We just came back from one week’s vacation at the in-laws, so now I need a vacation. I always seem to need some time to recover after the bustling activity of family gettogethers. Anyway, staying in an 2.5 bedroom apartment for the first time since we moved into the RV allowed me to make some observations on what it’s like to live in an apartment from the perspective of a fulltime RV dweller.

  • An apartment is much like an RV. It has the same things, couches, chairs, tables, kitchen. bathroom, etc. EXCEPT everything is strangely far apart. Normally in an RV, one person can be cooking and another person can be watching TV and the third can be sitting on the chair, and everybody are close enough to have a conversation. In the apartment, one would need to either shout or get up and walk over. In an apartment things are separated. In an RV things are together. RV wins.
  • An apartment offers instant hot showers (an RV does too, except we don’t want to waste gas by keeping the water heater on at all times), so I decided to try one after having deliberately used cold showers every day for the past three months. After one hot shower, I decided to go back to cold showers as I feel much better afterwards. With a hot shower, the skin is warm and damp and so the air feels cold. Also the skin tends to feel slightly puffy (it soaks in water). With a cold shower, the skin is flushed but cold and so the air feels nice and comfy. The skin is not puffy. Draw, since you can have both each place.
  • An apartment has higher water pressure. Older RVs are limited to 45psi which is not a lot. Also, the toilet in an apartment has no pedals and does not need to be filled with water before using. Apartment wins.
  • We did not do any cleaning while we where there, but I imagine it would take hours. Even vacuuming the floors would take at least half an hour. In the RV we can have it spic-and-span in about an hour which includes polishing. RV wins.
  • Overall there was a lot more stuff in the apartment. In an RV there is out of necessity a lot less because there is less room. Unless space is deliberately created in an apartment, the effective “empty space” will be the same. This is probably dependent on personality. Here, the apartment offers the choice, but this choice also comes with responsibility. I see this going either way. Draw.

In summary, I don’t appreciate the greater separation of things and people in an apartment. But I do like freedom. An RV gives you freedom to run your utilities, but it does not give you as much freedom in terms of space—it is much easier to move furniture around in an apartment than in an RV, but the latter is not impossible. And vice a versa. Naturally, this was just a comparison of one particular RV and one particular apartment. The space “problem” could be solved by choosing either of a different size although apartments have a higher lower limit than RVs. The utility problem could be solved by owning the apartment, but that is probably easier done in a house.

Originally posted 2009-07-09 10:52:41.