In our lightweight travel trailer, we can pack a surprising amount of clothing. There are overhead cabinets above the bed and shirt closets. Overloading could be a temptation.
The bulk of under bed storage is dedicated to lightweight boogie boards, masks, snorkels, fins and outdoor furniture. The space we have for clothes waiting to be washed is limited to the size of a single laundry basket. As a matter of personal preference, this works well for us. It’s a bad news-good news situation. The bad news is that we need to do laundry frequently, a couple of times a week. The good news is that the chore can’t get too big.
Our solution is to limit the volume of clothing we carry in the travel trailer to only a little more than can be stored comfortably in the laundry basket. An exception to this is the one outerwear closet we share, since jackets and other outerwear aren’t washed after wearing.
Other clothes we might need but don’t need currently use are stowed in the truck. When the weather changes or the occasion arises where we need them, they are accessible.
Creative Bathroom Management
Medicine Chest
The medicine chest holds frequently used items such as refillable shampoo, conditioner and bath gel containers and deodorant. The items in the chest are secured against bouncing with small extension rods. These can be purchased at a camping supply store or you can do as we did; purchase and mount inexpensive short curtain rods.
Plastic Baskets
Some bathroom items don’t lend themselves to upright travel. Hair brushes, toothpaste, straight and electric razors can ride in inexpensive plastic baskets on available shelves. Toothbrushes hang from a plastic wall-mounted holder affixed to the medicine chest or other straight surface.
Nylon Compartmentalized Travel Bag
Our other very lightweight items are stored in a fabric travel bag with clear plastic zipper pocket compartments of varying sizes. Cotton swabs and balls, dental floss, eyeglass cleaning cloths and a tiny emergency sewing kit find their home here.
Collapsible Ice Chest
Some items that would be kept in a home bathroom simply won’t fit our trailer head. These run the gamut from medications on hand but not in regular use to larger shampoo and skin lotion refills. These we keep in a collapsible ice chest either in a trailer compartment or in the truck bed. The ice chest helps insulate the weighty items against weather and dust. And, should we want to use the ice chest as an ice chest at our destination, we can empty it and stow the stored bathroom items during non-travel times.
Toilet Cleaning Made Easy
One addition to our travel trailer head, a hard plastic spray bottle, came as a direct cross-over from our experience cruising on a sailboat. When we’re in camp, we fill the bottle with water and use it set on “stream” as a pressure wash for the commode. When we’re in travel mode, we can empty the bottle and screw the spray mechanism closed. Then we stow the bottle where it can’t rock & roll. It doesn’t totally eliminate brush-cleaning the commode, but it keeps the commode cleaner and makes latrine duty less of a chore.
A Bigger Shower with One Piece of String
While the RV shower stall stands plenty tall, it can feel narrow. A solve we developed is simple, inexpensive and weighs virtually nothing. We devised a thin strand of elastic cord tied at one end to the back-of-the-door towel bar mounting post and at the opposite end to a small S hook. We positioned a small, sticky-back mounting plastic hook sideways and affixed it to the hard-surfaced medicine chest.
When you enter the shower, you simply pull the cord inside the shower curtain and attach the S hook at the cord’s end to the hook on the medicine chest. The cord pulls the shower curtain outward about four inches, giving you an extra several inches of elbow room. When the shower is complete, just lift the S hook off the plastic hook and let it dangle from the towel bar. It’s barely visible completely non-intrusive. No carpentry. No holes. Just more shower space.