There comes a time in every van owner’s life when packing even the best campervan for a weekend away becomes a chore and you’re likely to start struggling for storage, making you wonder why you do it. This happened to me with my previous five-berth coachbuilt. It was huge, with a vast garage that could be (safely) crammed full of all sorts of kit to cover every possible eventuality.
Years of visiting motorhome shows and filling it with the latest gadgets and ‘must-have’ devices meant that despite sticking to the payload, it was simply bulging at the seams. The trouble was that after a couple of years of carting everything including the kitchen sink (and a spare one, just in case), I had begun to question why I needed so much stuff.
Keeping up with the packing and unpacking, and maintenance of the many items in the ’van, became a major task. Time for a rethink.
Swapping to a small campervan was the turning point, and thinning down my touring kit to the bare necessities proved positively cathartic.
Now, only the absolutely essential touring items are carried. Many are prepacked and always remain in the vehicle, making setting off for an impromptu weekend away a fast and stress-free affair. Quite simply, it transformed my touring life, making it so much easier and even more enjoyable. So what are the top tips for maximising your campervan storage options and successfully living in a small van? Read on to find out – and don’t miss my guide to the 20 touring gadgets that will enhance any campervan tour either.
Maximising your campervan storage: our top tips
Unpack and repack
Organised containers
Things that fold up
Doubling up
Tools to pack
Reassess your kit annually
Bulk versus luxury
How to maximise your campervan storage
Unpack and repack
The first task is to take stock of everything you have. Pick a dry, sunny day, then remove all of your kit and place it in bundles on the ground. Spring cleaning isn’t just about knowing how to clean a motorhome and using the best motorhome vacuum cleaner to get into all of those corners in your van – it’s also a good chance to take everything out of your van.
Although at first glance, it might seem rather a lot of faffing about, it really is a worthwhile task to see all of your camping gear laid out in front of you.
You’ll quickly realise those must-have items for your campervan – for instance, you may have chosen a low wattage air fryer to make cooking simpler – versus those unnecessary ones. I’m talking immediately spotting the duplicate, out-of-date foodstuffs and obscure kitchen gadgets that you don’t even remember buying, let alone using.
A great rule of thumb is that if you haven’t used an item for more than a year, you should donate it to a charity shop or leave it at home. It really has no business being in your campervan.
Seeing all of your kit laid out in one go also gives you a good sense of volume and allows you to think about which items are essential and which are merely nice to have. But if something isn’t going to add to your holiday experience, why is it there?
Organised containers
If you’re a fan of spreadsheets and geometry, you’ll love getting your touring kit organised in containers. A selection of boxes is essential to keep your stuff together in one place and stop it sliding around while you’re in transit. It also prevents smaller items from falling into crevices or jamming up tambour doors.
There are lots of containers on the market – The Range is one of many good sources – and you can find them sized to fit every compartment in your vehicle.
You don’t need to buy new, though: you could just upcycle plastic food storage containers, washing pod boxes, takeaway packaging or any other plastic boxes. Clear containers work best, however, because you can see their contents at a glance.
For frequently accessed items, it’s better to go for trays, or simply leave the lid off the box – it can be a bit annoying to have to remove the whole box and lid to reach into it. It also means you’ll need two hands to get your stuff, which isn’t always convenient.
Another tip is to use non-slip matting on all shelves to keep your kit in place and reduce rattles – you can buy a roll large enough for all of a small side-kitchen campervan for under a tenner online.
Things that fold up
If you’re just starting out in a small camper, it’s worth considering the bulk of every item you pack. While there are lots of space-saving devices out there, not all are worth carrying and some can be irritating.
For me, the latter includes compact folding barbecues – having to spend ages building a device before you can cook on it when you’re hungry is a pain, and then you have to get rid of the coals, clean it and pack it away each time you use it. A rigid barbecue will be so much easier to clean and is well worth the space sacrifice.
However, fold-up kitchen pots and pans are brilliant in campervans. I’ve had a folding kettle for years and this has been joined by a similar pan and washing-up bowl. I also prefer them to all-metal pans because you’re less likely to burn yourself.
