hey there jenna here welcome to my channel where i take you on tours of creative homes
and showcase stories of people living alternatively for those of you that are
parents i want you to imagine for a moment if you had to raise your kids in a 188 square foot house
sounds chaotic right well now imagine that same house with a beautiful ocean view
and opportunity for daily adventures maybe it doesn't sound so bad anymore well in today's
video you're gonna meet a family of four that have been living tiny and nomadically for years and
they're gonna take us on a tour of their gorgeous airstream which is currently parked in baja mexico
if you like these kind of stories make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell so
that you know every single time i publish a new tour all right guys let's take a tour
hello my name is harvey and i'm alexis i'm stephen and i'm levi and we're the national
we had friends that had a sprinter van and we were just so impressed steven decided he's like i think
we should get one of these when we first got our van it really checked all of the boxes for us on
mobility and space and then when our kids came we were weekend warriors for gosh a good part of
the first few years of their lives they really enjoyed it you could see that the outdoors was
their element really brought out their creativity and their personalities we knew right away there
was something we wanted to do more of we gave ourselves a true deadline and said okay by june
8th yeah we're hitting the road setting that date is such a huge step you put a date on the calendar
you say this is the date like our departure date and then you kind of work backwards from
that it's amazing what having that date does we knew we needed to do this for ourselves
if we didn't do it we would live with such regret that we never gave ourselves the chance to try
we would only plan to be on the road for a year and we were getting into our second year and the
kids were sort of outgrowing their sleeping space and so that was kind of the catalyst for us to
decide that we needed to do something different the van was just wasn't going to continue to
work for us and the kids and so we landed on the airstream as sort of being the solution
and just switching from a van to a truck and a trailer combination we just wanted to separate
sort of our living space from the vehicle so that we could have a little bit more flexibility
we say in our van that we didn't live in our van we lived out of our van
and now in the airstream it's definitely like something we can live in
this is our 2017 airstream flying cloud
rear bedroom we've had this particular model for about a year now and we've really come to enjoy it
what we really liked about the airstream one of the reasons we decided to purchase it was all the
windows we used to have a lot of windows in our van it was really important for us to maintain
those views and the airstream has a ton of windows most of them open it's really great airflow
and it really makes for a great aesthetic look the other thing you'll notice is a dual axle trailer
which is really great for stability allows us to go down some roads without worrying too much about
the terrain and the conditions this particular model weighs in at just over 6 000 pounds and
has a gross vehicle weight rating of 7 600 pounds so it gives us about 1 600 pounds of
weight to play with which is really helpful for a family of four trying to fit all of your gear
and all of your food all the things that you need to live on the road one of the things we
did was have the airstream lifted three inches and it was a really simple modification to make
and that really helps protect all the tanks that are underneath the trailer because now they run
flush with the axles we had an issue with our fresh water tank that got damaged we definitely
don't want to repeat of that so that modification will help us avoid that situation in the future
all right let's go ahead and take a look up on the roof one of the first upgrades we made to
the airstream was adding these additional solar panels and swapping out the standard batteries
for lithium-ion batteries so we installed 300 watts of solar on the roof which was a pretty
easy thing to do on the airstream because it comes pre-wired for 300 watts of solar
those 200 amp hours of lithium batteries really give us all the battery power that we need and the
solar power can keep up as long as we're in pretty decent sun so one of our favorite features on the
airstream is this big awning in the front these awnings are super easy to deploy and create a ton
of shade and it really comes in handy when you're camping in places that are really sunny and warm
so this is the back of the airstream and one of the things i wanted to show you guys here
is that the airstream really doesn't have that much exterior storage compared to most other
travel trailers out there it does have a little bit you have a small storage compartment here
in the bumper and then you have this storage compartment for us that goes underneath our
bed where we carry a lot of our hoses and electrical components but that's it
so we're pulling our 28 foot air stream with our 2021 ram 2500 diesel this thing has a towing
capacity that's more than double the weight of the trailer when it's fully loaded we really just
wanted something we could depend on and that we knew was more than capable of towing our trailer
anywhere we wanted to go so the back of the truck we have all of our storage items we have a lot
of our gear and things that we just don't need access to regularly but we want to have with us
and one of the things that really helps us keep all this organized is this deck drawer system
it allows me to get to all my tools my air compressor and all the things that i might need
in the case of an emergency without having to unload the entire truck
come with me i'll show you around inside
welcome to our living room this is one of our favorite spots to just relax
enjoy time as a family together and of course take in these beautiful baja views
we also like to entertain a lot in our trailer and so this is a great additional seating area
for our guests our couch converts into a bed area it's a great spot when we have our nieces
and nephews over to have a sleepover or if the kids just want some extra sleeping space
welcome to our kitchen one of the great things that i love about this is all of
