Joni: There’s one thing almost every nomad has, and this one thing can make or break
your camp comfort. I’m talking camp chairs! Now, to be honest, I do most of my sitting
and lounging IN my van, either in my driver seat swiveled around or on my bed. But when
I’m hanging out with friends, my camp chair is super important! And there are SO many
variations on camp chairs! In this video, I share LOTS of different chairs so you can
get an idea of what might work for you.
And just a quick reminder, if you like this video, it really helps others find it if you
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[Music] Joni: This is the chair that I carry with me and I love it! Generally when I sit
in it I just automatically rock back and forth. The backrest hits my back really comfortably
and I just rock in it. It is really small. It fits in my aisle way so that if I'm playing
games with people it can fit there as an extra seat in my van. It's just a little tripod
chair. To fold this one up all you do is grab the handle and you shake it once and it's
all nice and compact. It actually has a built-in beverage holder. So when it's folded you just
spread the legs out and set it down. Super easy, really compact, really easy to travel
with, and I find it super comfortable. Hello I'm Wendy and I'm a full-time RVer in my truck
camper and here to share a little bit about my chair. It's very compact it's put together
quickly. It's by Guidesman. I've had it for multiple years. Just lift up the flaps, flip
it over...
I like this chair because I have a truck camper, it folds up very compact, it has a little
table, has a spot for my drink, very sturdy. Joni: So show us how it folds up. Wendy: All
right. So you just use this lever and step down over here, get the rug out of the way,
so it's really simple, the back holds down.
Joni: So I have my friend's chair here. This is a Walmart chair and it's a little heavier
than a lot of the camp chairs and a little harder to unfold.
But yeah...
But once you unfold it
it is super sturdy, super comfortable, um it is a little bit of a slingback so you don't
have a lot of like lumbar support in it but it's a nice sturdy chair. And the folding
it up is really easy. You just pull up on the arms and squish it in. Brian: All right,
so my name is Brian Gifford and I do some videos for Cheap RV Living and Joni wanted
to know about what chairs I carry around and so this is the plethora of chairs that I carry
around. They all have very distinctive purposes. This one is great for lounging back and looking
at the stars and so forth but what I don't like about it is it's cumbersome. When you
fold it up it's a kind of obnoxiously large and also I can't wear a big hat with it because
it hits the back end and my feet also don't fit under my like the chair very well. I can't
sit like this around like a fire as easily so it has a very distinctive purpose. Now
for ease of going around like places like if you're gathering with friends and stuff
and you just want to walk around uh this one is great for that because it simply folds
up it has a sling and I can just go around walk around if I find a campfire or something
or people I want to talk to you just sit it down very easily and then hop down and it's
super super light, super simple, but after about you know after 10 minutes or 30 minutes
of this you're kind of tired of it. No back support. Things to keep in mind. This one
right here I like probably the best because I can just throw it in my car. It folds up
very small and it's it's just so lightweight I can always have it with me. It does take
a little bit of assembly required but not horrible. But in general it hits most of my
needs because I can still lean back, still wear a hat, still kind of lounge out, I can
sit here and read my book. And so those are the reasons I carry around three chairs. I
know kind of ridiculous one person's traveling with three chairs. When I was talking earlier
about like folding them up, you know, this one you have to remove this little plastic
thing so it doesn't really fold up much which is the downside of this. So it does take up
a lot of room and it is heavy. So that's one thing I don't love about it. But it's still
very comfortable for a lot of things. This one we've already shown just folds up very
very quickly and very easily there's a velcro strap right here but you just wrap it around
and then it's nice and compact. This one more of an effort [Music]
There you go. So to put it back together you just put all of the little components back
together in their slots. Pretty simple. You can tell which one... which way the feet are
because they have the little rubber stops. So I usually put it down like this and then it
has these little little sleeves right here that you put each one in and I always do the
longer ones first and then...
Hi! I'm Keri and I live in a van! I have an over stuffed camping chair um I picked this
one as my winter chair because I have a small dog and it gives me the opportunity to kind
of like cuddle up with her and curl up. It's a really great wind Block. It full it collapses
into one piece so I don't have to like put it together. My favorite things about the
chair include it being kind of like overstuffed. There's a lot of room in here for me and my
teeny tiny dog. We can kind of snuggle in here. I've got a couple of down throws that
I can wrap up so it's a fabulous chair to be by the campfire in the winter in Arizona
when it's, you know, chilly but you want to really stay out and just enjoy friends. The
downsides to this chair include that all of this fabric is one piece and it doesn't really
come apart so it actually makes it a bit of a hassle to clean. I would also say it takes
up a lot of space and so you really have to be invested in this to make it worth your
time in a van. I also have a Cliq Chair which takes up about this much space for when I'm
just wanting to pull something out have a quick cup of coffee with someone or I'm walking
around an event. It's small, it's portable it's not quite as comfortable, so when I'm
settling in for a longer evening in my own camp with a bunch of friends this is definitely
the luxury model I pull out. So let me show you the different ways we can sit in it. This
is actually one of my favorite
um like this um because I can kind of like sink down. I'll put a little something back
here. My dog sits right here and snuggles with me. This is probably the most common
way. I'll also sit like, like this, snuggled in, imagine a down comforter on top of me
kind of like closing me in again, room for a dog right here. You can sit in it like a
normal human but that's not my preferred style.
And so, it's pretty big.
