Decking Out Our Caravan: Living Well With Less on the Road

When we decided to buy a caravan, we did what many first-time caravanners do. We went to caravan and camping shows, watched countless online videos, and read blogs from people more experienced than us. We wanted to understand how others organised their lives on the road, what they used, what they found essential. The research was helpful, but it also exposed us to a particular way of thinking about caravan life that we needed to question.

The truth is that it is far too easy to get carried away by what you see at those shows and what people promote on YouTube travelling channels. I completely understand that many travelling content creators earn their living not just from documenting their caravan journeys, but also from endorsing the products and gear they use. That is their business model, and I do not judge it. But what works for them might not work for us, and what suits one lifestyle might feel completely wrong for another.

The best advice we received came down to this: find what makes you happy and fits your lifestyle. So when it came time to set up our new caravan, we decided to be guided by two clear principles.

Two Guiding Principles

First principle: Buy only what you really need. This means caravan-specific items only, the things that have no other use in the world beyond caravanning. Drinking water hoses, leveling blocks, wheel chocks, setup gear. These things you have to buy new because they are designed for this specific purpose and nothing else.

Second principle: Use what we already have at home, or buy judiciously if we cannot. The living part of using the caravan, the everyday items, the things that make it feel like home, do not need to be bought new. Pots and pans from our kitchen, bedsheets from the linen cupboard, cutlery and plates we have owned for years. But when we could not find something at home, we looked to second hand shops first, including a set of plastic containers still in their original box, never opened, purchased for a fraction of the new price.

These two principles flow from the same place as my blog on sustainable living and wasting less. It is the same mindset: think before you buy, reuse what you have, respect what you already own.

Earn Your Keep

On top of these two principles, we added an overarching rule: earn your keep. Everything we bring into the caravan has to be truly useful and important. And wherever possible, things that can do more than one job are the things that earn more value in our set up.

Take our kitchen setup. We have a beautiful pressure cooker that works on gas and induction. Without the lid, it is perfect for cooking pasta. With the pressure lid on, it becomes a tool for reducing cooking time and saving energy when we make stews, ragu, soups, and casseroles. One item, multiple purposes, genuine utility.

The same logic applies to our kitchen towels. They are nice quality towels, the kind that dry quickly. They work as kitchen towels, yes, but they also double as placemats when we eat, and they are perfect for wrapping our wine glasses when we pack up to travel. Everything has to earn its space.

Even our chopping board follows this rule. It is a beautiful board with a lip that runs along one edge. When it sits in one of our kitchen drawers and we open the drawer fully, the board becomes a perfect side table where we can keep things handy during meals, things that do not fit on the main dining table. But it also works placed on the top kitchen drawer, giving us extra bench space when we are cooking. A chopping board that serves multiple purposes in multiple places. That is the kind of thinking we apply to everything

The Temptation

Just before we took delivery of our caravan, I watched a YouTube video about Ikea finds for caravanning. The products looked useful and the prices were affordable, so a couple of days after picking up our caravan, I went to Ikea. I could see how many of those items would work, but as I walked through the store, I kept asking myself: do I already have this at home, and how is this different from what I am not using right now?

That is when it hit me: affordable does not mean good value if you are buying something you do not need. If the price is low but the item is unnecessary, then it is not affordable at all, it is just spending.

After Ikea, I visited my favourite second hand shop and there I found similar organising solutions to the ones in the video, but for a fraction of the price, which made the choice quite clear. I did go back to Ikea later, but only to buy things we really needed, things we did not already have at home, and things we could not find secondhand, and it was a completely different experience because this time I was buying with intention rather than being swept along by what looked good on a screen.

Making Things Work

Not everything we put in the caravan came from what we already owned or recycled. Some things I made, and I found a pattern for fabric bowl cozies, the kind of thing that protects your hands from burns when you are reheating soup in the microwave. I made a set for the caravan that, like everything else, does more than its intended job. They serve as pot holders, they protect our plates and bowls when we pack the caravan to travel, and they keep everything in its place in the drawer, which means packing and unpacking is a breeze because everything has its home and its protector.

Of course, we did buy some new items for the caravan, things like kitchen towels and small homely touches that make it feel like home, but we kept this to a minimum, buying only what we genuinely needed and could not source secondhand or from our home.

The Glass We Choose

For years I have owned a vintage glassware dinner set from the late 1970s and early 1980s, amber coloured glass that is distinctive and beautiful. This is Bormioli glass, a gift from my mother when I got married, and over the years I found more pieces in op shops and second hand stores, slowly building a set that feels both familiar and found. Glass dinnerware does not stain, is easy to wash, incredibly strong, and does not easily chip, and this is what we pack in my handmade bowl cozies and take on the road.

I understand why people choose melamine or plastic dinnerware for caravanning because it is practical, unbreakable, and that seems sensible. But the fit your lifestyle principle matters to us because we want to enjoy our meals in a way that feels natural to us, like being at home even when we are on the road. We do not need plastic dinnerware to protect us from breaking things like children do, and if something gets broken, it is not a tragedy, it is just life. And honestly, finding a replacement in a second hand shop is part of the adventure.

Our Bormioli dinnerware, cups, plates, bowls, espresso cups, are beautiful and feels good to use. We are not rushing through life, even when we are travelling, we are slowing down and enjoying the moment.

A Different Philosophy

When we are on the road, we live well, at least in the way that makes sense to us, and everything we use to cook our meals, drink, eat and sleep works for our lifestyle, makes us happy, and means we travel lighter and buy less. That is what matters to us.

But I want to be clear: there is no right way to outfit a caravan. What matters is that you do what feels authentic to you, what aligns with your values, and what brings you joy. We are influenced far too often by what others choose or do and think we should do the same. Your home on the road should be a reflection of you, not a copy of someone else's screen or someone else's life.