AIBU to have fallen out of love with campervanning?

[cluckandcollect]

We've had a camper van for a few years. Secondhand when we bought it and nothing fancy and it's now 14 years old. For the first few years it was fun but I've become increasingly aware of how it's a way of taking housework away with us. We've got a campsite on the coast booked for Easter and already I'm sick of the meal planning and cleaning out the fridge and oven and preparing supplies and bedding and clothes and the first aid kit and on and on. I've had 12 solid months of cooking and washing up and now I'm going to be spending the next couple of evenings cooking and freezing and prepping and then, while we're away, defrosting and cooking and washing-up in a van...

My partner cleans the exterior, checks the mechanical. stuff, looks after the gas and the hook-up leads and points, manages the servicing of the vehicle and the gas safety and so on, which is great. We share the chores while we're away. But the fact is it's still the same-old-same-old and I'm so bored of it!

I know how lucky we are to be able to have this escape, and I know there are hundreds of thousands more vans out there on the road since we first had ours, so there are clearly many who love them. But are there other van owners who dread the drudgery?

Sell it now. They are going for mental money.

YANBU. We sold ours last year. Best thing we did all year .... (heaves huge sigh of relief never again to have to sleep in the thing/prep a meal in a totally inadequate kitchen/pee in a bucket/climb over DH to get out of bed ....... )

I'll just leave this here... 😉
www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/camper-van-gives-illusion-of-freedom-2012061430501

that did make me chuckle. There are definitely a lot of inconveniences. It’s easy to romanticise when stuck at home in lockdown. But overall we still love it.
If you’ve had enough, as people have said, time for something else.

I leave everything packed in ours and we share all the meal planning and prep. Love our van.

@Popfan

**are you going with children? from about 8yo they should be able to cook simple meals.

I can't roll my eyes enough at this.... just waiting for someone to come along to say their 3 year old would be changing all the beds / washing up / servicing the campervan.......

Why eyeroll? My 8yr old. Is showing a huge interest in cooking. I have been teaching him kitchen safety and how to safely use a hot oven and grill.

He can now make toast and cook a frozen pizza by himself. (supervised)

With a little more supervision and help he can make sausage and mash, banana cake and bloody lovely Yorkshire puddings 😁

I got rid of my caravan because it was too much like hard work and returned to tent camping. I’m a fair weather camper only though. Now with children I like those cheap sun savers static caravan breaks. Less than 40 quid for 4 nights and I didn’t have to set the dam thing up. We just ate tea in the local morrisons cafe every night!
Sell it if you fancy a change. Holidays shouldn’t be hard work

@Username7521

God op, you sound totally joyless. Sell the van. Life’s too short.

Why the judgy-ness?

Bit harsh!

I felt like this about our caravan and we NEVER cooked in it other than fry ups.

It was great when the kids were very small as they loved it and it was cheap. But I found travelling with it, parking and putting up awning stressful even that was mainly dh job. I had my usual jobs when home and cleaning washing etc with the additional work of washing bedding and tea towels etc.

We had an enjoyable couple of years but glad it's gone now!

And we sold it for tban we paid! You'd probably get a good deal at the moment as people are daydreaming about UK holidays due to covid.

You need to do it 70s style. All food is straight out of a tin, except Angel delight which is made with UHT milk. Disposable BBQ one night (no washing up) Take out fish and chips one night. Bakery pies one night. Cafe or pub another night.

We used to love tinned beans or tinned spaghetti with soft white rolls when we were kids. Disgusting food but you associate it with the adventure.

It’s ok to LTV if you want to.

But tbh it sounds like you have a DH Problem not a van problem.

If he doesn’t like ready meals, then he sorts all the food.

Don’t let him bullshit you that he has the harder job with the mechanicals. I had a van for a few years. That bit is a piece of piss. Cooking and packing is a ballache. He’s not only stringing you along, but making your job way harder than it needs to be.

He's really stuck you with the shit work. Personally, I won't go to a place with no hookup. Then I can use the sink and such at the block to do the washing up. Fuck all that batch cooking and defrosting because he doesn't fancy ready meals. He can cook then. We have an awning and most evening meals are BBQ of some sort. We pack and unpack together.

I'd have him go on his own, tbh.

We have a seven year old motorhome which we bought new. The oven has been used twice, the grill never, the hob a couple of times. We just eat out. You are making it very difficult when its doesn’t need to be.

@deste

We have a seven year old motorhome which we bought new. The oven has been used twice, the grill never, the hob a couple of times. We just eat out. You are making it very difficult when its doesn’t need to be.

Yeah, we only use ours if the weather is dire. We have a kettle made for a van and use that for tea and coffee and to cook noodles and such.

We sold ours a couple of years ago. We’d had it for about 7 or 8 years and had some fun but it was expensive to run and not as flexible as we would like. I’d like another van but something a bit smaller and easier to get to the really wild places we want to visit.

Calling all veterans: what would you say is the ideal temperament needed to become a happy campervan/motorhome holidaymaker?

We hired a VW camper van last year and although it was fun and we got to go to Dorset, Devon and Cornwall in a week, I did find it hard work. Not so much the food, as we ate out a lot but setting up the beds each night and then packing it all up the next day so we could travel, just did my head in (literally as I kept banging it).
I realised that you do need to be super organised and maybe take less stuff, as I seemed to be packing/unpacking the bloody thing all the time. One morning we were ready to go when we realised we had lost the keys, so out it all came again!
We also promised DD in the weeks before that she would be sleeping in the top but little did we know that the bed down below was small. We squashed in the bottom all week.
We soon realised we didn’t want one after this and have booked a static caravan this year. It will seem very luxurious, especially having our own bathroom!

I don't have a camper but do have a motorhome and it's brilliant. I take easy food and use take aways. Pub beer gardens are open from 12 April.

We get to go away as have own facilities from April 12 too. Love the freedom it gives.

If it doesn't suit you then as others have said sell it now, it's a sellers market as there is more demand than supply.

Although we are not veterans of this, the main reason I think we enjoy ours is that we stay fairly local. We live in a beautiful area that tourists come to, so we don’t go more than a few hours from home. When it’s rainy and the pop too leaks too much, and the kids seem like they’re never going to stop fighting, we can easily go home without it being a big ‘holiday ruining’ deal.
It’s great for days out, changing wetsuits and preparing coffee at the beach.
Ours isn’t at all new, or a VW, so the outlay wasn’t huge. It’s also our second car although I don’t need to drive often. Handy for trips to the tip etc.

^Why eyeroll? My 8yr old. Is showing a huge interest in cooking. I have been teaching him kitchen safety and how to safely use a hot oven and grill.

He can now make toast and cook a frozen pizza by himself. (supervised)

With a little more supervision and help he can make sausage and mash, banana cake and bloody lovely Yorkshire puddings 😁‘^

My DD is 11 and a brilliant cook - I won’t list her achievements - but cooking in a camper van is very precarious! There’s all sorts of dodging and balancing acts going on, not to mention the proximity of people and materials to the naked flame. That was what the eye rolling was for.