From Land to Sea: Kristin Hanes’ Journey of Tiny Homes

In this episode of the Less House More Moolah podcast, Kristin Hanes shares her journey into tiny living, discussing her transition from a conventional lifestyle to living on a sailboat and in a van. She highlights the benefits of living small, including financial savings and the ability to travel and explore nature. Kristin also addresses the challenges of urban parking for van lifers and the growing acceptance of alternative lifestyles. She provides insights into making a living on the road and the trends in van life, emphasizing the importance of community and environmental mindfulness.

Kristin Hanes Links

www.thewaywardhome.com

www.instagram.com/thewaywardhome

https://www.facebook.com/p/The-Van-Life-Collective-100083411613490/

Go to thetinyhouseadviser.com

Transcript

Less House More Moola Podcast (00:40)

Well, Kristin Hanes, welcome to Less House More Moola podcast. I'm super excited to have you here. You have been in this small living space for so long and have provided so much good valuable content to people that are trying to live this lifestyle. So thanks for taking the time.

Kristin Hanes (00:58)

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Less House More Moola Podcast (01:00)

So as we were just chatting before we got started, you're on your new boat, which is a really exciting project. You want to tell us a little bit about where you are and what's going on with your boat at the moment.

Kristin Hanes (01:14)

Of course, yeah, I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area at the moment and we just got a new boat a couple days ago and it's very exciting. It's a sailboat and it's a fast boat with a comfortable interior and so we're looking forward to doing some projects on it and hopefully sailing it across some oceans in the future. So that's where we're currently at with our boat life journey right now.

Less House More Moola Podcast (01:37)

So cool.

It's awesome to get to see new places and constantly be exploring just new cultures or new ideas or new foods and the boat can take you there faster than anything.

Kristin Hanes (01:51)

It can. Yes, it can. It's you know, it's funny about boats. They are kind of slow, but they joke around about boats that they're I think they're the most expensive way to get somewhere for free because you have to put all this effort into fixing and maintaining boats compared to other types of tiny homes. So that's kind of a joke among sailors, but you can get to really remote places, which is something I really like. Unlike an RV or a van, which a lot of other people can also get to those places. So sailboats are special for that reason. go really,

remote islands and anchorages and so it's really cool.

Less House More Moola Podcast (02:25)

And one thing

that's come up in my household from time to time is that you can often moor for very inexpensively. So it's maybe a parking less expensive parking option. Is that true?

Kristin Hanes (02:41)

for the boat, sorry, or for the van.

Less House More Moola Podcast (02:43)

Yeah, for the boats that, you know, sometimes you can moor for free.

Kristin Hanes (02:47)

Oh, definitely. Yeah, we do that most of the time. Actually, we go to anchorages that are totally free islands usually, or on the mainland. We've done a lot on the coast of Baja and you can live really cheaply on a boat. Um, as long as you're willing to buy the boat and put all the money into maintaining it when you're done with those projects, it's free. Um, yeah, anchoring and it's incredible. And you can use the sales. You're not using a lot of diesel. Like we really rack up a lot of bills in the van with diesel. And so the boat, you're just really living off grid with so.

panels and batteries and barely running the engine. It's really amazing.

Less House More Moola Podcast (03:24)

So I'm super

curious because you know, it's not everybody that can sort of move into a boat or a van. What was home like for you growing up?

Kristin Hanes (03:33)

Yeah, so when I was growing up, I lived on a decent size house with two acres of property. And I think something that I really liked was always being outside. And I think that's something that made me a little maybe better at living in a van and living in a boat. Cause I just love being in nature and being outside. And I grew up hiking and backpacking and just being outdoors. So, and I would say I kind of grew up as a tomboy too. like hiking, you know, climbing trees and building forts and just getting my hands dirty, playing in the mud. And so,

Things like that, if I'd grown up in a city, urban environment, might have been harder for me to make the transition. But I did grow up out in nature, I'm the outskirts of town. And so I think that really helped with my transition, especially the van life, which is very small.

Less House More Moola Podcast (04:19)

Yeah, as listeners have probably heard me talk about before, we did a lot of camping and I find that camping kind of has that direct relationship because when you go camping, when you're a kid, it is like your escape, right? And your opportunity to really spend a lot more time outdoors. And I don't know, just, there's something so exciting about it. And so then when you go into some sort of tiny living, it feels like camping.