It’s a very good idea to choose items to fit specific cupboards, too, so in the case of my mug cupboard, it holds four mugs, each of which houses a glass for maximum space saving. The mugs themselves are all sized to fit neatly under the coffee machine. Anything that doesn’t fit into a cupboard needs to be swapped for a different-sized item, or replaced.
One of the best tips for space saving is to switch to microfibre towels, rather than the oversized fluffy things you use at home. Massive bath towels steal lots of cupboard space and when damp, take an age to dry out properly.
Microfibre towels take up a fraction of the space and dry rapidly – drape them over a door wing mirror on a sunny day and they’ll be dry in under an hour. You do have to adopt a slightly different drying technique in the shower – they’re more like a chamois leather for wet skin – but once you get used to them, they really do work brilliantly.
Doubling up
Certain items, such as towels and toiletry bags, and some clothing, such as hats, gloves and coats, are worth duplicating and keeping permanently in your campervan. Shampoo, shower gel and toothpaste are not expensive and having two sets saves time when you are packing and unpacking.
Travel-size toiletries work really well in compact campervans. You can adopt the same plan for clothes cleaning, too, with sample and trial sizes of laundry soap and softener taking up minimal space.
Some people will pack an entire duplicate wardrobe in their vehicle and this can be a good idea, especially if you work during the week and want to make the most of your precious weekend. It’s one less thing to think about and saves time.
Tools to pack
The same goes for your motorhome toolkit. It’s well worth packing either a small set of essential tools (Lidl and Aldi do some cracking compact sets that are ideal), together with a selection of common consumables, such as fuses, electrical tape, self-amalgamating tape (for sealing leaks in plumbing or coolant hoses), gaffer tape and a range of cable ties.
Modern campervans are pretty reliable and it’s rare that you need to fix the base vehicle (and that’s what breakdown cover is for), so I tend to focus the toolkit on fixing the habitation equipment. Things like loose hinges, blown fuses and misbehaving water pumps are the most common things you’ll have to tackle.
For larger tasks, borrow tools from your campsite neighbours – there is always someone on the site with far more tools than you!
Reassess your kit annually
With everything laid out on the ground, it’s very easy to identify the less-used items in your campervan (typically, it’s the stuff at the back…).
In our case, three inflatable settees were the least used things. These are quite difficult to inflate because you have to run around like a loon trying to get them to billow with air and then rapidly fold up the ends. They also blow away when it’s windy.
For these reasons, they’ve only been used a handful of times. But on the plus side, they don’t take up a lot of room, so they have a stay of execution – for now.
Removing all of your kit is also a good time to spring clean the vehicle and create more space, by binning accumulated rubbish, checking foodstuff sell-by dates and then repacking in a more organised way.
Tony Robinson and his Time Team would have had a field day excavating the strata of parking tickets that had built up in our driver’s side door pocket!
Bulk versus luxury
Some of the items that are taken away on tour come down to personal preferences. For example, the two luxuries in our campervan are our Duvalay mattress/bedding sets, and the Nespresso coffee machine.
The Duvalays are easily the two largest things in our ’van and they do take up lots of boot space. Although a sleeping bag is more space-efficient, we much prefer the Duvalays, because they are more like a domestic bedding set and are really comfortable to sleep on. So for us, they are an essential luxury. You may feel having the best mattress topper for a VW campervan, for instance, is a must-have for your tours, if you’ve been wondering how to make a camper bed more comfortable.
Equally, we’re caffeine addicts and having a proper fresh coffee from the Nespresso machine is a treat. Although the pods and the machine itself only take up minimal space, the NDS 1500W inverter needed to run it is rather bulky. But being able to enjoy freshly brewed coffee at any location is just brilliant.
The verdict on maximising the storage in a campervan
Buying yet more stuff is not the answer to kitting out your campervan. Packing the minimum amount of carefully selected items really is the key.
Don’t worry if you don’t have the ‘correct’ kit right now – you can always refine it as you go along – just get out there and start enjoying the world!
After some more advice for getting the most from campervanning? Then head to our Go Campervanning: General Advice section for more great ideas!
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