10 VAN LIFE Items / Hacks You Might Not Have Thought Of

0:01 [Music] all right welcome back to the channel everyone my name is Scott Adamson and if you saw some of our other videos I put together a video kind of on what are some of the van build van life items that I include in every build and today we're gonna be talking about some of the

0:18 little van life hacks items that I always have with me and some of them you might know and some of them you might not know about so let's roll that intro and we'll get into it [Music] [Music] so you may or may not know that I've been traveling around in a self

0:44 converted Sprinter van for the last four years and over the last four years I've picked up a lot of tips and tricks on different things that you know I never would have thought of before living in the van and some of them come from other people that were little tips and tricks that they passed along on the way so

1:01 here we go here's a little list of some of the things that I always have in the van with me some of them you might need some of they might not so item number one is I always have an arrow press with me I have a big coffee guy part of coffee for me as just I love coffee I love the routine when

1:20 you're in the van it's hard to have a routine because you're always traveling around you're always in different places so routine is very tough so for me just having that routine of that morning cup of coffee it's sort of one of the few constants I do have when I'm on the road and I found that the Aeropress for me

1:38 it's one of the quickest easiest least amount of mess possible good cups of coffee you can make on the road so for me having an arrow press is that's why it's number one you know I just the Oh press is up there for me number two is a headlamp this one might seem pretty obvious if you're a hiker or something

1:57 like that but if you're not having a headlamp is huge if you ever have any problems at night it makes it so much easier so if you put the headlamp on and then you have both of your hands-free to sort of diagnose the problems see what's going on I just got these cheap ones off Amazon they do take batteries I'm not

2:15 sure if batteries is better or worse if you carry extra batteries and the battery dies you can just put new ones in the problem is if you don't have batteries you can't just charge it up I do think I would like to get a USB rechargeable one but for right now I've got lots of batteries and this headlamp

2:30 works fine again it was just a cheap one it's probably not the most reliable but getting a good LED lamp I do think is a must the next one that you might not know or think about is a squirt bottle I use this squirt bottle to do my dishes reason being is that if you're living in a van your fresh water supply is limited

2:49 and it always sucks wasting water just to do dishes because that's going to reduce the amount of time you can go between water Philips so what I do is I actually boil hot water I put it into the squirt bottle with some soap some dish soap and then I use the squirt bottle to squirt the dishes clean them

3:06 and then I just rinse them off with the fresh water so it drastically reduces the amount of water that I use when I'm doing dishes and it increases the amount of time I can go between water fills so that's been a huge one for me every time I do dishes it's with the squirt bottle same technique boil some water put it in

3:24 the squirt bottle so go from there the next one is some wet wipes moist towelettes whatever you want to call them for me sometimes it goes a few extra days in between showers and it's really nice just feel to wipe your hands face you know anywhere else that you you need to wipe down just kind of freshens it up

3:43 and makes it so you can get maybe that extra day between showers and it just makes you feel a lot clean or to you know wipe your face wash everything and maybe this is too much information but it's just I like having them around it's just like it's for me it's a must-have just helps me keep keep clean and feel

4:00 clean and not start to feel gross in the in the van another one is ear plugs for me I always carry a set of ear plugs I got these ones they're actually meant for musicians so you can still sort of hear with them but they drone out most it's a certain frequency that they're designed

4:15 to drone out depending on where you're sleeping if you happen to sleep at a truck stop or something like that that's really noisy it's nice to be able to throw these earplugs in and be able to get a good night's sleep some people argue that I've told this that you know what about for safety I like to be able

4:31 to hear around the van you're still gonna hear if someone's banging on the door people talking outside but just sort of that those repetitive sounds that are stopping you from falling asleep and keeping you maybe a little bit paranoid it's gonna drone those out and let you get a much better night's

4:48 sleep so I always carry these with me I sleep with them often and yeah I recommend it a spare key a lot of people I it surprises me how many people do not carry a spare key in their vans you should have somewhere hidden on your van whether it's underneath the van somewhere in a lockbox or on your roof rack or on your

5:06 spare tire or underneath the hood or wherever you should try to have a spare key hidden somewhere because that's really the key to your house it's the key to your van it's the key to kind of everything some of these vans have these weird quirks where if you close the door it'll self lock after so many minutes

