Holy Hell We Lived in a Trailer for Two Years (March 2022-February 2024)

Holy fuck wow, so we lived in a camper together for two years. That was a thing to do. Our intention was to live in it seasonally and use it as a base to travel from -- travel for a few months, come home for a few months, rinse and repeat. That way we could cut out the worst times to be in Maine in a camper -- summer and winter.

Unfortunately that didn’t work out and we ended up in the trailer for over 400 strait days without a break, which is a really fucking long time. And I just wanted to capture that moment in time. It kinda happened in two parts -- the first year (2022) and the second year (2023).

When we first arrived in March of 2022, it was initially just the fun hullabaloo of doing the thing -- renovating the trailer, getting settled, meeting all the people, etc. And it was so fucking fun. We made the trailer super cute and our friends were so happy to have us there on their property and there were three neighboring houses and we all became friends and initially it was like one big happy family and it truly seemed like we had found our spot. Living in a trailer was a real fuckin ride though.

Ferrying buckets of rank piss water from our black tank to the garden

Checking out our new mattress — note the gorgeous wall paper I was so in love with!

Our friends dog shitting right in front of our camper door like always, fuck my life

One funny thing that happened initially was the shitter. There was a proper flushing toilet in the trailer, but it turns out it costs about $50 to have someone come and pump out your shit tank (properly referred to as the black tank) and you have to do that once a week on average….so there was no way we were paying $200 a month to shit, you know? You’re also on their time table….which we also didn’t like. Meaning if the pumper people were busy or flaked out or couldn’t come right away -- you were just stuck with a full ass shit tank and were at their mercy. Also what no one tells you is that you have to flush quite a bit of water down with your shit -- you basically have to think of making like a shit slurry. Because the pumper can only pump out liquid / sludge -- the heavier, solid turds sink to the bottom and don’t get pumped out. NO ONE FUCKING TELLS YOU THIS THOUGH. So that also was not going to be possible for us to do because we had to mega conserve water due to the nature of the shallow well on our friends property. Also having to flush down that much water also makes your black tank fill up much quicker, thus need to be pumped out much more frequently.

Like initially we shat in the toilet thinking it would be no big deal. But then we ordered our first pump out, and they came and pumped….but after they left we realized our black tank was not registering as empty, and when we peered down the toilet hole - there were loads of turds at the bottom. Actually a big fuckin mound of turds. So we called the pumper people and were like yo, there’s still a bunch of shit in there. They said they’d come back, but they couldn’t make it back for some days. And we happened to be out of town on a planned overnight….so this is how good of a friend our friends are whose property we were parked on -- our friend Amy fucking met the shit pumper people and while they hooked up the pump, she literally went into our bathroom, stuck a giant fucking branch down our toilet and simultaneously stabbed at the mound of shit while also running the water down to get the turds pumped out. Like - can you say you have a friend that would do that for you?

ANYWAY. Ha.

We decided we would just only pee in the trailer toilet -- because fuck all that turd drama -- and also with pee only, that meant we could empty our black water (and grey water — this is kitchen sink / bathroom sink / shower) into the garden to help conserve water. Because you can’t put doody on a garden.

BUT! We had already been shitting in the RV toilet, and even though the majority of it was pumped out -- there was still remnants of shit in our tank, so before we could start emptying it into the garden, we had to make sure all the shit was out of there. And that was a nasty ass job. That was weeks of ferrying shitty murky sludge to our friends toilet inside their house and flushing it down. We would put a 5 gallon bucket under the opening of our black tank, open the black tank pipe and fill the bucket, and ferry the bucket in to the toilet, dozens and dozens and dozens of times, it was so fucking nasty. And we had to do that until there was no more visible poo or poo particles coming out. Until we basically got just clear, rank piss water.

But anyway yeah -- then for shitting — we set up literally just a 5 gallon bucket lined with a plastic bag with a plastic toilet seat on top. That was just one of what felt like a zillion little concessions of living in a trailer. And guys! I didn’t romanticize living in a trailer, okay? I knew it was going to be less than ideal, but I figured just doing it seasonally would make it completely do-able. I didn’t know I’d be in it for over a year straight without a break. I didn’t intend to do summers and winters in it, for fucks sake.

