After spending 10,000 miles and several months in our #Lance1685, we knew there were some annoying things in our living space. Especially that never used, but gorgeous solid wood magazine rack … that totally blocked access to the only 110V outlet on that side of the slideout! We’ve also learned it’s better to fix annoyances rather than live with them.
Here are 8 of our annoyances that you may wish to consider for your own camping lifestyle.
See that annoying magazine rack (lower right)? What you don’t see is the electrical outlet directly across from it — too close to actually plug anything in! Now it’s been repurposed!
We removed the offending magazine rack, cut it in half and repurposed the two pieces!
The bottom of the magazine rack repurposed into a much needed extra spice rack – added under the original spice rack.
The “other half” of the original magazine rack was attached to the back of the dinette drawer to provide secure space for olive oil and other stuff I don’t want sliding around the drawer.
Adding one beneath an existing spice rack gave me an additional spice rack and installing the other inside the dinette drawer gave me a secure place to store olive oil and other cooking essentials. Now I have extra space to store spices, olive oil AND access to an important electrical outlet! WinWin!
And with access to actually use that electrical outlet, I decided to expand the outlet capability a bit …
The Belkin extra outlets/USB power source.
PlugIn Surge Protectors/3 Outlet plus Dual 2.4 amp USB Charging. We needed more outlets to charge all our stuff – phones, IPad, camera batteries, FitBits … how can we possibly have this much stuff that needs charging? Regardless, it’s just easier with additional USB plug-ins and the extra surge protection is nice.
Inflatable Solar LED Luci Light
Luci Light Our Carefree Awning is wonderful, but it has “arms” on both sides and I’m always afraid someone will bang their heads on the low hanging spots. On the boat we had a wonderful solar LED inflatable light called a Luci Light. On our recent camping weekend, I hung it on the low spot of the awning to remind everyone that there’s an obstacle. It worked so well, I added another one for the other side! Deflated, they store almost flat taking no room at all. Being solar and LED, they don’t require recharging except being outside (even in total shade it recharged). What could be easier!
Eerie morning fog surrounding our campsite at St George Island State Park! See those potentially nasty awning arms just waiting to surprise someone? We’re trying bug spray around the trailer door and patio mat area to see if it’ll keep the bugs away like it does at the lake.
Raid Bug Barrier Bug Spray. Despite the fact that we have the worlds quickest and easiest Clam Screen Enclosure, some nights it’s just nice to sit out under the awning in our zero gravity chairs. We’re trying the same approach we use at the lake, bug spray around all the openings in our #Lance1685 and outside around our “patio awning rug“. Hoping to keep the mosquitoes away at sunset.
Best. Campsite. in Fruita Campground. But windy … our slideout canopy vibrates. Ugh!
Anyone else have a slideout cover that vibrates generating unwanted noise when the wind picks up? We’ve tried various remedies, including putting a swim noodle between the cover and the slideout top. But nothing has worked well … someone told us to use a piece of foam intended to be a toddler safety table edge, attached it to the slideout top edge with the included 3M 2 sided tape. Here’s the one we ordered from Amazon. Time will tell, but we’re hoping this solves the issue. For less than $9 and 20 minutes of our time to install it, it’s worth a try!
Replace the Water Filter. One of those things we should have known, but didn’t think about … During our recent weekend “shakedown” camping trip, we discovered the water pressure inside the trailer even though we were hooked up to water was dismal (good thing the state park had showers because this water pressure wouldn’t have rinsed shampoo out of even my short short hair!!!). We changed the Camco water filter and voila, what a difference!
Gray Water Tank STINK! It never occurred to us that the gray water tank would stink, but it smells as bad, if not worse, than the black water tank. We didn’t put anything in it during our last trip out west, but this trip will be different. I’m not sure if this is the best stuff yet, but it’s our starting salvo to try and get the stink under control. If you have something you like better, PLEASE leave a comment and share below!
Storage! Not one but TWO huge storage areas under the bed! With no light… until now!
LED Light Strip for Under Bed Storage. We have GREAT underbed storage … and I was using a little LED handheld light to see in the storage containers we added. The lack of light was getting frustrating. So I added this cool little adjustable battery powered motion light. So far it’s just right! With the lid up, I needed the light to focus down, not out as most of the usual LED light strips do. This one adjusts for any direction and it’s motion sensor is a useful addition – especially the part about turning off automatically when I shut the top.
Now if I can just figure out how to make the shower enclosure a bit more spacious — or at least keep the shower curtain from sticking to me while I’m showering. I called Lance Camper to see if there were any options – like adding doors instead of a curtain, but so far I’m back to square one. We’ll figure it out – it’s likely we’ll see a good idea along the way while we’re camping! Other RV-ers are great sources of ideas!
Anyone have things that have drastically improved your camping lifestyle? Please leave a comment and share! ESPECIALLY if you’ve figured out that tiny corner shower annoyance! 🙂 Cheers! Jan
8 Comments
We did our first week trip in our 2017 1685 and I to have issue with the shower! Did you come up with any ideas?
Hi Jeff! Check on the Lance Owners Forum, but here are a couple of posts showing photos and modifications others have done – both the 1685 & 1985 have the small corner shower. We’re living with it for now – I talked to Mike Williams at Lance about the possibility of glass/plastic shower doors and he spent a lot of time looking for me, but didn’t come up with anything. His recommendation was to find a glass company that could fabricate something custom. Won’t be in one place long enough for any custom fabrication until next summer … if then… so the shower remains an irritant, but not unusable – we’re lucky we’re both small people. If you come up with a fix you like, PLEASE let us know! Here are the links: http://lanceowners.hoop.la/topic/extend-a-shower-2017-model-1995-corner-shower
http://lanceowners.hoop.la/topic/spike-s-shower-enclosure-installation-w-photos Cheers! Jan & David
I haven’t seen the geometry of your bathroom, but would one of those curved shower curtain rods work for you? You could attach it on the sides with a few of those velcro buttons. I’m sure the rod could be bent to the right curve. It could really make the shower seems much bigger.
Curved or expandable, either might work. We were hoping to find an even better solution, but alas… In the meantime, we decided to use the shower for a month on our trip west (starting today!!!) and then re-evaluate before leaving for the entire winter. THANKS! Jan
Hi Jan and Dave. Any No See-ums at St. George Island? If so, do you have a spray or lotion to keep them off you? Happy trails! Carlee
Hi Carleen! No see ems weren’t as much of a problem as WICKED mosquitoes when we were there in November. No spray seemed effective – we use Ben’s with DEET, but hate it. Now that we have the screened in enclosure, it’s better – at least the mosquitoes stay out. Cheers! J&D
Still a great blog, even if you went to the Tundra dark side;) I wish we could still zoom in on your photos. Have a safe and fun summer.
Interesting thought Marcel – I’ll see if I can figure out how to make the photos be clickable where you can zoom in. That would be cool! Thx for the idea! Cheers! Jan