Now in this video, we're going to talk about things that I absolutely 100% stopped buying
after we moved into our RV a couple of years ago now I know that you're going
to find this super valuable because this is going to help you not only downsize if
you're looking at RV living but just have a more clutter free life in general so I
know you're going to get a lot of value out of this video you're going to want to stay tuned
Hello my name is Charity if you're new here to the channel my family Ben myself our kids our
dog our cats we've been traveling the country for five years now in our RV we've learned a
ton along the way we found some great places to visit some great food and just great tips
and tricks which we all share here so if that sounds like something that you're interested in
make sure you hit that subscribe button so that you just get a quick notification every time a
new video is released so today we're gonna talk about things that I no longer buy and to kind of
give you a quick intro I want you to think about stuff in general it's kind of like an employee so
if you're the owner of a business or if maybe you've been in management before you've worked
with employees employees need to do a job for you they need to benefit the business somehow
or benefit the company somehow and I want you to think about every single item every single thing
that you have in your life as an employee and if that employee that thing is not benefiting you
and you're having to take more time to manage that then maybe it's time to let that thing
or that employee go so that being said the first thing that I no longer buy after being in our RV
are seasonal decor items this would be things like say your Valentine's Day decorations or
your Easter decorations or fourth of July Decor all of these things that are so easy to pick up
now they're they're pretty cutesy right but in an RV there's just not the space for it it takes too
much time to set up to take down there's just more negatives more cons than there are Pros to all
of these just seasonal type of clutter things now when it comes to Christmas that's kind of the One
Big Holiday we have one small tub of Christmas items that we will put out at Christmas time
but that is the only time we put out any seasonal Decor I got rid of it all it all ended up
either unfortunately at the landfill or at the thrift store and I no longer buy it [Applause]
so the number two thing that I no longer buy or will have in my RV are throw pillows now I cannot
tell you when we first kind of renovated our RV I was wanting to make it look more homey and throw
pillows on the couch just seem to really bring a pop of color and they looked nice and they looked
pretty but there was this thing that happened every single time we had a travel day and all
of those throw pillows ended up on the floor and we have two animals and we have kids and so throw
pillows on the dirty floor then now created more laundry where I was going to have to wash the
throw pillow covers or even try to spot clean the throw pillows and then they would end up on the
floor again and again and they just really didn't serve any purpose other than maybe they looked
nice and then the same with the bed like in an RV you just don't have a ton of room and so having a
bunch of throw pillows like on your bed where they might look nice they're not really functional they
don't really serve any other purpose and so I just got rid of all of the throw pillows that
are in the RV we use regular pillows for sleeping if for some reason we do you know feel like we
need a pillow on the couch we could always just grab one off of the bed to kind of prop yourself
up if you're gonna be reclining on the couch but throw pillows no longer will buy those [Music]
now the number three thing that I will not buy anymore after moving into our RV are home decor
items such as like your little knick-knacky things maybe a decorative vase or a decorative
wall hanging something of that nature again when you think about things being like an employee and
the time that it takes to take all of that down on a travel day and to secure it and put it away
and then have to keep it clean and dust it and get it all back out after you're done with that
travel day it just takes a lot of time and so the only decor items that we have in the RV now
is I have just a few small fake plants from Ikea that I actually can secure with like some poster
putty onto the table so I don't have to pick it up and put it away on travel day and then put
it back when we're done traveling or worry about any of that it stays where it should brings just
a little bit of only feel to the RV but it's not taking up a lot of space and it's not taking up a
lot of my time either [Music] now the number four thing that I will not purchase anymore
is an RV or actual hard copy books I love reading books and I really like those hard copy books but
carrying them around in an RV and accumulating those in an RV it takes up a lot of space but
it also adds a lot of weight and depending upon the type of RV that you're looking at weight is
something you have to consider and it's a precious commodity when you need to put stuff in your RV
and you don't want extra things weighing it down so now if we're going to be in a specific area
for more than a couple of weeks I will utilize our local library and go check out some books
from the library the other option that's great is you can use things like e-readers so use a
Kindle download audio books we love listening to audiobooks or podcasts on travel days makes that
time go by faster so there's a lot of great way to still get in a real really good book
without having to have a bunch of those hard copy books taking up space in the RV [Music]
now something else I stopped buying after we moved into our RV was a mattress topper one
thing that most people find out very quickly is that the mattresses that come with your RV
from the manufacturer well they're just not very comfortable and we tried to solve this
by purchasing a mattress topper for our RV Factory Mattress and we didn't get a cheap
one no no no we bought a several hundred dollar topper thinking that this would do
the trick well if you've ever heard the saying about putting lipstick on a pig this is called
Crimson Sky that's kind of about what it was like because that Factory Mattress was still a pig
so we got rid of the Factory Mattress and the topper and ended up choosing a mattress from
rvmattress.com by Brooklyn Bedding we went with the Aurora Luxe hybrid mattress and it's been
great having a mattress that feels like a real bed and not like an RV bed now the process to
have it shipped to us and get it into the RV was super simple their mattresses come rolled up in a
box and wrapped in plastic so when our mattress arrived we hoisted it in the RV unwrapped the
