in this video we are going to show you how to save hundreds of dollars by not
buying the RV accessories that you really don't need or just really don't work so well for RV
life so stay tuned we are charity ben dakota and trinity we decided we didn't want to wait for a
life of adventure so in 2017 we bought our first RV and set off to live a life of travel in the USA
we've visited over 38 states in three years and have many more to go follow along to learn all
the best places to see RV and travel tips and much more when we bought our first RV
the first thing that we did is jumped on youtube and searched for RV accessories or
jump on Facebook and ask people in the Facebook groups what are your must-have RV accessories
when hitting the road and as you know we've got a ton of different responses from people but we saw
some common threads where a lot of people were maybe recommending the same thing over and over
so we took kind of those common answers and that is the accessories and the gear that we bought we
found out once we started using them that not all of them worked so well in practicality so in this
video we are going to help you save money by not buying those things that just didn't work so well
once we actually started using them and this is a little video that I kind of am wanting to call
buy this not that so the first piece of RV gear that we bought was this style
water pressure regulator now this particular style is the style that we saw recommended in
a lot of rv blog posts and people in Facebook groups that were saying this is the style of
water pressure regulator that you need so this hooks up to the outside spigot this hooks into
your hose coming into the rv for fresh water and it does do its job it regulates the water pressure
however, we found because this is not an adjustable water pressure regulator
that this is only able to reduce it by a certain amount and so what happens is
is you're reducing all of that water pressure that is coming into your rig and using this style of
water pressure regulator we found we didn't have hardly enough water pressure to take a shower or
to do dishes because it reduced the water pressure so highly so this was a total waste of money
we don't even use this anymore but what we use instead is this style of water pressure regulator
now this is actually an adjustable water pressure regulator there is a place here at the top where
you can use a screwdriver to actually increase the water pressure or decrease the water pressure
it gives you a gauge so you know exactly what your water pressure is you're not making it too
high to run the risk of damaging anything on your RV interior but we've got great water pressure now
to be able to take showers do dishes all of those things that we need to do on the inside of the rig
so this is what we use now where we wasted our money on the other one so definitely
buy this not the other kind the next piece of RV gear that we spent several hundreds of dollars on
that turned out to be a total waste of money are the zero gravity style camp chairs these turned
out to be completely impractical we actually stopped using them and went back to the regular
style folding cam chairs this is why they are too big and too bulky this is really big and let me
tell you what this is not light and it weighs a ton if you have an RV where you need to be
concerned about weight or if you have say a pickup truck or tow vehicle where you're towing your
travel trailer or fifth wheel and bed space is it a premium you don't want to fill it up with this
these are so big that they would not even fit in the basement compartments of our rig
they ended up going in the back of our jeep which is the vehicle that we tow and then I would get to
the grocery store and forget I didn't take out the chairs and have no room for groceries and so they
turned out to be the most impractical thing that we purchased and this particular style we did not
spare any expense for because we thought we needed to be comfortable while we're
sitting out under our awning at the campground so biggest waste of money ever and this is what
we ended up using instead and this is also what you should consider buying these Coleman
camping chairs so these are very very lightweight they don't take up a lot of space and these have
actually come a long way over the years so if you have checked out our video about the
top gifts for our viewers you can see more information on these and all of the cool
features that they have in them these days but needless to say they're very very lightweight
you can easily take it with you down to the beach or to the park or anywhere you need
to go they store very very easily in a lot of varieties of RV storage space they don't weigh
a lot so you're not adding extra weight to your rig or losing any sort of storage capacity by
just having something that's big and bulky while you're moving from spot to spot so definitely
buy this not the zero gravity style so the next piece of rv gear we regret buying is the coleman
grill what you want to get instead is a Blackstone griddle with the Coleman grill there's a couple
things that are disadvantaged with this particular grill one of them being that it has two burners
right so in order to cook anything you do have to have pots and pans to put onto the grill so
that's more that you do have to carry with you so if you want to cook pancakes on the Coleman grill
you have to have a pretty large size pan to put onto the Coleman grill now with the Blackstone
