When you live in a ordinary home, having someone come visit you for a week usually isn’t a big deal. In our case, we always lived in houses that were much bigger than we ever needed. We perpetually had an extra bedroom set up for friends and family. And they visited us plenty! It didn’t matter whether we were living in Korea, Germany, DC, or Texas. Spending time together and playing tour guide to the various places we lived was always fun for us.
But now that we’re in an RV full-time, we live in a meager 300 square feet. There isn’t a whole lot of room for a guest suite! So how do you accommodate guests in such a small space? It wouldn’t take long before we found out the answer.
Mom’s in town!
My mom’s birthday is in August, which was about three months into our RV life on the road. Mom definitely doesn’t need more *stuff* cluttering up her house. So, we’ve always tried to celebrate her birthday with a consumable gift or a shared experience instead.
This year, we invited her to come visit us in Maine for her birthday. She’s never been to Pine Tree State, so it seemed like a great opportunity to share something new that she’d aways remember. What’s more, she would join us during the annual Maine Lobster festival. And she’d get to be our first house guest in the RV!
Maine Lobster Festival!
Where do you sleep an extra person in such a small space?
Issue #1 when you invite someone to be your houseguest in an RV is where do they sleep?
Our RV manufacturer advertises that our motorhome sleeps up to 8 people. There’s space for two people on the queen bed in the bedroom. There’s room for two more people to sleep in the overhead loft above the driver’s compartment. Two more can supposedly fit on the dining room table if you collapse it down. Finally, there’s room for two on the sofa, which jackknifes out into a bed.
That seems like a lot of sleeping options, right?
There’s one critical fact you should know though. My Mom isn’t a small person. She’s nearly 6 feet tall. She wasn’t ever going to fit on the dining table converted into a bed unless she curled up into the fetal position. And I’d never hear the end of it if I forced her to sleep there.
Mom also has some mobility issues. She wasn’t climbing four feet into the air on a tiny aluminum ladder to get up into the overhead loft. So that option was completely off-limits too.
Luckily, the jackknife bed on the couch is long enough and comfortable enough to accommodate her! Whew! Crisis averted.
What about the bathroom situation?
With the sleeping arrangements solved, our next consideration was adding an extra person to our daily routine. This was a challenge because we only have one very small bathroom!
Some RVs have what you’d call a “split bathroom.” The shower is on one side, and the toilet and sink on the other side in a separate space. So theoretically, multiple people can be getting ready at the same time.
Our bathroom isn’t like that. It has everything in one space. And there really isn’t room for more than one person to be in there at a time, even to brush your teeth.
Then there’s the privacy aspect to consider. Our bathroom has a nice thick door. But there’s a three inch gap above and below the door (to let airflow and light in). That doesn’t amount to very much isolation for your guests. You can pretty much hear EVERYTHING going on in there. And while Keith, Finn and I we aren’t shy people around each other – Mom might want a little more um, seclusion.
The bathroom situation turned out to be fairly easy to solve though. Most campgrounds have bathhouses with toilets and showers in them. No fighting over the sole throne in the RV. Plus, the bathhouse has a much larger water heater so everyone can have a hot shower in a private stall where they can turn around easily. It was just a matter of booking us in a site within easy walking distance of the bathhouse.
Well, at least Mom didn’t have to use an outhouse during her visit! (Photo Credit: Amy Reed)
Can you cook dinner for guests in an RV?
What about eating? Can you really cook for guests when you live in such a small space?
Lots of families bigger than ours live in an RV, and they cook every night. So adding one extra person to the mix shouldn’t be too hard. But, you know the saying about too many cooks in the kitchen, right? Three adults trying to make a meal in a kitchen that’s only six feet long is a horror show waiting to happen.
Luckily, part of the joy of having a guest around is satisfying the desire to go out to local restaurants and trying the cuisine. So we weren’t exactly cooking every meal in the RV while Mom was in town.
And for the meals where we ate in, we just picked who would do the cooking. One night Keith was grilling fish (outside) while I prepared the side dishes inside. Another night, Mom cooked dinner and had our meager kitchen all to herself.
It’s all about compromise when you live in a small space.
Try not to be jealous of all the counter space in our kitchen!
Entertaining your houseguests
The only real topic we had left to consider was entertaining Mom while she during her visit. She definitely didn’t fly all the way across the country to sit around in our RV. Particularly since the grand tour of our new home took us about four and half minutes.
Look people…we choose to downsize to this tiny space so we could get outdoors more. We really live out of our RV, not in it. Thus, figuring out the entrainment was easy. We took her out to see Maine!
We went to the Maine Lobster Festival and ate lobster rolls. We toured Acadia National Park. We visited the LL Bean flagship store in Freeport. We sampled beer at a microbrewery on Mt. Desert Island. We booked a whale watching and puffin tour. Basically, we spent time together like we otherwise would do.
And when we got back to the RV, we had time to play cards, watch the sunset over the water, and enjoy each other’s company over a bottle of wine.
So – all told, it is completely possible to host guests when you live in an RV. It may not look exactly like what you might have done in your prior home. But, living in a small space forces you to get out and see what your environment has to offer. And what better way to inspire your house guests to consider the full-time RV lifestyle?
Lobster Boats!!
Lobstah baby!