Going from 1,200 square feet down to a 10′ x something space – in a 13′ fiberglass Scamp camper – sounds more intimidating than it really is.

If you think about it, how much living space do you actually take up at any given moment? Really, just the space your body currently occupies! All else is…stuff. Now, I’m not advocating that people cram in like sardines. But for me, rather than a large home, I’d rather have a small home footprint – but lots of land out my door instead! With a small, rolling residence, this can be done and it’s easily moveable to different locations.

Can a person take all their furniture or a standard-sized household’s worth of stuff in a tiny home? Nope! But it isn’t all needed. A lot of stuff boils down to room-filler, some functional, some decoration. If a person hypothetically has a large room, they’re compelled to fill it so it doesn’t look so empty.

Now if a person chooses a large home, that’s cool. What I’m doing isn’t for everybody – and that’s a good thing. It’d be boring if we were all alike in that regard. (If your billiards table must go wherever you do, this wouldn’t be a good life for you! Or you better get a really large toy-hauler.)

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“But MW, what about a coffee-pot? Where on earth are you going to put that? We know you, and you have to have coffee for the good of all…What about a bathroom, or a shower? That tiny camper certainly doesn’t have one! How will you cook things? What about Maggie?…”

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Nope. No formal bathroom, no counter-space. No worries. I have absolutely no intention of foregoing my coffee or comforts for Miss Maggie. (Georgie will be staying with Roseytail.) Here’s where we improvise with some things, which I’ll cover in a future post.

Having previously lived in a big-rig sleeper area, I’ve kind of done this before. (-cue dramatic music-) The first thing to do is assess the space available to work with. Fortunately, the Scamp does have some storage areas; so today we’re covering the assessment phase. (None of this stuff is in it’s final arrangement.)

This is the tallest side-closet, by the door. I can get quite a bit in here!

This is the over-the-table/bed cubby. I can put lighter-weight things in here.

The area under the table/bed, which I keep folded into a bed.

The area under the sink and stove. Right now I have the grey water container and 2 collapsing buckets in here.

While I do have a water hookup, I’ll carry several gallons of drinking water in the cupboards and a little extra also in the van.

Aaannnd…the over-the-sink/stove cubbies. You can carry lighter-weight things up here as well, like dried mixes, crackers and such.

For folks familiar with Scamp campers: The twisted-iron bars that usually run from the side of the sink to the top-left cubby have been removed in my Scamp. There’s been a lot of debate as to whether those are needed or not. I called the Scamp factory to ask them myself and they told me it would not cause a structural problem for those bars to be out. This also matched the info given to me by Mr. Scamp’s previous human, who said he’d also called the Scamp factory and they had told him the same thing.

Like anything, you just use common sense and don’t store several gallons of liquids in those free-hanging cubbies! 🙂

I also have storage under the front-end couch/bed and under the table/bed. (Not shown.)

And a plus, I have some space in the Vandura to work with also. A quick tip: If you’re tackling a project like this, it helps to remember that an item’s packaging can take up a lot of room. I’ll cover that more next time.

This week, I bring things out to the Scamp and begin creatively manipulating. It involves a few things – de-packaging when necessary and arranging so that things are as convenient as possible to get at and use. Making something fit doesn’t do any good if it’s a huge PITA to get at the item you need, or you have to unpack 50 things to get at just 1!

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The Vandura’s new receiver (with the pre-loaded 1 7/8″ ball) also arrived this last week so I could do it’s first test hook-up:

Cue up The Turtles “Happy Together”….

This next week will be devoted to some bug-fixing and packing. I need to pull and rewire the hitch light plug. Ms. Vandura has a 6-way round plug, Mr. Scamp is a 4 flat. I got an adapter so that didn’t pose too much of a problem. However, Ms. Vandura’s 20 year old weathered wiring did pose a problem. I repaired a plastic splicer that had crumbled in my hand and some other things, but a wire going in to the plug itself also seems to be loose, leaving me with running lights, but sometimes at random no blinker or brake lights. Fortunately, I have the problem traced, which is half the battle, to that loose plug wire. I just need to crawl under there again when it’s not raining and wrestle the plug off and see what’s involved to rewire it. Wheeee!

The entire rig and I will also be visiting the Scamp new-shoe store this week. (Tires!) I discovered this last week (unfortunately) that Mr. Scamp’s current, kind-of-oddball-sized but previously good Goodyear radials have started sidewall-cracking, so they’ve gotta be replaced! I’m sure our extreme weather here hasn’t helped that. After measuring whether the new size I was considering would clear, since the Scamp sits pretty low-slung (and they will!) I’m going to have a slightly bigger set of ST radials, with a higher load-rating, put on him.

The tire shop said that I can bring the whole rig on down as opposed to wrestling off both tires at the same time and bringing them in that way, (whew!) so that will be the first outing for Ms. Vandura and Mr. Scamp as a team! I’m holding my breath that no weird problems arise.

I, and Miss Maggie (meow), and our rig leave for Glacier National Park in 2 weeks! Can I get everything done? I don’t even know! This should be a busy week. Stay tuned to see if my eyes start rolling in different directions independently of one another or if I can retain my thin-coating of sanityyyyyyyyyy…..

Posting assistance provided by Master Georgie. While this looks impossibly uncomfortable, he was quite content.