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This van dwelling story is a guest post by Mat and Danielle – share yours here!
We’re Mat and Danielle – two Canadian, minimalist nomads who are exploring long-term travelling, house sitting, and living/working in our 2002, Ford E-150 conversion van. We’re sharing our ongoing lifestyle experiments on YouTube and on our blog: Exploring Alternatives.
We started travelling 2.5 years ago after selling our house and quitting our jobs. We travelled to Costa Rica, California, Australia and Thailand for almost a year, using our savings and the money we made from the sale of our house. Then we secured online work that allowed us to keep moving for another year, so we travelled to Iceland, Germany, Spain and the United States.
We officially moved into the van several months ago and are travelling across Canada. We’re working in cities/towns during the week, and camping/hiking on the weekends. We stealth camp, sleep in Walmart parking lots, park in the driveways of friends and family, and camp in provincial parks.
Couple Decide to Live Adventurous Van Dwelling Life

Images © ExploringAlternatives.ca



We’ve installed a 300 watt solar system to power our laptops so that we can work in the van, and we made our own curtains, drop leaf table, and soft storage to make living in the van more comfortable.


Images © ExploringAlternatives.ca
Video: Nomadic Couple Living/Traveling in Converted Van Full Time
We try to keep our lifestyle and van setup as simple as possible, and so far it’s going better than we could have hoped!
Learn more: http://www.exploringalternatives.ca/
Resources
- Exploring Alternatives: Living Large with Less
- Mat & Danielle’s YouTube Channel
- Converted van as full-time home for nomadic Canadian couple
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Alex
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