Kristin Hanes (04:44)

It really does. And I also think it feels like you're in a fort kind of my partner, Tom and I joke about that. So we both grew up building forts. And so being in these small spaces just feels like you're in a fort and especially when they can travel around like a boat in a van, it's like you have this little traveling fort. And so both of us like that aspect of it. yeah.

Less House More Moola Podcast (05:04)

Yeah, it's our inner child coming out.

So, you have had a, a fairly normal path through life in terms of kind of, you know, the working world and corporate and all of that. And so then how did you come to your unconventional lifestyle? And now you make a living that way. How, what, was that transition like for you?

Kristin Hanes (05:28)

Yeah, so that all happened when I met my partner Tom in 2014 now and we ended up meeting. We're living in a communal housing situation just north of San Francisco in Mill Valley. And so there was one big main house that he lived in. He was in a room in that house and I lived in a cottage also on the property. And so I met him there and he had already sailed from the Chesapeake Bay to San Francisco via the Panama Canal. He'd lived on a boat for like eight years and he was at that point looking to get another boat.

And I thought that was pretty interesting. I'd never met anyone like that. And then he decided that he was tired of paying for that room at that house and that he would just move into his Prius so he could save all his money from his full-time job and buy a boat with cash and just start his life of travel. And so I was like, that's weird. I've never met anyone like this. But if you think about it in the Bay Area, you can save like $22,000 a year or more depending on your rent if you don't live in house. And so

I didn't move in with him at first. It may be six weeks later, I, I was camping with him every night anyway. And we were at campgrounds and having a good time in a tent at first. There was a Prius and a tent. And I was like, why am I paying rent if I'm just with him, like camping all the time? And so I got out of my rent and I lived with him in that Prius for four months in San Francisco while going to work. And, that was interesting, but it allowed me to pay off my debt and create this nest egg. And then, I didn't move back into a normal,

situation. But then a year later, I got fired from my job and I was like, I know how to do this. I know how to live tiny. And at that point he had purchased a sailboat from all the money he had saved being in the Prius. And so I moved on to his boat and it just kind of went from there. That was 2016. And then I got interested in van life. And then 2018, I got my first van. And so it's all Tom's fault that I live like this.

Less House More Moola Podcast (07:22)

Yeah, it's so amazing. And I was just thinking about, such an interesting time in our history in which it makes more sense, right? If especially in the Bay Area to live in a Prius and, camp in a tent and pack that up and go to work every day that it does to do the thing that we've all been programmed to do, or that we've all been told to do. And it's just an interesting time in history where

Jobs are so insecure and yet housing just continues, you know, to require you to show up with your rent or your mortgage every month, irregardless of how unstable or crazy the world is around us. You have to continue to pay for your housing in that way. And so it's really presenting alternatives as like a great opportunity or a really smart move. And that's such an interesting sort of change, I would say from.

the, when we look back at the economy and the labor market and all that of the past, it's just such a shift.

Kristin Hanes (08:27)

I know, and I am thankful that I was able to move into a sailboat and in the Prius and the van because if I hadn't had that opportunity, I for sure would have gone into some sort of debt just to try to pay my rent or I would have had to move home maybe for a little while while I found another job. And so I'm just thankful that there was an opportunity to not pay rent while I was trying to figure out the next steps.

Less House More Moola Podcast (08:51)

Yeah, there are a lot of people end up, you know, going back home and you know, maybe that's a good fit for some folks, but certainly it's great to have other options out there. So you've got the van going and you've got the boat going. And so tell us about the full range of your geography and a little bit more about your two rigs and how you balance all that out.

Kristin Hanes (09:14)

Yeah, for sure, so...

Um, we did start this in San Francisco with the boat in 2016 and the van in 2018 and we stayed there for a while living and working and eventually by 2020 we decided we wanted to leave and go travel. And so it was that winter that we started, um, to hop the sailboat south, um, intending to head to Mexico and go to Baja. And that was the COVID year. So we stopped in Ventura actually for about eight months to see what would happen with COVID. We didn't want to cross into another.

country. But by the end of 2020, we did cross into Mexico and Baja and we've been there ever since. And so we typically spend winters in Baja on the sailboat going up and down the Sea of Cortez and then we haul the boat out when it gets too hot. We put it in a boatyard and then we take the van into the United States and we take that to cooler, you know, Minnesota where Tom is from. go to Oregon, Washington, California and just explore the U.S. on those other months when it's too hot in Mexico.

