Tiny Living: Troy and Elizabeth

There's a few reasons why we decided to live in an RV full time. I (Elizabeth) have always loved the idea of living tiny, with less materialistic things and more time doing the things we love. My husband was already working as a nurse, but needed a change once his unit became the COVID unit. At that time travel nursing was looking like a great option for us to be able to travel and he could still work as a nurse. We also lost Troy's mom to cancer 4 years ago when she was only 60. That really hit us hard and made us realize how short and precious life really is. You can always say you'll go places and live the RV life when you retire, but not
everyone makes it to retirement.

Our Big Tiny Home

We have a 2015 Grand Design Momentum 380 toy hauler. We really liked the idea of having a toy hauler and making the main bedroom our girls' room and my husband and I sleeping in the raised bed in the garage area. Our RV model had 2 sliding doors to the garage area and ever since we saw this model, we knew how awesome it would be to remove the doors to have one big living area from the kitchen to the living room. We also use the garage area to tow a motorcycle, fishing kayak and 4 bikes! For our tow vehicle we have a 2019 Dodge Ram 3500 dually. We've been really happy with it so far!On our first trip we made a wrong turn and accidentally drove through a crowded downtown with our huge RV. I really didn't think we were going to make it out of there and we got some funny stares as we drove by!

Work Life Balance In Our Travels

Troy was a nurse and worked in the CVICU unit and I was an Elementary teacher previously, but started staying home with my kids about a year before we started RV life. Now Troy is working as a travel nurse and so far all of the jobs he has had have been on the CVICU unit which has been really nice. I stay at home with the girls and have started homeschooling my oldest daughter this year.

Taking It Slow Where We Go

When we go somewhere we're usually there for at least 3 months at a time for Troy's work contracts. We actually like living in a place for that long. It gives us time to really explore the area at a slower pace. We love not feeling like we have to rush to go see everything. We've been doing little trips in between contracts and that's been a lot of fun. This last time we were able to see a lot of Florida state parks for the first time.

Sound Carries In RV Parks

I think the biggest adjustment is just worrying about if our kids are being too loud! When we lived in a house we had a few acres of land so we never had to worry about that. One time our neighbor told us she thought it was thundering outside, but when she walked outside she realized it was just our girls running up and down our RV! 

Everything Is A Learning Opportunity 

Our best advice when going into this lifestyle is to just think about the way you're living now and apply that to the type of RV you buy. Our kids are still small and spend the majority of time in our kitchen and living room which is why it was important for us to have a bigger living space instead of 2 full bedrooms.

Know that you're going to be making a lot of changes along the way and it takes living in your RV to know what you like and don't like. As far as kids and pets go, get a really good vacuum! In a smaller space, the messes and dog hair will be everywhere! We invested in a cordless Dyson and couldn't be happier!

Looking Forward To The Future

We really don't have a plan in place for how long we'll do this for. We'll settle down eventually and plan to homestead again. We had honeybees, chickens and a garden before we set off and we are looking forward to having all that again one day.