Never too late to have a van life

This woman is 59 years old and converted a van into her home. Discover her van life adventures!

Transcript

00:00Welcome to my van home. It really hadn't occurred to me to be in the van full-time

00:07until I saw someone else doing it. My name is Beverly Brown, I'm 59 years old, and I

00:13currently live in my 2004 Chevy Express 1500 van.

00:17There are definitely some challenges about van life and it is absolutely not for everyone.

00:31I get asked a lot about the bathroom situation in the van and this is my toilet which is also my

00:45footstool and occasionally it's my guest chair. I don't tell them what they're sitting on

00:50and basically I made this pretty little cover for it but it's a just a little cassette toilet

00:59so it has a water tank on top and a holding tank on bottom. The lid pops up, I take care of business,

01:05shut the lid, press this, it puts water into the tank and then when I'm ready to flush it I pull

01:15the handle right there and the liquid releases down into the tank and then at some point which is the

01:23worst part of van life to me is I just unlatch it and take this bottom tank off and empty it.

01:35And then there's the shower situation. Basically I have a bucket here

01:39and it's a collapsible bucket that I fill up with water.

01:46I set that there. I have a hose here and I dip the hose down into the bucket of water.

01:59I pop that up and hook up the shower nozzle to it.

02:02And then I take the shower curtain and string it across the doors here. I have a bag full of clips.

02:20And I'll typically just clip it to the handles on the inside of the van.

02:39And string it across like that and that's my temporary shower for outside.

02:43At some point in my journeys it truly has become my little tiny house on wheels. So I gave the van a

02:55name. I call her Jennifer Vaniston and then to go with that name I had to get a Brad Pitt pillow.

03:02And I tease and I say we make Brad Pitt stops and then occasionally Brad and I get into a pillow fight.

03:09A lot of people have opinions about van life and living in the van and sometimes it's a little

03:22critical that like they feel like I've screwed up my life and now I'm stuck living in a van. And it's

03:29not like that at all. I feel like in some ways I've been inspiring to a lot of people. I have a YouTube

03:37channel called Becoming Bev so I get a lot of feedback from the channel. I do instructions about

03:43van life and adventures in van life. And I get a lot of people that are inspired by what I'm doing

03:50and crave that kind of adventure in their lives. The best thing about van life is the freedom that I

04:00feel. And like I'll get questions sometimes like how can you live in such a small space? And I'll say

04:07but have you seen my backyard? So I feel like my backyard is oceanfront property or it's a beautiful

04:18river like where we're parked here today or a wooded area or the mountains or the edge of the Badlands

04:25National Park.