What Full-Time RV Life Actually Looks Like With 3 Kids
When people hear that we sold our house and moved into an RV full-time with three kids, they usually picture one of two extremes.
Either they imagine a nonstop vacation — national parks, campfires, mountain views, and endless freedom.
Or they imagine complete chaos — five people crammed into a tiny space, no routine, no privacy, and a whole lot of stress.
The truth is somewhere in the middle.
Full-time RV life with kids isn’t a permanent vacation, and it isn’t a disaster either. It’s just regular family life lived in a much smaller space, with a lot more movement, a lot more logistics, and a lot more intentionality.
We still work. We still homeschool our kids. We still do laundry, grocery runs, dishes, workouts, and all the normal things every family has to do. The difference is that our version of normal might happen in a campground in Montana one month, near a jiu-jitsu gym in Idaho the next, and outside a national park after that.
Our Family, in a Much Smaller Space
There are five of us in our RV — me, my husband Eli, and our three kids: Sullivan, Charlie, and Forest. Plus we have a cat, Ron, and a poodle, Willie!
We live in a fifth wheel and travel the country full-time while balancing work, homeschooling, training, campground life, and all the ordinary responsibilities that come with raising a family. Eli works remotely during the week. I homeschool the kids and handle a lot of the day-to-day logistics of keeping our life moving. The kids train jiu-jitsu and wrestling as we travel, and a big part of this lifestyle for us is finding ways to combine family life, travel, and training into something that actually works long-term.
That’s one of the biggest things people don’t always understand about RV life. It may look adventurous from the outside — and it is — but if you’re doing it long-term, it has to work as real life, not just a trip.
What a Normal Day Usually Looks Like for Us:
No two weeks look exactly the same, especially when travel days, new stops, and different gym schedules get involved. But when we’re settled somewhere for a bit, our days usually follow a pretty familiar rhythm.
We wake up, get the kids started on homeschool, and Eli gets to work. I make breakfast, help where I’m needed, and try to catch up on whatever needs attention while the kids get some free time. At some point in the day, we come back together for Bible study as a family, and we usually do a workout together too.
Then we get ready for jiu-jitsu or wrestling and head out to train.
After training, we come back, make dinner, and settle in for the evening. A pretty normal night for us might look like hanging out together, watching “The Ultimate Fighter“, showering up, and just being together before bed.
That’s probably the simplest way to explain what our version of RV life really is: a lot of normal family rhythms, just built around movement, training, and life on the road.
What We Actually Prioritize in This Life:
If I had to sum up the values that shape our day-to-day life in the RV, it would probably come down to four things:
God
Our faith shapes how we want to live, parent, and spend our time. We’re not doing this life just to collect experiences or check places off a list. We want our home — even in an RV — to be centered on the things that matter most, and for us that starts with God.
Movement
We care a lot about movement, health, and physical capability. That shows up in our life through wrestling, jiu-jitsu, family workouts, hikes, playing outside, and just trying to raise kids who are strong, capable, and used to using their bodies. We’re not especially interested in a sedentary version of family life, and RV living actually supports that pretty naturally.
Healthy Food
Feeding a family well in an RV takes more intention than it would in a full-size house, but it matters to us. We try to keep good food in the RV, keep meals simple, and build our days around habits that help us all feel good physically. It’s not always glamorous, and it’s definitely not always convenient, but it’s important to us.
Family time
One of the biggest reasons we chose this life was because we wanted more time together while our kids are still young. We wanted more shared experiences, more room for play, more flexibility, and more chances to actually enjoy being a family instead of feeling like we were constantly rushing from one thing to the next.
Travel Days:
Travel days are their own category. Those are the days that remind you this lifestyle is not just road-trip freedom and pretty campsites. Packing up a house on wheels, getting everyone ready, making sure things are secured, managing food, bathrooms, fuel, route planning, and arrival timing is work.
Some travel days go smoothly. Some do not.
Sometimes you pull into a beautiful site and feel like a genius. Sometimes you arrive tired, late, hungry, and questioning all your life choices while trying to back a large RV into a weird campsite with children asking seventeen questions (and needing to pee RIGHT NOW) in the background.