So we move around, we migrate a little bit, and so that's our pattern at the moment.

Less House More Moola Podcast (10:22)

Yeah, I

saw a bus at Schooley Palooza that had typed on it or its name or whatever was chasing 77 degrees.

Kristin Hanes (10:31)

Yeah, sounds about right. Chasing perfection, because you can, especially when you have a van, because the van goes pretty fast. The boat, it takes a while, but you still can. But it's nice hopping in the van and just driving somewhere cooler. It's really nice.

Less House More Moola Podcast (10:46)

Yeah.

And it seems like a lot of folks, even folks that are just in a van are going to Mexico these days. and you and I talked before about how the affordability element certainly is attractive. What's been your overall experience? It sounds like good because you go there all the time. Tell us a little bit more about traveling to Mexico. What's that like?

Kristin Hanes (11:09)

Yeah, it's great. We've mostly been water based in Mexico, so it is super different from us, you know, for us than it is for someone with a van or an RV who's camping along Baja because we just anchor the boat at mostly islands. There's a lot of islands down the coast of Baja, so we're remote and separated from people most of the time and we hang out with an anchorages and there's other cruisers there. So it's a really different experience, but we do go ashore and go into town and go grocery shopping and tie up at a marina sometimes and explore and all that

and lovely. It's been fantastic. The people are wonderful and the food's really good and it's way cheaper than the U.S. And where we are in the boatyard, which is in Puerto Pinasco, that's way in the northern part of the Sea of Cortez, there's a boatyard there full of cruisers who are working on their boats and that creates a nice community and place to do boat maintenance because all boats needed a lot of work and that town is affordable. We like to go out to dinner and it's only like $15 and I went out to lunch with a couple girlfriends and

was five dollars and the groceries are cheaper and it's just a very affordable place to be which is nice and so that's an added benefit of being in Mexico and so we really love that part of it.

Less House More Moola Podcast (12:21)

Yeah,

I'm sure that you have written a lot about parking, both probably for the van and the boat. Before when you and I talked, you mentioned some of the challenges that you face in the Bay Area with parking. So what's a quick overview or, know, what are some of the key highlights that you have learned or ways that you've adapted to the

parking environment, especially now that there are even more people out there doing van life and probably parking has the environment has shifted in the time that you've been doing it. So what do you have to say about parking for folks that are considering van life these days?

Kristin Hanes (13:05)

Yeah, parking in urban areas is definitely pretty challenging and it's not my favorite thing to do. I really dislike it actually. When we lived in the Bay Area and we were living in the Prius, that was way easier because a Prius is a really stealthy vehicle. You're not going to think people are sleeping in there. And likewise with our Astro, you know, that looked like a passenger van and that was easier to get away with parking in places like City Streets or Marina parking lots. But with our Sprinter van, which we now have, it definitely looks like a camper and we don't do

City stealth camping anymore just because it's too stressful. We think someone might come knock on the van We did it for a couple nights in the last few years, but we really don't like urban van life at all But if people I know a lot of people have to do this if people are living in a van because they need to because they need to save money There are ways to park in cities. You just have to have a van. That's very stealthy You like no windows. It looks like a work van or it could be a minivan I just interviewed someone on my blog who lives in a Chevy Suburban

and he has a full-time job at a restaurant in Colorado and so he's able to park anywhere in that city and undetected but if someone has a real van that looks like a camper it's super challenging and I don't recommend that if people have to be in cities but what we normally do is we camp in nature called boondocking and this is where you can camp for free on public lands for usually up to two weeks in one place then you can move maybe 30 miles away and go another two weeks and that's all free and so we typically do that sort of camping

or we go to campgrounds or we go to rest stops, truck stops or legal places because it's just for us with the sprinter it's too stressful to try the urban stealth camping these days. So it is more, it is challenging. A lot of cities don't want people camping or they kick people out, they make it illegal and so we just try to avoid that altogether but it's definitely become harder over the years.

