RV Must Haves after Four Months

Now that we’ve been on the road for just over four months, we’ve discovered several items we couldn’t do without so we thought it was time to recognize these products for their usefulness to us. While all our readers aren’t RV’ers, many of these products may be of interest to you, as well.

First, a shout out to Amazon Prime. Prior to leaving on our journey, we paid $99 for this amazing offer from Amazon. Since our home is now where we park it, purchasing items we need is so much easier as we can get almost everything delivered to the park in which we’re staying in two days. As a bonus, I also use the additional photo feature included in a Prime account, giving me the ability to store all my photos for no additional cost. Love the added security of knowing the photos are located in a numerous locations, aside from in the fifth wheel.

Before I left my last job, I purchased Mr. Coffee Single Serve Coffee Brewer for the office. During that time, we put many coffee pods through the brewer so I got to see first hand that it worked well. It’s a bit slower than a Keirig but it gets the job done. We were using the pods in the RV but decided there’s a lot of waste due to the empty plastic pods left behind. Now we’ve gone to coffee grounds/beans and reusable coffee filters. Our coffee grinder is also a Mr. Coffee. That takes care of the morning’s hot beverages. Our NUTRiBULLET takes care of smoothies and even frozen adult beverages in the evening, if you decide to use it that way. It’s quick and takes up very little space in the cabinet.We found while we have a dining room table in the fifth wheel, it was a little too high to use for our laptop, at least for me. So we purchased inexpensive, foldable tables made by Table-Mate. They have a drink holder and have both height and vertical adjustments. Since it’s the two of us and our dogs, we like to keep the air circulating in our small space but we didn’t want a huge fan. We purchased a rotating tower fan from Lasko with three speeds. It works really well for us. In following Facebook RV groups, it’s amazing the amount of potty talk we’ve read. Of course, one of the most important areas to know about in any RV is how to manage the black tank. We like to use CAMCO RV Toilet Treatment Drop-INS after a flush. No mess. No fuss. And they seem to keep things nice and fresh in the toilet.When we first starting packing up for our move from stick and brick home to RV, we struggled with what to do with our movie collection. We loved it and really wanted to take it with us. Our solution, purchase a CD/DVD holder and get rid of all of the bulky, plastic cases. We’ve purchased a few more movies while on the road. The cases have gone away and the new movies get to ride along with the rest of our nearly 400 movie collection.Because we’re in the truck a great deal, we like to take along beverages when we travel. I know many of you stand by another more expensive brand of stainless steel beverage holder, but our daughter purchased Ozark Trail drink holders for us and they’ve worked incredibly well. We’ve been in Texas for the month of August and it’s been hot. We’ve had ice in our cups all day so, for us, this is the way to go. And since we’re out seeing the sights during the day, fixing dinner when we get home is so much easier with the help of our Power Cooker. Recipes get done so quickly and you can make breakfast, lunch, dinner, or dessert. I’ve found loads of recipes on-line to help you along.

While many of you may not cook much in your RV, our family loves homemade buttermilk biscuits. When I say all, this means our two dogs, too. Because we don’t use buttermilk for anything but baking, I have to tell you Saco’s Cultured Buttermilk Blend (powder) makes delicious biscuits AND it doesn’t take up much space in the refrigerator. I highly recommend it for any recipes that call for buttermilk.As for our four-legged family, we try to take care of them as much as we can. Neither of them are fans of storms and they don’t particularly like the long travel days in the RV. We were skeptical at first, but decided to try Thunder Shirts. They’ve worn them during storms and while traveling and the shirts really do seem to calm their nerves. If you have stressed-out pets, give the shirts a try. It doesn’t solve the problem completely, but it certainly helps. Since our older dog, Hannah, needs to be comfortable when we’re at our destination, we purchased a Petco Orthopedic Peaceful Nester Dog Bed for her. She likes to move pillows around and this bed gives her that same feeling. She loves it, and Sadie occasionally lies on it, when she’s not bouncing from one end of the couch to the other to look out the windows.That’s it, for now. I’ll share more ideas in later blogs. After all, the holiday season is only a few months away. These items would look great under a tree for your favorite RV’ers.