Aside from the semi fucked shituation, the first couple of months living in Maine were bliss, but then in May of 2022 we experienced some pretty severe financial devastation that threw our investment / financial freedom plan, that had been years in the making, completely off the rails. To say we were devastated is an understatement. It would take several years to get back on track. And while we had no doubts we would get back on track, we also had no idea how we were going to survive in the meantime.

On top of that, it turns out summers in Maine are pretty hellish. And the conditions on our friends property made it even more complicated as they had a well for water, but it wasn’t deep enough and they had run out of water in previous summer seasons when it hadn’t rained enough. And towards the end of May 2022 -- it hadn’t rained enough. Water conservation basically ran our lives. To the point where we were doing dishes under a trickle and taking 30 second showers and getting to the point where we were doing laundry at the neighbors house…and then of course -- our fucking grey water tank that we were emptying into the goddamn garden. We were doing this by filling 5 gallon buckets with our nasty piss and grey water, and pulling them in a wagon across the yard to the garden. That was a holy shit fucking shitty thing to have to do. It was hot as balls, and we were draining foul smelling piss water into nasty ass buckets and sloshing them arduously across the fucking yard. Like every single time we would just be looking at each other like what the fuck is happening right now. But this is also how committed we were to our future dreams.

On top of that, there were ticks EVERYWHERE. All over the property, in our backyard, literally everywhere. To the point where every time we stepped outside, we had to be thinking about ticks -- either using bug spray or wearing specific clothing. And every time you come back inside, you have to do a tick check. EVERY TIME YOU COME BACK INSIDE. It was so much mental overhead, like just to step outside on a nice morning with a cup of coffee -- you had to be thinking about ticks. There were also epic fuck tons of mosquitoes. They would swarm us on walks and I got bit to fucking shit. We went out and bought a big zapper unit that we installed right outside our front door, and several smaller units for inside, and a salt gun to shoot them with. They were biting me in my goddamn sleep. Like literally I’d get bit or hear one buzz by my ear and it’d be like -- turn on all the lights, fully wake up and find this fucker or it’s just going to continue biting me. Like just so fucking awful. And same thing when you went outside -- wearing certain clothing, using stinky ass bug spray to try to avoid bites, and not really being able to go outside and lounge….fucking mother fuck it was rough.

So yeah, a shit load of biting mosquitoes and lyme-disease-carrying ticks all over the property and humidity out the wazoo -- being in a fucking trailer added an extra layer of proper shit as it was in full sun and was basically just a tin can on fire. It was so hot and miserable and getting mosquitor bites in bed at night almost sent me over the edge and it was just such a fucking hostile environment, I was so fucking miserable so much of the time.

All we could do was just hunker down and get through it.

And it wasn’t all bad, okay! We had some nice times!

My cute boyfriend laying under the trailer to open the black tank

Bomb ass pizza from the literal corner store

Thankfully we had such a social outlet with the neighbors -- it was just one big crew and we were always going swimming together and having potlucks or game nights, it was so nice to have such a strong community for the first time in really years. There was also a huge garden, so I distracted myself a ton with just tinkering around in there.

My boyfriend sweating his balls off in the garden — it’s hot as fuck but you have to be covered because of the mosquitoes

Kris also joined a financial education membership site called Real Vision, and that basically saved our ass and got us back on track. The education there and the support with the community of other members was a literal life saver. And we just spent endless hours going back and looking at our investing mistakes throughout the cycle (crypto goes in 4 year cycles) — this is a really important step. It’s so easy to just turn a blind eye and just hope you do better in the next cycle. But to really do better next time — you have to figure out where you went wrong. Otherwise it’s just random luck. And boy, that’s a mother fucker — going back and facing the past and mucking through it with a fine tooth comb. You have to be objective, first of all. And you can’t judge yourself. You have to think of it like just going back for a history lesson and having the benefit of hindsight. We spent countless hours doing this — talking it out, looking at charts, reflecting on our emotional state, what we were thinking, why we made the decisions that we did, what information and education we were lacking, etc. It’s an emotional roller coaster, but there’s no other way. You have to face it and just move forward. That was a very painful time.