you can throw anything onto that griddle so you could cook eggs bacon sausage vegetables
hamburgers anything you just throw it all on there and you're not required any extra accessories
to go with it to make it work all you need is the blackstone griddle itself and some oil and
you're good to go now one thing that we do regret doing is buying the two burner blackstone griddle
I thought bigger was better but that isn't always the case so what I would do is if you're a small
family get the single burner blackstone griddle because you can get a carry bag for this thing
so it's easy to pull in and out of the rig without requiring two people to pull it out now I can move
around the two burner blackstone but it's a little bit much for me get the blackstone griddle not
a Coleman grill the next piece of RV gear that was a total waste of money and that we
regret buying is this style of freshwater hose for the city water hookups in the RV
now again this is the style that we saw in all the blog posts in a lot of different youtube videos
that people were purchasing so this particular one happens to be a Camco brand there's lots
of manufacturers that make this particular style of freshwater hose but we found it to be a total
waste of money and this is why this zero-g style hose literally weighs less and is longer than the
traditional drinking water hose the other thing is this thing is so flexible and so easy to use
that it just ends up being a way better hose when you go to coil it up to put it in your
rig for storage you're not feeling like that you're you know messing with some sort of live
snake or whatever because it doesn't want to coil and it's really stiff and inflexible these
zero g hoses we have absolutely loved and then here's a little tip we actually have two of these
and then when we hook up to the campground spigot we're using a dual hookup to have
two so we've got one coming into the rig for fresh water and then we have another one that
we can use if we need to just spray something off real fast maybe we went for a bike ride and
got muddy or the dog got muddy so there's two of these and they work extremely well
much better use of money using this style hose for your freshwater drinking hose
than the traditional drinking water hose that you see in all of the blog posts and on all the videos
the next piece of RV gear that was a total waste of money and we don't use it and I was surprised
that we still had it this thing needs to go down to the donation store but that is one
of these collapsible trash cans now when we got our first rig we had people that were campers
tell us oh you need a camping trash can so this one collapses down it opens up and then
you can put your trashcan liner in here and put your trash in it but here's the thing if you're
in an RV chances are that you are going to be at some sort of campground at some sort of state park
somewhere where you have access to dumpsters and you have access to trash cans and you're
going to keep a trash can on the inside of your rig and so if you feel like you need a trash can
for the outside just grab the one from inside your rig bring it out to empty your trash in because
you're gonna just bag it up and go take it down to the dumpster the campground trash can anyway so
total waste of money never has been used in four years of living the RV life I was shocked we're
still hauling this around so this is a piece of RV gear total waste of money we're just going
to be donating it at a local thrift store for somebody that will find it useful with
a different style of camping other than RV live we'd love to know what you guys think are a waste
of money what accessories have you purchased that you're saying we're gonna go and leave this behind
the next time we go out on a trip because we know we're not the only ones that this has happened to
we know that it's probably happened to some of you guys too where maybe you found in a group or maybe
even you just saw something while you were out shopping at a camping world or something where
you thought that's a great idea and then in practicality when the rubber hit the road you
found out that was the biggest waste of money ever so leave us a comment below and let us know what
has that been for you what if you found out just didn't work as well in practicality
also Charity has made this amazing trip planning guide that is free and available
to our community so we wanted to invite you to go check it out at gratefulclamper.com forward slash
planner so this is also another tool that is just going to help you save
money as you're planning your trips on the road so make sure that you check that out
if you're looking for some more fun videos about rv life and some never before seen footage
you can check us out over at our Patreon and I will put a link in the description below to that
we've got deleted scenes in there we've got just some inside tips from some places that we visited
that we share with our patreon supporters over there so make sure that you go check that out
and if you found this helpful or valuable we'd love it if you hit the thumbs up button
and subscribe to grateful glamper this lets youtube know that what we're providing is valuable
and people like it so that would help us out a lot so even if you don't go check us out on patreon
you can still help the channel grow by giving us that thumbs up and hitting the subscribe button
until next time we'll see you on the road these coleman champion care champion cares
thanks for watching and we'll see you on the road that's awkward