Hi, I'm Christian. I'm Aubrey. And we are the Matneys and this is our 2007
converted Dodge Sprinter van that we have lived in for the last year and a half.
We'd both known that we wanted to travel like forever and ever. I was
working a sales job for a startup and Aubrey was working marketing for that
startup and we had been saving for something. We didn't really know like
what we were saving for, we just knew we wanted it be travel related and I
think at the time like we thought we were gonna go to Thailand or Myanmar. We had a
little bit of money in the bank. We'd been saving for two years and that just
didn't feel quite right. And then we were driving home one day and my parents had a
van they were selling and we were like, "Well, do you want to just buy their van
and drive around in it?". And Aubrey's like, "Yeah, that sounds like a great idea."
And so two weeks later we bought a van. We didn't end up buying their van
we bought a completely different van, but it kind of spurred us on to start
this new chapter of our life. So it was two weeks from like idea inception to actually
purchasing the van. We did like a first build and it was while we were working
full-time and we lived in it for about a year and then recently, back in May, we
kind of like just rethought everything and restructured a lot of stuff. There's
a lot of things that we have improved as we've been on the road. This couch that
we're on right now like this huge amount of seating space, probably the best part
of a home is just a place to crash where you just can kick back, relax, and the
first van that we built we really didn't have anywhere to crash at all,
right? So we just built this like absurd amount of seating space.
Now it's actually like fun to be in here.
So this van is a Freightliner Sprinter. It's
technically a Dodge, but it has the Freightliner logo on there. I'm not quite
sure why, but it is a 2007 Dodge Sprinter. It's a diesel of course because it's a
Sprinter van so we get about 22 miles to the gallon, which is really really solid.
Obviously right now we've thrown some pretty beefy snow tires on this. Since we
do so much traveling just around different types of climates we have a
few different tires that we keep in store. We're in Canada right now, we throw
some studded tires on there. When we're going to South America in a few days
we're gonna throw some all-weather tires on there. This is our garage space. We
wanted a space that kept all of our tools, our bikes, our outdoor gear,
everything like that. Sometimes this van is kind of hard to get around different
cities so this gives us an alternative. Anytime we're living in a city for a
month or two at a time we literally just bike everywhere and find a place to
leave the van. So we need to pull out our bikes. We've got them both on a rack
right here and we also have like this, this is the tray that we can pull out.
The same goes for all of this. Pretty much anything else we need. So this is
any cold weather clothing storage. It's cold weather right now so we're not
storing many clothes there, but we usually do. This is the sheets, pillows, anything
we need to set up our guest bed on our couch inside and then in here we've got
anything we need for backpacking. So we've got our tent, sleeping bags,
sleeping mats, backpacks, anything else like that all right there. I wanted to
make these all like really smooth slides. You realize when you have a storage
place this big it's not easy to access the stuff you just throw it all in there
like an attic, you know, you just never get to it. And then this tray although
it's not very full right now usually is what keeps all of our tools for the van.
So up here I'll keep a circular saw, a nail gun, a couple drills, like anything
that I would need basically to do this entire van again I just go ahead and
keep with us. Guitar with us here and we have our hiking boots right here. These
are window covers that we have that are just unbelievable. Magnetic
can roll right up like this. These guys are lifesavers for us. Our solar panel
setup is pretty simple. We've got two 100 watt solar panels on the roof and we
have a Fantastic Fan that we've installed right in front of those two. So
nothing too crazy. We drilled right through the roof straight to our lithium
ion battery on the inside so it's a very short cable, we don't have to deal with a
bunch of wires or a bunch of holes in the roof. Our heater is an Espar D2
heater that goes directly to our diesel tank so we've got a little pump and
battery that pulls fuel from our diesel tank right to the heater. We have a
little screen here so we don't get dirt on it and clean air right in, get hot air
pumping right out.
Welcome to our home. Alright so, first we have our kitchen
here and we just have an ARB fridge that we can pull out. We keep probably about
two or three days worth of food in this fridge. A lot of people ask where our
stove is. We actually just have a little stove that we pop out here. Just one
burner, that's all we need, and we just hook it up to some fuel.
Vitamins, towels, silverware. We have our toothbrushes and toothpaste and face
wash and everything in there. Twelve gallons of water under here and running
water so we can do whatever we need with cooking, brushing our teeth, that
kind of thing and then we have one tank under here for gray water. We only use
biodegradable soap so you can dump that wherever. Everything that we need to cook
a meal or eat a meal it's in this drawer so all of our pots and pans, bowls, cups
plates, everything. Our pantry right here. We actually call this the abyss because
it is horribly organized, but that's kind of where we keep all of our dried goods
oils, anything that doesn't need to be refrigerated. This is a queen-size
mattress and the most comfortable mattress we've ever owned. Super grateful
for that. It's a little bit high so yeah we can't sit up here, but
you don't need to sit up when you're sleeping so works great for us. Solar
chargers is Goal Zero battery. This just makes our whole setup super simple
so we can run our 12 volt appliances and then just plug things in from here, super
easy. We didn't know much what we were doing so this made it super simple for
us. A huge, long couch we do a lot of work in here. We like to cook our own meals so
that we can save money and that kind of thing and we also like to have friends over so
when we have friends we actually have a little secret seat for those people. It
also doubles as our laundry basket so we have some dirty clothes in here right now.
Lid goes on top and this extra cushion
goes right here. We have enough room for like six people. Our closet is under the
couch so we have our clothes. This is my clothes. Christian's clothes. Bookshelf.
We're trying to fill this up a little bit more with books we find along the
way. A lot of people ask us about these picture frames right here. I'm from Los
Angeles and Chris is from Austin and we honeymooned in Reykjavik so just kind of
where we came from. Lastly we have our lagoon table so this is really awesome
plenty of space for both of us and we can work here, eat here, do whatever we
need to do in our home.
It may feel really, really scary, but it's so worth it to live that life that you
know you know is best for you. I don't think I met a single person who's
actually like gone on the road and made a jump
who has regretted it. Like literally not a single person and I've met a lot of
people that have had like an absolutely horrible time of it; like stuff breaking
down, getting robbed, got whatever it is and still everyone's like, "this is the best
change I've ever made", you know what I mean? We've met people who are a week into
their van life journey and literally every single day the worst possible scenario
cracking up about it, laughing, loving life and we're like so, "how's van life?"
and they're like, "it's amazing. Best decision I've ever made." At this point of our lives kind of thing we live
by is just trying to push ourselves out of our comfort zone every single day. You
get in these routines, you get in these habits, you don't realize how much you
never push yourself outside your comfort zone, right? It caused a lot of anxiety at
first to practice trying something new every single day and really getting out
of your comfort zone, but then you get pretty good at just going with the flow
and letting go a little bit and just putting yourself out there, you know? This
year has just been chock-full of new experiences and I think 2019 is going to
be even crazier, but I've like flipped over so many handlebars and motorcycles
and mountain bikes and things like that and it's been painful and scary, but like
really fun. Every single day it gets more realistic to live this lifestyle on
the road. I think in five years it's not gonna be this crazy thing. It's going to
be like an acceptable lifestyle and we're all kind of like re-branding what
it means to live in a van together. To where you can be a professional, you can
have goals, you can have aspirations, you can want to do good work. You can do all
these things and yet still value these sorts of experiences and live this sort
of lifestyle.
Thanks guys so much for watching. I really hope you enjoyed
seeing our van. If you want to continue to follow our journey we are @thematneys
on YouTube and @thematneys_ on Instagram. You can find us
and follow our journey there. All right, see you guys later!