Being in nature helped though, and we found a handful of really nice walking trails that we tried to do on a regular basis.

The company of the neighbors also saved our ass in the moment, but somehow that all fell apart. I don’t even want to write about it because it was just so horrible in the end. While it was good - it was so good, but then it came to an abrupt and dramatic end at the beginning of 2023 when I had a very heartbreaking friendship breakup with one of the neighbors. I felt like such an outsider after that because the friend group just continued on without us as if nothing had happened, and it was the loneliest feeling in the world.

And on top of that, winter in the camper was very rough and we just felt so frustrated and stuck. It was obviously cold as fuck and it was really expensive to heat the camper. It had a propane furnace with a thermostat but it went through the propane quickly and that shit ain’t cheap.

-11 outside and struggling to keep it in the mid 50-s inside

Wearing orange so we don’t get shot! fuck my life

Literal iced over / completely frozen doors and windows in the mornings

We also ended up with an insane mold explosion because of the propane heat -- it created so much condensation that there was literally water dripping down the walls. And unbeknownst to us, in the dark, dank places we didn’t think of -- like under the bed -- mold was growing everywhere. It was so fucked and so gross and just oh my gawd, fuck my life. It turned out our whole bed frame was rotted out and we had to literally trash it and rebuild it and a bunch of our stuff that was stored under the bed was ruined and it was just a nightmare. We had to go out and buy two expensive ass dehumidifiers and put one at each of the camper and they were big and obtrusive in our already tiny ass camper and also not cheap to run and just fuck my fucking life you know?

The storage space under our bed, completely rotted

RIP to my beautiful wall paper — it was moldy as fuck

Kris was making amazing headway with Real Vision though and had started making a name for himself within their membership community. We were watching shit loads of their content and learning so much, and Kris was super active in their Discord helping people, answering questions and just getting to know the other members. It was an expensive membership, so it made the caliber of members super high, and everyone took it very seriously. At the end of 2023, Real Vision launched a new monthly show and asked Kris to be a guest. It went really well and he ended up coming onto the show on a regular basis. They also paid him to do a 6-part video series on security within the crypto space. So that was a big boost.

I had also started trying to get virtual assistant / web design clients again and it was very on again / off again. It was very limp dick, but I was just getting it where I could get it and it was all just such a slog. Nothing ever led anywhere and I was never able to get the ball rolling. It all just felt very choppy and disjointed.

So yeah. Towards the end of winter 2022 and the beginning of 2023, staring down the barrel of another summer in that fucking trailer…..we just had to make something happen. This leads us into sort of part two of living in the camper, after the community fell apart and when we decided we were going to leave for the summer of 2023 and go house sit in the U.K.

Previously in our travels, we had done all sorts of clever things to keep it extremely cheap when we were traveling for months at a time -- getting clever with Airbnb, Couchsurfing, volunteering, work trading, etc. But we just didn’t really want to do any of that again. Then a friend sent me a TikTok video that was totally click baity about how to stay in swanky houses for free -- but it led me to a house sitting website. And it wasn’t a gimmick. I literally signed up on the site in March of 2023, and within a few weeks, we had the entire summer of 2023 booked out with free accommodations. It was pretty fucking wild, like it was truly blowing our minds.

That made the next couple of months a lot easier - since we had this big fun thing to look forward to. We started out at the end of May in an Airbnb in Budapest so we could get some dental work done. Then we house sat in:

Helensburgh, Scotland

Limoges, France

Bearstead, England

Tunbridge Wells, England

Newick (Sussex) England

Little Easton, England

Goddamn it was amazing. I mean it wasn’t all perfect, but nothing major was wrong. Although I will say -- it helped a lot that we lived in a trailer. So like -- that was our baseline and most anything was better than spending the summer in the trailer, you know?