Less House More Moola Podcast (14:56)

Yeah, it's so

interesting though, because so many people are adopting van life. It's kind of a friction between what people want to do, right? And, and what is being allowed. It's kind of like the legalization of tiny houses too. Like people want to live in smaller spaces and

and the municipalities just aren't moving quickly enough. mean, some statistics show that there's 3 million people in some version of van life. It's a lot of folks out there. I see them everywhere, especially when we're traveling, just so many people that are out exploring the world. And yet I guess probably those numbers have made it, you know, so much more challenging to do it without having people bang on your doors.

Kristin Hanes (15:27)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, for sure. And that's why it is better to go to public lands and do dispersed camping, I think, for people who are doing van life. It's way more relaxing, it's beautiful, you can get deep into nature. And so that's definitely my recommendation if people don't need to be in a city going to a job.

Less House More Moola Podcast (15:55)

Yeah.

So what problems has living small or tiny or alternatively, however, we want to talk about it today, solved for you.

Kristin Hanes (16:05)

Yeah, for sure. It's helped me save quite a bit of money. That's probably the main benefit that I've found from living in the Prius. I was able to pay off my debt that I had had for it wasn't even that much debt, but just with paying rent and paying all these bills, I had to get rid of that rent payment to pay off my debt. And I did. So that was huge. It allowed me to save money for the first time. Um, and then recently as my blog and online business has grown and made me a decent living, I've been able to put most of that money into my 401k and

to my savings and so I have much higher savings rate with living small than if I had been paying $2,000 a month for rent or whatever that might be. And so I think monetarily it's helped solve a ton of problems and helped make me and my partner Tom more set up for retirement and for just living life on our own terms and not having to be working at a job somewhere stuck in a city. Alternative living lets us travel around and live really affordably and so we can

do more of what we want in life. And so I'd say that was the main problem that tiny living has solved for us is the whole money issue. So that's been really amazing.

Less House More Moola Podcast (17:16)

Yeah.

And it's kind of like you have reached your, your passion based life where you get to live the life that you want to at a much earlier age than you would have otherwise. Most people have to work for 30 or 40 years and try to save up enough and pay off their house. And then they eventually get to be retired or maybe do more of what they want to do. And here you are so young and able to, you know,

kind of make it work for yourself in that you're making an income certainly, you're saving certainly, but you're also getting to enjoy your one precious life.

Kristin Hanes (17:55)

Exactly. And it was important to Tom and I to do this at a younger age because we are so active that we want to be able to like hike and mountain bike and windsurf and surf while we're able to. And so I'd honestly rather do that now and I'd rather be at home later. You know, like a lot of people they're out and about, they're like working now and they're traveling later, but I wouldn't mind doing the opposite where I'm like just traveling all the time now, but maybe I'll reach a certain age and I'll get a tiny house on a land.

with

a garden and I'll be more stationary in my older years because to me that makes more sense. Like I'm do all the hard stuff at this age that require a lot of physical mobility and energy and then yeah when I'm older and want to rest I will be more sedentary so I'm doing it a little bit more reversed than a lot of people.

Less House More Moola Podcast (18:42)

Yeah, it makes perfect

sense to me, right? We're only, you know, so young for so long and all the things that you like to do are all very active and require a lot of, you know, energy, like you said. So yeah, that makes perfect sense. So clearly you are loving your life, right? In terms of being able to

Kristin Hanes (18:56)

Yeah, totally.

Mm-hmm.

Less House More Moola Podcast (19:06)

be out there and travel and be in different modalities as I like to call them, right? The boat and the van and, know, creating income through that. know being a business owner, that can be really stressful and very challenging to manage all the aspects of running your own, your own business show. But at the same time, it's kind of worth it because you can, you know, get up every day and you get to make all the decisions.

Kristin Hanes (19:12)

Yeah.

Less House More Moola Podcast (19:36)

Is there anything else about your lifestyle that you just really love that we haven't already talked about?

Kristin Hanes (19:42)

Yeah, just...

Being in nature is very important to me. Like when I was growing up, like I said, I had a big garden, a big yard with a lot of trees and I would be out there all the time. And so the ability now to be in nature as much as I want is really beneficial to me. I think it's really important because a lot of people spend tons of time in cities just around cement and glass and steel and just things that aren't, I don't know, they don't feel good to be around and so much noise pollution. I notice now when I go to cities, just how loud,

they are and I don't like that. And so just being in nature helps me feel way more at peace and so that's something that I really love about this lifestyle and the ability to visit friends and family when I want because before when I had a full-time job I had limited vacation so I'd go home for just two days, two, three days and now we spend like six weeks in Oregon which is where I'm from which is incredible and we go to Minnesota where Tom is from for a month and it's just neat to be able to move our home base to

these locations where our family members are and so we can choose to spend even more time with friends and family. So that's another really added bonus of this lifestyle.

