Inspiration

I Moved From A 3-Bedroom Apartment Into A Renovated School Bus, And I Don’t Regret It At All

  • My husband and I purchased a bus in June 2020 and spent 9 months changing it into our dream living.
  • Downsizing wasn’t as exhausting as we anticipated, plus we have now loads of storage on board.

My husband, Charlie, and I met in 2015 and immediately linked over our love of journey.
After a number of blissful years in Chicago, we had been prepared for one thing new, so we left our jobs in 2019 to backpack round Asia and Oceania.

Prior to our small sabbatical, we lived in a three-bedroom, 1,000-square-foot condominium and had sufficient stuff to fill it. But after living out of a backpack for 4 months, we agreed materials possessions weren’t bringing us happiness and had been able to downsize.

We could not determine the place we really wished to live

The international pandemic hit the US three months after we obtained back. Since our lease was ending and jobs had been transitioning to be distant, we moved out of our condominium, packed our stuff right into a storage unit, and settled into my dad’s home.

For a number of weeks, we had been careworn about the place we might live subsequent, attempting to determine the type of living we wished to purchase and what would make us blissful. We began taking a look at various choices after some buddies began touring the nation in an RV.

New RVs may be costly, and we wished one thing that will really really feel like a house to us. So once we noticed a social-media post a couple of couple who transformed a college bus right into a tiny living, a lightweight bulb went off.

We realized we may make a college bus completely our personal and likewise journey North America to seek out the place we need to calm down.

We renovated the space to suit our wants

In June 2020, we purchased a college bus off of Facebook Marketplace for $3,500. It was an empty slate for us to make our personal, however we had no experience with carpentry, plumbing, or electrical energy.

We did a lot of the school bus renovations ourselves
We did a lot of the school bus renovations ourselves. – Nicole Jones

With assist from YouTube, Instagram, household, and buddies, we constructed the tiny living of our goals in simply 9 months.

We went by all of our belongings and solely saved we what actually wanted. It wasn’t as exhausting as we anticipated, and we had greater than sufficient storage on board.

In March 2021, we hit the street and instantly headed to the Southwest for hotter climate after spending the winter in northern Wisconsin.

Adjusting to the small living space wasn’t as tough as we imagined

Although transferring from a 1,000-square-foot space right into a 230-square-foot bus could seem to be a giant change, it solely took us a number of weeks to regulate.

However, that period was powerful. Within our first two weeks on the street, we had a problem with our transmission, radiator, and windshield, plus three separate journeys to the mechanic.

We thought we had made a flawed determination and weren’t going to have the ability to deal with the stress of living in a college bus.

But after every thing was mounted, we made it to Show Low, Arizona, to fulfill one other school-bus couple we had discovered by Instagram. We exchanged tales with our new buddies, and our worries went away.

Living in a bus has opened our eyes to so many experiences

We spent the subsequent a number of months exploring locations we might by no means been, going to nationwide parks, attending festivals, and making buddies.

We’ve now been on the street for 16 months and have by no means been happier. We chase good climate, and if we wish a brand new experience, we transfer our living.

We nonetheless do not know the place we need to calm down full time, however the extra we give it some thought, we suspect it isn’t a lot that there is nowhere we need to live — we’re simply not prepared to surrender living in all places but.

Author : Nicole Jones

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