And upon our return, we were renewed, and that helped so much. We still got the euphoric feeling of “being home” and I always love the settling in period of cleaning and refreshing the space you’ve left, unpacking, getting re-acclimated, doing the big grocery shop, driving our car again, etc. Which is exactly why the intention was to cyclically travel, then it’s always fresh. It was also so fucking novel to have not had to sublet our house like we always had to in Phoenix. We came back to everything untouched, exactly as we had left it and that was so fucking amazing. We were also heading right into fall boner season:

Anyway, those nice feelings lasted a good couple of months. We got back at the very beginning of September and it wasn’t until the end of October that it started to creep back in - the oh shit feeling. It was partially because winter was creeping in again. And the multiple-times-per-day mental overhead of staying on top of the condensation / preventing the mold. And there was also still the extreme social awkwardness and going into the season of all the gatherings -- friendsgiving, christmas parties, etc. All of that was still happening as if nothing had happened -- but we just weren’t included and it was very surreal and didn’t feel good at all. Also Kris got a fucking tick bite and fucking Lyme disease that was just so horrible. Right in our back yard, too — not, like in the depths of the woods or something.

All of that, combined most importantly with our investing plans sort of ramping back up, and suddenly we were really seriously talking about getting out of the trailer and what that might look like. We had zero ideas, but then one day in early December 2023 we decided to reach out to Kris’ family who had a handful of rental properties in the columbia river gorge area in Washington state. It turns out they had one that had just become available and pretty much overnight we decided to take it. It was a double wide that hadn’t been touched since the 70s, but we were so desperate and the price was right so we just said fuck it, let’s do it.

Once we knew we were leaving, it was a weird feeling. Wanting to leave Maine and the trailer so badly, while at the same time being sad to leave. We spent our last few weeks — before we picked up the u-haul and started packing — doing our favorite walks and just getting in all the things for the last time.

And from there, it was just balls to the wall of trying to sell the camper and just generally get everything in order for a cross country move. Although it was pretty fucked in the camper because unlike a house -- we had no room to pack or stage anything. So we weren’t really able to pack until we picked up the u-haul trailer in late January 2024, a week before we left. So essentially we ended up doing four really big things in the span of a week -- four things that should’ve been done one at a time:

Packing up your house

Loading the moving truck

Preparing your house for sale

Packing and prepping for cross country travel

Like it was just the most manic week of my entire life and I’m not totally sure how we survived it. Also Kris’ had a shoulder injury, so he wasn’t able to do much and it was mostly just me and just fucking fuck it was insanity. It was just like morning to night -- packing, cleaning, loading, painting, I honestly didn’t think we would get it all done. And in the end, we seriously barely did and it was incredibly stressful and fucking awful -- just running around like crazy people. If I had to go back and do it again, I would do it so differently, but I just didn’t know how bad it would be, I had no context obviously as I’d never done anything like that before.

Prior to that, I had only ever done in-town moves in Phoenix. Even when we left Phoenix to travel long-term, the move-out day was crazy, but we weren’t also prepping the house we were moving out of for sale -- it was just a rental. And we also had loads of space and started packing many many weeks in advance. This move out of the trailer and cross country just had so many layers of complexity.

But anyway, I mean -- we did get it done, obviously. But fuck me sideways. The morning we left Maine was just intense. I had been running on fumes for a week already, my lips were chapped, my eyes were bloodshot and I had barely slept and was up at the literal ass crack of dawn, like 5 a.m. just doing all the last minute shit since we spent the last night in the trailer so it was like loading the mattress, packing the sheets and pillows and blankets, eating breakfast and making coffee and cleaning that mess up, and loading all the random final shit into the car or the trailer. Our friend Amy got up at 6 a.m., bless her, and we wouldn’t have been able to do it without her. And then it was just sort of a rushed and tearful goodbye with her as we had to go and meet my dad and were on a timeline. Oh yeah -- my dad was going to be hauling our car and the uhaul trailer across the country for us.

I was just so tired and so raw and there were just so many emotions. Leaving Maine after two years, leaving the safe nest of our friends property, leaving our little trailer, moving to a new place that we had never been before, just all the things.

It was funny too because we actually rode in my dad’s semi-truck for a few hours -- he dropped us outside of Boston to catch our flight, we just took an uber from the truck stop. But it was fun to ride with him - it was the most time I had spent with him in years. And then that was that - we got on our flight, landed late, spent the night at an airport hotel and woke up to begin the next chapter: going from a trailer to a fucking double wide. I guess we’ll fucking see.

Katie DiBenedettoMay 14, 2024