Both are part of it.
What RV Life With Kids Actually Feels Like
The best way I know how to describe full-time RV life with kids is this:
It makes everything closer.
The good parts feel closer because they are. We spend a lot of time together. We don’t just see each other in passing between school, work, sports, and errands. We’re in each other’s lives constantly. We’ve had more shared experiences, more time outdoors, more conversations, more adventures, and more ordinary moments together than I think we would have had if we stayed in our old routine.
But the hard parts are closer too.
There’s less room to spread out when people are frustrated. Less privacy when someone is in a mood. Less margin when the campground laundry is full, the weather is bad, someone’s tired, the groceries need to be put away, and you still have to figure out where you’re going next week.
You don’t get to hide from your family’s rough edges in a big house. You learn quickly that small-space living will expose both the strengths and weaknesses of your family culture.
That can be hard.
It can also be really good.
The Parts We Love the Most:
There are a lot of things we love about this life, but a few stand out.
- We get more time together
- This is the biggest one. Not just “vacation time.” Real time. Time to know our kids better. Time to build family rhythms. Time to experience places together instead of squeezing everything into the margins of work and school calendars. Time to slow down enough to actually notice our own life.
- Our kids are getting a bigger view of the world
- They’re seeing different landscapes, different towns, different people, and different ways of living. They’re learning flexibility. They’re learning how to adapt. They’re learning that there’s a lot of beauty outside of what’s familiar. And honestly, so are we.
- We’ve built a life that feels more intentional
- RV life has a way of forcing you to decide what actually matters. There isn’t room for endless clutter, endless busyness, or endless autopilot. You feel your systems when they work, and you feel them when they don’t. That’s not always comfortable, but it has been clarifying.
- We get to combine multiple things we care about into one life
- Travel. Family. Training. Homeschool. Adventure. Simplicity. Time together. We don’t have to choose only one version of life we care about. This lifestyle lets us build something that holds more of it together.
The Hard Parts:
There are hard parts to this life, and I don’t think it serves anyone to act like there aren’t.
- Space is limited
- This is obvious, but it matters. Five people in an RV is not spacious living. There’s always a level of shared air, shared mess, shared noise, and shared logistics that you just can’t escape.
- Campgrounds are inconsistent
- Some are peaceful, clean, and beautiful. Some are cramped, loud, poorly maintained, or just not what you hoped. We’ve had great stays and frustrating ones. We’ve had easy setups and weird, stressful arrivals. Campground quality has a huge effect on day-to-day life.
- There’s a lot of planning
- Where are we staying next? Is there space available? Are there hookups? Is there a gym nearby? Can we get the RV in there? How far is groceries? Is there anything worth doing in the area? Does it make sense for Eli’s work schedule? Does it fit the route?
- A lot of this life happens behind the scenes, and it’s easy to underestimate how much mental energy it takes to keep it moving well.
- You still have all the normal responsibilities of life
- RV life doesn’t erase dishes, bills, parenting, marriage, laundry, school, work, or hard days. It just relocates them.
- That doesn’t make it bad. It just makes it real.
What People Get Wrong:
If I had to sum it up simply, I’d say this:
Full-time RV life is not a vacation. It’s not escape. It’s not an endless highlight reel. And it’s definitely not easy all the time.
But it also isn’t irresponsible, chaotic, or unserious the way some people assume.
For us, it’s a deliberate way of living. It’s a way to stay close as a family, see more of the country, train as we go, and build a life that feels more awake and more aligned with what we actually value.
It’s still work. It’s still parenting. It’s still normal life. It just happens with mountain views sometimes.
Final Thoughts:
Would we do it agin? Without hesitation.
Not because every day is magical. Not because every campground is perfect. Not because we’ve mastered anything.
We would do it again because this life has given us exactly what we hoped it would: more time together, more shared experiences, more freedom to build our days differently, and more confidence that we don’t have to live by default.
It’s not for everyone. But it has been right for us.
And for now, we’re really grateful we said yes to it.