But easy up easy down. It's also pretty stable. It will tend to blow over in the wind but
it's not going to go very far. [Music]
This is my Cliq Chair. I got it off of Kickstarter about three years ago and they're now available
on Amazon for actually about the same price... about a hundred dollars. But this one you
pay for the lightweight and the convenience of it. It's just so easy to carry around and
put together. Again, I don't really like to play a game of you know... I don't like a
jigsaw puzzle in a chair. So this one is pretty straightforward honestly. Like it... for someone
my size it's just about right. For someone with a larger frame it might not be the most
comfortable. The other complaint that people have had is sometimes you can like... it can
wiggle a lot. It has just enough wiggle for me, actually, because I tend to move a bit
when I'm having conversations. But it supports me it is really comfortable on a variety of
different surfaces, even if it's not completely level, you know, I'm not going to be snuggling
with my puppy dog in this one, but you know, it makes me feel like I'm not too much lower
than anyone else, I'm still in kind of the same level as other people in a conversation,
and um you know it leaves my big chair open for my pup! This is really Molly's chair.
So it's pretty straightforward. It's just got um telescoping arms with a little button
you can...
There's two on the bottom. Right? Then there's a button here that releases the whole thing.
Bring that all together, make sure everything's nice and compact, and then it... this part
wraps around and it, you know... This is the one I'm obsessed with. And the reason I really
like this one is because it makes room for two people or more room for one person. So
actually, this is my friend's chair and I spent a lot of time in it on this camping
trip. I appreciate that it's got a really solid back which means that I that there's
a wind block. It actually stays pretty stable even on uneven terrain and kind of one of
the nice things... a couple nice features about this one: it's got the netting inside
here so you and your stuff is not going to fall out. Right? And of course, my favorite
feature is not to share, really just to spread out! And it fits a frame like mine pretty
well, but it is also an open invitation if other people want to join. You know, you bring
one thing and you have two seats. It's also got, you know, kind of the essentials. And
apparently, this is for a wine glass which is just too bougie for me. The downside to
this one is that it has a larger footprint but candidly it's about the same footprint
in my... in my garage when it folds up as my bigger chair that only seats one. Joni:
Here's a chair that's probably going to be really familiar to a lot of us especially
those who grew up in the 70s. This is your old aluminum frame chair. This one happens
to have been re-webbed with some nylon macrame cord. It's really actually very attractive.
They're lightweight, they fold up really easily, but they don't fold up super small so you
do have to have a space for the chair to be folded up. But they're really really comfortable,
you can find the frames in lots of thrift shops and re-web it yourself, they're very
easy and uh actually really attractive. Schyler: I'm Schyler and this is Scout we're Scout
and Sky and this is my Sam's Club chair It's basically a knockoff of one of those like
200 Stargazy chairs which is awesome. It was $35 at Sam's Club! And it's mostly fantastic
because I always sit cross-legged so you can just sit and chill. Right? It's very cozy
because my legs always dangle off those ones. But it's got this cool thing you can pull
these little tabbers and just chill and watch the sky which is nice. Oh, it's just relaxing.
It's a very good chair. It's also got this sweet cup holder which doesn't move much when
you're swinging so you don't dump your stuff all over yourself. The downside I suppose
is that it is huge when it packs up. It's very cumbersome and then two parts which isn't
convenient for toting. So I was saying it's got these little two little pinner things
down here. Also a good feature is this just comes off so to prevent the fading and stuff
as it does, you can just take this thing off and crumple it up somewhere or just leave
it out, whatever.
Then you've go two pieces basically. So it doesn't fold up like as conveniently as as
that one but... When you set it up you gotta be very careful. The first time I set this
up I uh did so at my mom and dad's house. I didn't know that you had to put those in,
so I show my 70 plus year old father this fancy new chair and he sits in it and it collapses.
He didn't get hurt or anything but we all had a good laugh about it. So you just throw
little pins in and then uh BOOP! It becomes a chair! Joni: Awesome! All right, so tell
us about your other fancy chair over here. Schyler: Oh this is the Taco chair. This is
your standard Walmart special. But they're super handy if you just BOOP fold them up,
leave them someplace, carry them around, just basic basic stuff. The puppies love them.
Rachel: All right. This is a very compact and light chair made by Marchway. And what
I really like about this chair is that it is compact and it's light. It has a carrying
case which we just stow on the legs when it's not in use. So there are a lot of chairs that
are very similar to this on the market.
There's this seat piece.
And then these are just basically like tent poles that most people have experience with
[Music]
And then put it in the bag. To put the chair together...
You can set this part aside...
Velcro
Joni: It kind of assembles itself doesn't it? Rachel: It kind of assembles itself yeah.
You can tell which part is the legs by which part has the rubber feet on it.
There yo go! The top has like a deep pole pocket so you have to put the top on first
Then the seat.
One of the things I like about it is that it's a little bit springy so I like a rocking
chair and I find that I can just kind of rock myself. But I have heard other people complain
that they don't like the back angle on this chair. So there really is only one way you
can sit in the chair. You can't like really sit up on the edge, it's not comfortable.
So if the back angle isn't for you then this chair really isn't for you.
I hope this video helps you find a chair for your best nomad life - one that’s not too
big or too small, but JUST RIGHT! And maybe we’ll see ya’ ‘round the fire someday
in your perfect chair!
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every Thursday at 5pm Pacific.
This is Joni, with the Galavan, Enjoy Your Journey!
[Music]