met one family at the trailer park, they said um they spend about 30k a month.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

And I was like, oh what?

SPEAKER_00 36:34

I remember they I don't know how they came into so much money, but they said, Yeah, we came into all this money and for what six months we've been traveling and we've been spending about 30k of it a month. Yeah. And that d that's not including what they spent on their on their camper, on the truck to haul the camper. Oh it was.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

It was including their payments for their camper. Oh, the payments, yeah. Yeah, for their camper, their truck, and then just the lifestyle they were living, the classes they would go to, the things they would do every day. But I was like, wow. So I feel like it depends on what your goals are. If your goal is to save money, um, maybe if you're like you bought land and you want to live in a trailer till you build a house, depending on a lot of things, maybe it could work. But for the most part, I don't think it's a great plan to save money.

SPEAKER_00 37:26

Build your budget if you want to do it, build your budget for it, and then double it. And that's probably where you're gonna be at in the end, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:34

Literally. Oh my goodness. Okay, let's see. Um yeah, because we bought our trailer for 15,000, and then oh, and then we decided to redo it. All things to me.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

She decided to redo it.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

I was like, I think I always had this dream. Even when we first got married, I remember pinning, like, oh, we should redo it. Don't ever redo your trailer. Ever. Flip it.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

Don't flip a trailer, it's not worth it. You can't flip a trailer.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

I had all these dreams, and I was like, well, even if we don't make money on it, it'll look so cute and we live in it, so I want it like to be better, and it won't cost us that much because you know how to do all that, so we just have to buy flooring and paint. That's all we need to do, right?

SPEAKER_00 38:17

So we we had already ripped everything out of the camper. So they had the built-in like benches and the table. We ripped all that out. They had like the built-in couch and then the built-in bed in the kids' room. We ripped all that out and put like a nugget couch in there for that. So everything was already ripped out. So we already did that. So yeah, we just did the flooring and then we painted all the cabinets and then the walls we painted as well. Yeah. Is that all we did? I think that was it, right? Yeah. We painted the doors, got new door handles.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

We had to wash and sand down every single square inch of that place so that we could paint, like prep it for paint. We had to prime it and then paint it. Pull out all the cabinet doors, cabinets, everything sand them down, like we hang Waylon like drilled a hole in them so we could hang them on hangers, and then we like he had a sprayer, he would spray them.

SPEAKER_00 39:08

We had all these cabinet doors. I don't know what our neighbors thought. So all around us.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

So many pictures of this stuff.

SPEAKER_00 39:13

We have one acre in the middle of all these like giant houses uh around us, and I mean I I don't know what they were thinking when they just see all these cabinets. I there's so many cabinets in that too. How many cabinet doors do you think we did?

SPEAKER_02 39:27

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

I think we got like 48 or something cabinet doors. We had just hanging out there like painted.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

I will post pictures and videos to my Instagram at opinions that change. So go follow there if you want to see some more behind the scenes of that. But yeah, we oh my gosh. It looked good though. It I mean, yeah, and then it but it also like our kids were always caked in dirt, so the white walls just had like well you could wipe them down easy, but they were just I was constantly wiping them. Like before, I feel like all of it blended in and it makes sense. Because it was all brown. Yeah, that's what I mean, and it made sense with like RV life. It was like, yeah, if you're in an RV, you're obviously out and camping. Right. And I was like, Oh, it'll be great, we'll paint everything white, and we'll oh my gosh. Anyways, and then I was like, Well, at least we could probably sell it for more when we go to sell it. No, we were so over that experience, we were just ready to get rid of it, and we so we bought it for 15,000. We ended up selling it for 10, and we we did keep the generator, and so we got that.

SPEAKER_02 40:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:37

I think I think it this experience helped us save money for the fact of we were very much in the mindset of not spending money, we don't have room for anything, and we're working all the time, and we're minimizing our life. So I think that's why this worked for us.

SPEAKER_00 40:57

Everything we did, like like Ashton says, like we did uh the library for our movies, we went to the park for activities with the kids, like everything we did was either free or super cheap.

SPEAKER_01 41:07

And we said no to so many social things, even if it costs like five dollars, we were like no. And we're gonna go way more into detail.

SPEAKER_00 41:14

Why we were going so hardcore, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:16

Yeah, yeah. We'll go into so much more detail. But yeah, um, yeah, I think I think that's that's really I don't think I don't think a trailer is gonna solve all your problems if if if your goal is to like magically get out of debt and save money. But uh yeah, I think if you want to travel and have experiences and do all that, like go for it. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 41:38

Probably not something we'll do again, but I don't know, maybe one day maybe just me and you.

SPEAKER_01 41:44

I have a friend that uh they've also I was gonna say it depends on I think how many kids you have too. Because like we have a friend who has one kid and they've been doing it for six years, and they work at the resorts that they um stay at and they've loved it and they've had a great experience, and obviously they've had moments where it's been hard or not great, but also like that's with anything in life, right? Like, even if you're in a house, you're gonna have moments that are hard and not great. So I think it's worked really well for them and they've loved it. So I think it just really depends on your circumstances. But I hope that this has been informative, entertaining, helpful, whatever you wanted it to be. I hope it answered some questions. I'm happy to if you want to comment more questions or DM me. I'm happy to answer more questions if we like left stuff out. But yeah, thank you for being here and we'll see you next week. Uh, let's let some opinions change. Bye.