Our Family Sprinter Van Conversion – Video + Details on Our Build & Design

For a number of years, the freedom of living a simple and mobile lifestyle called to us. We’ve always loved to travel, and have felt the most free when traveling with very little – be it roadtripping across the States with little more than a few outfits and a cooler, or traveling through Asia for months with only 24L, school-size backpacks. All of these were very temporary living situations, though. When Stephen first approached me about living in an RV, then, I balked pretty hard. I didn’t like the look and feel of RVs, on the inside or outside, and I thought we would feel cramped. Customized tiny homes, on the other hand, felt very exciting, and I could imagine us building one that met all of our needs and joys in a home. Enter #vanlife. Learn all about our Sprinter van conversion build, and especially how we did it with our 1-year old daughter Sofia. Included here is our video tour of the converted van, plus many pics showing the various choices we made. Overall, we LOVE our van and highly recommend it as both an option for living and for long-term travel. If this interests you, and you have questions about the video or the post, please feel free to comment! We will write back and help you as much as we possibly can. Thanks!

OS54: Ross Lukeman – Designing the Unique Home of Your Dreams

Often we accept things we’ve been taught or told, until one day something strikes us as being a bit “off”, and we begin to ask questions. For Ross Lukeman, that something was the traditional story we’ve been taught about home ownership and freedom. That is, if you own a home, you have achieved the American Dream. It struck Ross as strange that people buy homes, believing this story, then design the rest of their lives around paying for that home – staying in jobs they don’t like to pay a mortgage, putting off the things they really want to do, and living that way sometimes for the rest of their lives. He also found it strange that he never learned about any types of “alternative” dwellings in architecture school, only the mainstream ways of building and making a home. So Ross began probing a question that gets to the very heart of how we live and enjoy our lives: What other types of homes are possible, and, specifically, what type of home will maximize a person’s experience of freedom? He created a website dedicated to this question, and traveled across the country interviewing people building and living in all kinds of homes he hadn’t learned about in school: strawbale homes, earthships, and even, vans. As it tends to happen when a person follows their natural interest, a calling emerged for Ross. What he found in his search was that the type of home that will create the greatest freedom depends actually on the individual – and what’s most exciting and expansive for them, specifically. For Ross, what quickly became the most exciting was #vanlife. He started living in his own van, and now he helps people do that – online course, van builds. This is how we learned of him, his van conversion resources that are online (see shownotes for links to all of Ross’ resources). If you’ve ever wanted to live more simply, build your own home, explore another way of living, this episode is for you. Enjoy!

OS11: Alexis & Christian of Tiny House Expedition – Living, Moving & Chronicling All Things “Tiny”

Alexis & Christian of Tiny House Expedition have emerged as leaders within the vibrant and growing world of tiny houses. Filmmakers and storytellers, their mission is to help expand the tiny house community via beautiful media related to tiny homes, advocating for coding changes enabling more to go tiny and building awareness via the lens of their own tiny house journey. In this episode, learn of their design and build (they DIY’d about 80% of their tiny house), their travels across the US with their “THOW” (storage? bathroom? kitchen? It’s all there), the challenges and rewards from this unique lifestyle and their mission to archive this exciting new possibility for many who seek an upgraded living arrangement over and above the traditional model of owning a mortgage or paying rent. Enjoy!

OS5: Andrew & Gabriella Morrison – Tiny Houses, Family & Redefining the “American Dream”

Andrew & Gabriella Morrison

Andrew & Gabriella Morrison join us on Ownstream Podcast Ep 5 to discuss their “hOMe” tiny house, radical lifestyle design & redefining the “American Dream”. A few years ago, the Morrisons sold 90% of what they owned – including their large house – and moved to Baja for 5 months to repattern and redesign their lives. Now, they live on 5 acres in the gorgeous Oregon countryside, in their 317 sq. foot tiny house and teach others how to go tiny, creating more freedom, abundance and connection in their lives.