the upper cabinetry where we have extra space for our dishware all of our spices
and seasoning and it makes it easy when we want to just throw something on the stove and cook
and have everything right here one thing that we could use a little bit more of in this trailer
is some extra counter space as you can see when i'm cooking and i'm trying to prep
for my meal i don't really have a lot of wiggle room to get the work done
so this is our dual zone dometic fridge freezer it typically lasts us about two to four weeks when
we're off grid with the amount of food that we put in here which is perfect for a family of four
to be honest we probably would run out of water before we would run out of food and
have to make a grocery run next up is our pantry we really like this pantry because
it gives us a ton of storage space and it goes pretty far deep into the trailer itself but we
actually use it as food pantry we've got our bath towels toiletries air fryer everything we need
this is also a cool space to put the kids drawings sometimes we've added calendars if
we've got really busy months going on but our kids love to be artistic and we want to be able
to maintain the clean space of the airstream but also showcase off some of their work
all right so let's talk about the shower the shower itself is a nice treat because when we
were in the van we didn't have a shower and so for us this is really nice the shower itself is
a little confined we are short people i'm 5'4 my husband's 5'4 so if you're a little taller
i think it might feel a little bit cramped but we really like having a shower there is
one thing that i don't like about the shower and i don't know if it's a pervasive airstream problem
but we have to lift it up to open and close it so when the kids are taking a shower
they're relying on us to get them out and uh and back in so this is our master bedroom where steven
and i sleep every night we do love this area it feels like there's enough space for both of us
not quite enough for the kids to sleep with us but they've got their own bed the other thing that i
should note about this bed is that it's a queen it did come with a standard mattress which we
promptly tossed and got our own and because we are short people and we do like our extra space steven
actually cut off the front end to ensure that we had enough wiggle room to go around the bed
on either side of the bed is our closet space this is really great because it does have an
area to hang up our clothes the bottom compartment though is sort of a wasted space at least for us
because it doesn't have any shelving and so it tends to just be a junk drawer where we throw like
winter clothes or my yoga mat just the extras that really don't have a designated space
so one thing that we do to keep organized you might want to think about is utilizing packing
cubes it actually is a pretty efficient way to utilize the space we've got it organized by our
undergarments shorts and t-shirts and whatnot and when we get our laundry in we put them right away
stack them in there and we're good to go so one feature that i really like in the bedroom
is the his and hers areas so we've got these nice little cubbies and compartments where we
can add our books i can put my glasses before we go to bed one thing that we also have are these
lights over the bed i really like it because i'm a reader and i like to read at night
we have a ton of extra storage under the bed and we put all of our dirty laundry under here
all of our drinks and things that just don't fit anywhere else go underneath the bed
all right let's move on to the bathroom so it is a smaller space
all things considered but we can actually fit two people
in here pretty easily we've just got the standard issue rv toilets a dometic
so this is our dinette area this is where we do all of our family meals
this was really important to us because when we were in a van we didn't really have a dedicated
space to sit down and have a meal together this is also an important place because it's ruby's little
home she sits underneath our table and got her bed down there she's super cozy and comfortable
and i think she likes it when we're doing our family meals because her feet are all
tucked up underneath her as well one of the other things about the dinette
space and this is probably our most used compartment within the air stream itself
is the snack drawer this is where our kids have free range to come in and out get their own cereal
all their snacks because the kids are in here all the time i know when they're trying to sneak a
snack because it's so noisy when we close it when we first got the airstream we actually thought
we would probably rip out the dinette space just to give us some more floor space and versatility
and we quickly found that it converts into a bed for our kids and they prefer to sleep on
this one as opposed to the one behind me it's probably the size of a small twin or full bed
the reason why we like this bed is because there we both sleep together because usually this little
guy would have nightmares a lot of times like i mean a hundred the blankets are so comfortable
and and the pillows and the panels are so soft and also harvey used to be scared of monster
under the bed since ruby's under here our dog she is kind of the monster under the bed basically
i think we could sleep three years in this bed until we
want to probably change our minds and go get a new bed we want to show you our secret compartment
so this is our secret compartment filled with toys we got stuffies we got swords
we also got toys and also a lot of books
you can really live this lifestyle in any type of rig i think for us our rig for right now the point
that we're at works great for us but it might be another rig in two years and three years and so
the vehicle you're in it's just the tool to get you out there but the point is to get out there
and explore you're going to encounter obstacles and challenges along the way and it's how you
handle those and how you face those especially as a family makes all the difference living
this lifestyle is not easy it just has its own set of challenges for me i would much
rather take the hardships that come with this lifestyle than the ones we were experiencing
in our old life hands down i hope you guys liked this week's video please make sure to
like share and subscribe and i will see you soon with another tiny or unique home tour
you