My favorite part about van life is the freedom to be different.
I'm not living my life by the book.
I'm not doing the things that society
told me that I should do.
I'm Lisa and I live in a van
Welcome to Free Bird.
The Van.
She's a 2012 Nissan envy.
2500 high roof.
She is 100,000 miles.
And I've had her since June. 20. 17.
It took about five months to renovate Freebird into a tiny home.
I got her off of Craigslist being sold by repo Guy.
She used to be a chicken taco delivery van, so I named her free bird
storage.
Essential.
A lot of people don't maximize the above the cab storage space.
I ripped this whole thing out and created this super deep space
that I can stuff all of my blankets and window coverings.
Another really cool thing is that I was able to create
a little vanity area by having this door open this way.
All of a sudden, my kitchen space turned into my bathroom.
A huge part of my van is dedicated to the kitchen.
This counter space is key.
I have a five gallon sink, five
gallon fresh water, five gallon gray water underneath here.
If I were to do this again, I would have ten gallons fresh.
That would be amazing.
I put in four windows in the van,
really specifically located for Daylighting.
This window here is right at my eye level.
I can see out what people can't see in.
Also, these two windows at the bed,
they both are sliders and those have some airflow.
And then this one's a slider as well.
I've got a junk drawer here.
Everyone needs a junk drawer.
And here is my toilet.
I have a lavaoa dry flush toilet
that's basically like a diaper genie for adults.
The best part about Freebird is the bench to bed set up.
This is a queen mattress cut up into pieces.
And when you put it all together, the whole thing becomes a bed.
It can actually fit three people comfortably.
The cool thing is
that when it's the benches, you can have such a great flow of traffic.
When I'm working here in the van, I like to set up the table
and open up the back door so I could have inside outside work vibes
I purchased Freebird for $11,000,
and then I spent $20,000 doing the renovation band
life can cost a couple of thousand dollars or a couple hundred thousand dollars.
I will say that if you are thinking about embracing this lifestyle,
I really highly recommend spending more money on the actual van.
Cheap is expensive when it comes to renovations and when it comes to vehicles.
So spend the money.
The biggest challenge for me, going from house
life to van life was definitely minimizing.
I could not even comprehend
living in 60 square feet
My least favorite part about Solo Van
Life is that it can actually be very, very lonely.
It's hard to be in the middle of nowhere by yourself.
I think it's a slippery slope between feeling free
and feeling loss
before band life.
I was a lawyer in Austin, Texas.
I was working nonstop.
I had no time to do anything fun with any of the money I made.
And just found myself on that never ending rat race loop.
Then my mom got sick with breast cancer and she was given
three to five years to live.
She ended up dying six months later,
when my mom died.
The person that I was.
Died with her
I really felt like I was starting from scratch.
This was the biggest tragedy in my life
and a horrible thing to go through.
And at the same time, losing everything
made me feel free to do anything to
Now that I realize now that I really understand
that life is so short, none of the crap that I was worried about before matters.
You can be whoever you want to be when you're outside
of the context of everyone who knows you from the past.
I never thought I'd be living
that life four years later, but here I am out.
Take to be.
Who knows what lies ahead.