5:23 and then your keys locked inside I've seen that happen one time Sarah and Alex from sarin Alex James they were visiting me at my family cottage and the their van did the auto lock thing they didn't have a spare key and so we were doing you know we had the coat hangers and we were trying to you know do the coat

5:45 hanger thing we must been working at it for I don't know three hours that wasn't working and then we actually took the roof vent off the van and I was pretty small so I was like almost all the way inside crawling in their van through the roof vent I was kind of at that point of no return where I either had to drop in

6:01 the van or come back out and then all of a sudden Alex actually got the door open with the coat hanger I still can't believe that actually worked and I kind of forgot about that but I think he had to do it a few more times before he actually got a spare key so just get a spare key you're not gonna regret it

6:20 another little handy thing I like to have is one of those grip-strength things I keep that on my dash it's just kind of nice when you're driving just have something to do keeps the blood flowing and on those long drives just nice to have stuff that kind of keeps the blood flowing keeps you moving keeps

6:35 you awake so for me the grip strength thing works great I always just have it on the dash somewhere where I see it and so I remember to do it because I don't know for you guys but it sometimes if it's out of sight it's out of mind I'll forget about it so I just keep it up on the dash grab it use it you know a few

6:51 times when I'm driving next one isn't really a necessity but it's called the but I really enjoy it it's called the pedal box and what the pedal box is is it basically makes a Sprinter van or any vehicle that the accelerator is throttle by wire it gets rid of a lot of the lag if you've ever driven a Sprinter van

7:10 you'll know that when you push the gas it's almost like it's got like a turbo that spools up it's just like and then it goes there's that pause and a lot of that pause is because there's a delay in the the accelerator actually sending the signal to the motor to okay it's time to go so what the pedal box

7:28 does is it actually modifies that signal being sent and increases the responsiveness so when you do step on the gas the what do you call it the the responsiveness is immediate so the vehicle is gonna go right away makes it a little bit safer when you're pulling out on two intersections because there's

7:47 not that lag it's just step on it and go personally it does make the vehicle drive a whole lot better it's a for me it's an a worthwhile investment on your van next one is to have a good set of tools when putting the other tool box for your van you should have a super wide variety of tools so you can almost

8:07 fix anything within reason I mean some jobs are obviously gonna be over ahead but just you know you should be able to take your tire off you know make sure you've got the right size socket the right size wrench a breaker bar something like that so you can properly get it off it's not a bad idea to carry

8:23 a torque wrench so when you do put the tire back on you can torque it properly have a proper Jack that you can lift the van up with just things like that on top of tools it's good to have the right recovery gear oh I'm not gonna go into a big detailed video and recovery gear but some of the basics I have I carry max

8:41 tracks which I've used I carry a shovel which I've used I have an air compressor I've used I used lots I have a toe strap I have tire chains and I'm sure I got a few other things but those are some of the primary things that I carry and I've I have had to use every single one of them I've had to use them all on my van

9:02 and I've had to use them when I'm traveling with people if they don't have it I've had to use it to help them get unstuck so every van that I have will have this and I think it's super crucial that a you have it and B that you know how to use it especially things like tire chains like that most of time

9:19 you're never gonna need them but if you do need them it's gonna be in a storm it's gonna be windy snowy you're not gonna know how they go on you're gonna be out there just scratching your head so make sure when if you do buy chains or any recovery gear you practice putting it on you know

9:33 how it works and when it comes time to use it you're not sitting there scratching your head with no idea what's going on another one that I think every man should have is a little small broom and dustpan and a little hand vacuum I use this all the time you know sand is always getting everywhere in the van so

9:49 it's nice field you know sweep it up quick sweep it out the door and the vacuum is amazing for dog here if you have a dog as you guys know I've got Ellie she's a big header I love her to death that's the one downfall is she sheds like crazy especially two times a year when she's blowing that undercoat

10:05 so for me the vacuum and a small dustpan and broom our must-have is in my van the next item that I'm really glad that I have is I call it my spare bedroom and it's a hammock I've got a way that I can rig up a hammock inside the van and that way when anyone comes to visit me we have two place to sleep mind you I

10:23 usually get stuck on the hammock because I actually know how to sleep and head and find it kind of comfortable but that way my bed is a little tight for two people especially two buddies so one person gets the bed one person gets the hammock and it's also really nice if you're at a campsite for a while being

10:39 able to string it up and have some order to relax during the day so yeah hopefully you found that information helpful those are kind of my van life little van item [Music]