Houseless, but certainly not homeless.

We’ve finally done it! We handed the keys in to the estate agent last Wednesday and we have survived a whole week of van dwelling.

So far, so good! We’re still in a state of organised chaos, well our van is a bit of a mess.  We are missing our kitchen unit (a promise from a friend fell through), lacking a few cupboards, plastic boxes and storage space (a job for next month’s wage) and I appear to have enough clothes to open my own branch of ‘Go Outdoors’! A job for tonight is to go through our clothes and decide what we really need...that fancy dress bag is really going to have to go into storage!

After 3 days of cleaning last week, seriously it’s the hardest I’ve ever worked in my life! We were on pins as to whether or not we would get our ridiculously large deposit back from our rental house we were moving out of. It wasn’t just the money that was important to us, but the fact that it is our security net. If we need to move back into a house at short notice or the van decides to break down, then we should have £1050 in our savings account to fall back on. The good news arrived on Saturday as I listened to a voicemail from the estate agent informing us after the Landlords inspection we were getting our full deposit back and it should be with us within seven working days. This in itself is a massive achievement and if you have dogs you will know how much hassle it can be to try and rent a house and the assumptions behind having dogs in a rented property...funnily enough neither of our dogs did eat any of the house!

Our first week in the van has been pretty uneventful and we are really looking forward to getting organised and settling in more. I think my most interesting moment this week is now having the ability to ‘wee’ standing up. I have invested in a Shewee extreme (http://www.shewee.com/) and it has been a complete revelation. It was hard to overcome the psychological barrier of opening the flood gates whilst stood up, but I’m getting there slowly and it is really quite liberating not having to squat and bare my bum to the world!

1 month until the big move!

We’re finally firing on all cylinders! We bought a van on Saturday 28^th April and we have had a few fun weeks and weekends in it as a bit of a test run.

It is a Renault Master 2.5 litre van – which used to be a passenger ambulance, it has spent life as a Taxi mini bus and we have welcomed it with open arms as a partially done project. It has had all the seats removed and a very basic conversion started to make it into a campervan. We are going to continue the conversion and make it our home!

We have handed in notice on our rented house and sold most of our belongings...we are currently sleeping on a mattress on the floor and have little more than sofa, fridge and freezer (everything else has gone and I can’t wait to move into the van.

We officially move into the van on 27^th June...just one month to go!

We are taking our ‘before’ photographs tonight and jobs which we hope to be done by the end of the next couple of weeks include:

·         Curtains – essential for privacy and a homely feel.

·         New floor – easier to clean.

·         Painting the woodwork – to brighten the place up.

·         Kitchen unit completion – for normality and somewhere to store our food/utensils etc.

Who pressed the pause button?!

No we've not fallen off the edge of the Earth!

But things slowed down and knocked us off track....I will post a more detailed update before the end of the week, but after a long 8 months of this idea taking shape...we may have a van and be very close to starting this crazy adventure!!