Teardrop Trailer

The great thing about ridding yourself of "stuff", is you can start figuring out your own minimum life requirements, what you can actually stand. And when these basic requirements are really small, you can tow a teardrop trailer behind your car from place to place. Maybe park it somewhere fancy, maybe a campground, maybe the back yard of a friend willing to rent you the space and hookup external power cord for comforts.

 

Yes, a teardrop trailer is the size of a tent and you can't stand up inside, which is really annoying when you get dressed in the morning, but it has metal sides, keeps the rain out, and a kitchen stove and sink hides under the lid off the back. Not super comfy, but better than a tent in most other ways. Can be air conditioned or heated if done carefully. Can hold your Laptop for movies and communications. What do you still need?

 

A bathroom. A shower. Somewhere to wash clothes. A proper kitchen with a roof, though technically you could pitch a tall tent over the kitchen you can stand under and keeps the rain off and the bugs out of the food. Give it a flue. Most people put a propane bottle on the front platform, or even a storage bin of stuff to help counterbalance, but I've seen bicycles and even a motorcycle up there before. A scooter will work too. Pot growers would probably want to paint their trailer something more subdued, and put an enduro bike on the front, so they can park their 4WD or truck rather than waste gas when they can't afford to. An artist would probably enjoy one, allowing them to park wherever folks are friendly, or on BLM land with a permit or up in National Forest, same thing. There's a lot of legal places you can tow these to camp in.

 

This teardrop trailer is interesting as the smallest possible you can still use. And light enough to haul behind a common sedan. This designer built it for less than $2K. That's very affordable for a home you tow behind yourself. With less than 44% of American adults actually employed anymore, the other 56% struggling to survive could probably use these to escape the terrible economy they voted for so overwhelmingly in the last two elections. Hope and change, remember?

 

I think a teardrop is the very most basic level of towable shelter, and they're great for that. I'd personally rather have one I could stand up inside, has an indoor kitchen, and a bathroom. And I'd like much more serious insulation. I recently lived in an apartment that was 740 square feet, which was big enough, but the neighbors stomping and screeching and thumping really ruined it for me. If I had separate walls it would be fine. Especially getting enough light. I like light during my day. Murky darkness wears on me after a while. I'm not cut out for Portland or Seattle or Northeast snowstorms. Make sure your home is big enough you don't go crazy, or that you understand this kind of living space is temporary, enough to motivate you to build a proper house. Learn the Uniform Building Code, and find out the costs for permits etc where you live, in case you opt to buy property and build a house. In the old days, you used to be able to file papers with the US Forest Service and they'd lease you land for 99 years and you built a cabin with minimal taxes on it for the duration. You and a friend put something together. Maybe cut down local trees with a chainsaw to build an actual log cabin. Those were better times. More capable people, less whining about safety regulations by people everyone should ignore, especially because it drives those people nuts when you do.

$160K Airstream luxury trailer. No trash live in these.

If you have an SUV or truck, which can tow something bigger, look into a used trailer and rebuild the inside. A rehabilitated trailer with better insulation than standard, new interior and fixtures is going to be better quality when original. Restoring Airstream trailers became a popular thing for the wealthy idle rich, those 1% trust babies pretending to be lumber jacks or sheep herders because the like the way it looks, and grow beards even though it makes them look dangerously unhinged because all their friends have beards. I don't understand that, but I'm getting older. Being generation gapped is a modern reality. Bigger trailers don't have to be heavy. Quite a few are built with aluminum panels rather than steel or wood, which when coupled with fiberglass greatly reduces the weight. A big one like the above airstream is heavy, and needs a serious tow vehicle, usually going for the 5th wheel (overhead hitch) rather than the pictured trailer hitch. Those are more stable on the highway and easier to tow.

 

Another option is the A-frame pop-top trailer. This has overlapping insulated fiberglass shells which pop up and latch together, making more living space inside, yet fold down for much easier transportation. This is more comfortable and secure than a traditional canvas pop-top or the old school Westphalia VW campervan. Remember those?

Not comfortable, but better than sleeping in your car. And slightly fashionable too, like a Vespa. They also tend to overheat because they are air-cooled, and make a terrible sound when their oil burns up. Bad rings and blowing smoke are another trait of VW buses. Most Japanese vans would be a better choice to convert. Like a Mitsubishi people carrier with the seats swapped for furnishings and a sink.

 

The hardest part of any of these is the money. And the next hardest part is where to park it when not in use, and even more, where to park it when you're camping inside. I know I'm curmudgeonly, and opinionated. I wouldn't have a blog if I had no opinions. Would you live in one of these if you lost your job, or your career required you to be more mobile but didn't pay well enough to afford those Motels and still make a profit? Yeah, sucks. I know. So would you live in one of these?