plastic and it poofed right up and was ready to sleep on but what about if you're not on
the road or you're a part-time rver one thing we realized is that we were sleeping better in
our RV than we were at our glamper Hideaway which is our home base plus vacation rental
so we went through brooklynbetting.com which is RV mattresses parent company to get another
mattress for our home base their mattresses are made right here in the U.S and shipped for free
and come with a 10 year warranty so we are set for a very a long time one of the things
we really want to do is be a resource for you all in the RV community and so we do occasionally take
time to share about products that we really love and use ourselves and we partner with businesses
like rvmattress.com for discounts for our viewers so if you're looking for a new mattress for your
home or RV check out rvmattress.com you can click the link below or go to rvmattress.com
forward slash grateful and save 20 off of your next mattress purchase with the code grateful
so the number five thing that I will not buy anymore is excess or extra food now again
space being at a premium but also think about it this way when you maybe ask your spouse for
your significant other or if you're traveling with a friend hey where do you want to go eat
and they respond I don't know where do you want to go eat and you say I don't know what sounds
good and they're like well I don't know what is there because there's so many options in
the United States we never have a shortage of restaurants or places to choose to go eat and
because of that we get like decision overload and it's hard to make a choice when there's
so many options and I was running into this and finding this with food when I would get seven or
eight different types of snacks in the cupboard we would eat through two or three of those and
then the rest of them would end up going at a date and I would end up throwing them away or donating
them to a food pantry if they were still still in date but there was just decision overload and so I
found that if I just put two to three different options for snacks and we plan our meals I plan
about five to seven days in advance and that's all the food that I bring in the RV now I will
tell you when you first start doing this it feels like a little I don't know like whether you get a
little bit of anxiety maybe or at least that how it was for me when you open the fridge and the
fridge isn't like jam-packed full well couple of benefits with that in an RV number one wait
number two your fridge will actually work better if it's not packed to the gills but the actual
food that you need for you and your family for five to seven days chances are it might not take
up the whole fridge it might not fill up the whole freezer and I learn by not having a lot of excess
food well one we're saving money because I'm not buying things to just end up throwing them out
later because I forgot that there was a bag of asparagus shoved in the back of our refrigerator
that I forgot about but we're also just taking up less space in general it's just more clutter free
so the number six thing that I will not buy anymore as an rver is actually something that
was really hard in the beginning when we first started traveling and that was souvenirs because
we wanted mementos we wanted these like things these trinkets all of these things from these
places we would visit so that we would remember that time that we visited that place and that can
get really cluttersome really fast I also found myself purging a lot of that and it got donated
to the thrift store after several months because it just didn't have the same value two or three
months later it really didn't remind us of that place like other things did and so now when it
comes to souvenirs really the only thing that we will do souvenir wise is occasionally if I could
find a really small sticker that I could throw on my water bottle well maybe I'll get that is
some sort of souvenir or Memento occasionally if we see a really cool shirt that we're like wow I
just love that shirt design and it says Glacier National Park or whatever well maybe we'll pick
that up but we have a rule that is one in one out so if you're a member of our family and you
see a really cool shirt and you really want that thing as a souvenir you gotta remember
in the back of your head all right what's gonna leave the closet when this goes into the closet
and then one of the last things that we do is we take a ton of pictures wherever we go use a
lot of those pictures on our mix tiles that we use for Decor in the RV and I will rotate
those out from year to year to kind of keep some things fresh to keep those things fresh in our
mind of all the wonderful adventures that we've had in the form of a photo hanging on the wall
and that brings back way more memories than that little shot glass that says Acadia National Park
now the number seven thing that I do not buy anymore is an rver is bottled water we have
a water filter we use on the outside of the RV we have an under sink filter we don't have a big
fancy filter setup but what we do use is we use our travel Berkey so we keep that full of water
it filters it out really really well I love the taste of the water out of the travel Berkey and
we fill up reusable stainless steel water bottles it keeps the water cold it works great as we're
out and we're about traveling and it saves on not only the expensifying bottled water but it saves
on plastic lots of just eco-friendly reasons to use a refillable water bottle versus just
buying more water bottles but I will have a link in the description below to our Berkey
we absolutely love that and then another thing that we don't buy anymore or at least not as much
as we used to is then sparkling water we really like sparkling water we drink a lot of sparkling
water it is gotten more expensive lately and again just from a waste standpoint a lot of campgrounds
unfortunately don't offer recycling which that is a whole other video and a whole other subject in
and of itself but it saves space and it saves expense so I'll put a link in the description
below for the soda scents that we have off of Amazon so you'll have to let me know in the
comments below which one of these ideas was maybe your favorite or the one that most resonates with
you more Pros no more cons forgot what it was all right hang on Decor because that factor that
so you'll have to let me know what well let's see I'm gonna put a link right up
here for a video we did about things we would do differently if we were to start
RV life all over today I know you're gonna find that super super helpful if we don't see
you out on the road or around the campground we'll definitely catch you in the next video