Van life request to shower

[Uoyeb]

I have a long-standing friend who is a bit unconventional. He’s never really stuck at any job, is a bit of an artist, always low on cash. He tends to live in short term rentals, often studios or rooms in shared houses. It wouldn’t be a life for me but he seems happy and content with it, so be it.

Rents are increasing and and he recent came into a small inheritance, so he’s decided to buy a van to live in. He’ll fit it out similar to a small camper, sleep / live in the van, and then use toilet facilities that are open to the public, and showers at friends or cheap leisure centres or service stations that have that facility.

He’s asked whether, on the odd occasion, he could use our shower if he’s in the area and there’s nowhere else local to go. I’m not sure how to respond.

How would you respond?

Exactly

This thread is so Mumsnet 😂

I've got a friend who has done exactly the same. She pops round (with at least a week's notice) 3 or 4 times a year. I wish she could make it down here more, absolutely love seeing her, it's a treat. I always offer to pop any laundry round the wash while she's here although she's often just been to the launderette and doesn't need it. She uses the shower as any overnight guest would. For dinner either I'll cook as I enjoy it or she'll buy a takeaway.

She hasn't yet eaten my eyeballs or given my inheritance to her gerbils or whatever else people are worried about.

isn't this rather different? I would obviously let a visitor staying with me use my shower. This chap has made a point of choosing the shower less life.

Oh scratch what I just posted. That will teach me to post late at night. I see your friend has also chosen the van life @LauraMipsum.

Anyway, yes, I am still mean and grudging.

Propping a friend up while they are down, like your friends did, of their own will, with the resources and time they had, without request or obligation is a bit different to having a friend lean on you as a resource to tap at their own convenience so that they can play the starving poet.

I would not have a problem with that, as long as it was now and then.

I think you need to think a bit further wider and further. You mention ‘our shower.’Who is part of your ‘our?’ How do they feel about it?

I’ll be honest, it would be a ‘no’ for me until I saw how it actually worked for the friend living on the van.

I will do anything to help anybody if and when I can, but I don’t like being tied to a commitment that might impinge on my privacy/personal time or space.

Nope from me. He is scouting out whose door is open to him and any situation he may find himself in.

I think the issue is that however much he assures you the escalation won't happen, however much you would like to think he wouldn't take the piss, that might work in a reasonably mild May/June. He'll tootle round in his van, possibly finding nice places to park for a night or a few.

On a cold, wet, miserable November night, when he realises he's got to get through December, January and February too his genuinely meant assurances in the summer may not hold. Even if he did his own washing somehow in the van, how's he going to dry it? What are his plans for heating the van? What will be his cooking arrangements? Does he actually have any experience of living off grid? Even a week's camping?

I'm not convinced that he has the faintest idea of what he's about to do, and if you say yes to the showers I'm not sure you'd be doing him any favours. It would just help him further into his optimistic fantasy that this is all going to be a doddle.

Not if it means 30 min showers.

The van life people I knew of tended to have a good job or professional career path to keep things going (doctors, teachers etc) so could splash out on an Airbnb if pushed...they weren't seeing it as a cheaper life option.

I actually thought about it myself as it sounds cool! Trouble is, unless you have rich farmer uncle Angus who is happy with you parked at his, it's quite a vulnerable lifestyle.

The issue in this country is the weather and we don't really have a culture that makes it easy to live in a van. Plus would need to be SUPER handy and well-connected.

In fact, they often commented it was fairly expensive to keep running and they'd have been better off just renting a nice Airbnb for the time they spent there.

Not sure how big his inheritance is. Would it be worth him looking to use it as a deposit to buy a two bedroom somewhere cheap CoL? If he's quite hippy presume he doesn't care about posh area. Rent out one room to lodger cover mortgage. That could set him up better.

If he spends it on a van and it doesn't work out after a few years, that could be the inheritance up the wall.

It would depend on whether he was talking about one shower every now and then or parking his van at my place, charging his battery & power bank and/or coming around to mine because he needs a poo. (Experience- had a relative I couldn’t shift for months) If he has form for overstepping boundaries, I’d be busy every time he was “in the area”.

I would say no.

I once had someone in my life like this. For him it was a boat.

just say no. All these posters trying to be nice are so naive. These people get half baked ideas about living cheaply and having lives of freedom. Soon they miss the creature comforts and turn up at your home far too often and want to stay far too long.

If I lived in a van I would wash in alcohol

Yes as long as he provides his own toiletries. But I suspect he might also expect his laundry to be washed as well.

Nope. Services have showers. I wouldn't like someone using my house for showers at all. I feel like it's an open door to getting comfortable and hanging about after, expecting feeding etc.

If it was a situation where someone's shower wasn't working or whatever short term, not by choice, situation, I would absolutely help. I would not offer my home as a long term solution to a choice someone else has made to not meet their own needs appropriately.

I'd probably be ok with it. But the whole van life thing can be a bit grating. People think they're getting away from society but often they are just sponging off it.

There's a few people living in vans near me. They park on the street blocking out the light to our house and then put their rubbish in our bins. That pisses me off.

Exactly.

He's chosen not to have a shower so I think it's fair for him to contribute towards the cost of the one he's chosen to use. Fair enough £5 a shower might be the wrong figure but I think there's nothing wrong in saying look you opted not to pay for a shower so you can use mine if you help me pay for mine.

What’s he offering in return?

bit of diy? to buy takeaway? full deep clean of bathroom?

fuck that last one is tempting me to invite him round

Otherwise short term or unforeseen emergency only

I’m not your mum mate

Worse if he is one of those insufferable pricks who bang on about ‘making difficult choices’ or ‘opting out of the rat race’ or ‘saving the planet’

Make the difficult choice to not sponge off yer mates

Opt in to a lifestyle you can manage yourself

Save relationships by being a friend & not a leech

Indeed on that last note, if you are good enough friends for him to ask & you to agree to this-

Why are you not being honest with him?

Loads of folk had this idea before, and thought it through - either realising they weren’t being realistic, wouldn’t manage & dropping the fantasy or fully preparing so they could manage

You won’t do him or yourself any favours by agreeing to measures that allow him to half-arse it at his friends expense

Can life won't be as easy here as it is in the States, but I'd be supportive if it's only occasional. Only you know him, though.

Great reply, and probably on point.

is that also his impression?

My fiancé and I have often had friends stay with us for a day or two but this is something I would want to make very clear.

„Your van project sounds lovely! yes, you are very welcome to use our shower when you are in the area if we are home. You would have to use the shower at a time that works for us (as well).”

Wouldn’t you want to warn a (real) friend about that?

Imho, theres’s a huge difference between helping someone out in temporary unforeseen circumstances, such as serious illness or death, and helping someone over a long period of time who has deliberately put themselves in to situation where they may need help.

This opinion may be extreme for some, but after sixty years of observing human behaviour, it’s my considered view that the good folk never ask in the first place.

Sorry op if that sounds harsh! But it’s an opinion borne out by experience.