Less House More Moola Podcast (20:52)

Yeah, I agree

with that. I think it's great to be able to, especially as our family members have certain, you know, things that crop up and it's nice to be able to show up for them for a period of time and not be like, gotta go, you know, have to have to be back to my job. It's you can bring your job with you and you can, you know, balance all that. And it's, I think, just a more family centric way to live your life, than the way that we kind of thought we were going to go.

Kristin Hanes (21:07)

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree.

Less House More Moola Podcast (21:23)

So

if you could change anything, is there anything that you would change? Or have you ironed out all the kinks?

Kristin Hanes (21:31)

Yeah. No, there's still kinks. think, what's interesting is.

trying to think of what I would change. I would like to eventually add more of a home base to the repertoire, like a tiny house on a property or a cabin. Cause one thing about traveling all the time is you do get tired of traveling and it's nice to stop. Like I've noticed that sometimes when we go park the van somewhere for a few weeks, it's just so nice just to not be thinking about where are we going to camp next or on the boat? What's the weather doing? What Anchorage can we go to? There's so many decisions that are made with this lifestyle that it can be very tiring. And so I think like having

that stability at some point would be really nice. And that'd be the next step I'd look for in this lifestyle is having that land where, I can go somewhere for a few months and just chill out and work on my projects and stop for a while. I think that would be a definite benefit. And that's even more important, I think, in the van. When we're traveling in the van, it's a very small space. The boat is a much larger space. And so that also feels better for me to do that transition between the van and the boat, to have those different types of models of tiny

living

because the van does get cramped with two people in a small van and the bow is way bigger. It's almost like being in a RV. It's just a bigger situation in here for us. So I do like the ability to transition between those two modes of tiny living. I don't know if I could do van life full time. I don't know. I think that'd be hard, but yeah, so that's where I would see it in the future.

Less House More Moola Podcast (22:58)

Yeah.

Yeah. It's funny how it's always nice to have some variety, no matter what kind of life you're in. know, we know wealthy, right? They have six homes, right? All around the globe. Right. And so when you're in tiny living, it's nice to have a couple of different options. have a, a Lance truck camper that of course is our sminy, our tiniest. And then we've got the 300 square foot tiny house and we just got

some property up in Colorado that has 600 square feet cabin on it. And it's like, feels super big, right?

Kristin Hanes (23:31)

that's

nice. That would feel huge. I love that idea. So I'm glad I'm not the only one with multiple tiny homes. I don't feel so bad now.

Less House More Moola Podcast (23:37)

Yeah, because it's nice to get in

your, you know, to, go between the two places and to look forward to what you're going to do there at the new place. And if you're kind of in the same thing all the time, gets, you don't get that anticipation that can be just really fulfilling.

Kristin Hanes (23:51)

Yes, very true.

Yeah, yep, I agree.

Less House More Moola Podcast (23:56)

So I know

you often talk about how you make a living on the road. What are your key tips for folks that are trying to figure out how to, especially now that people are getting recalled back to work. So what are your thoughts at this moment in terms of making money on the road?

Kristin Hanes (24:07)

Yeah.

Yeah, a lot of people I talk to are van lifers do have try to create their own businesses on the road because I think that is the way you can have the most flexibility. It's hard to work for an employer and travel. I haven't personally tried it, but I'm just imagining having to work nine to five and be in a van all the time just doesn't sound as fun to me to be chained inside the van as the office. That just sounds hard. Some people probably do that, but a lot of the people I've spoken with create their own businesses. Mine is a blogging business.

which is, you know, content creation and blog posts and Facebook posts and just everything surrounding content creation and van life. But that's not the only method of working and starting your own business. Some people are freelance writers. I did that for a short period. That's a really good one to do because even bloggers like myself are looking for freelance writers. So writing can get people in, if you like that, into a lot of different venues for making money and being a virtual assistant. That's a great way to make money online or

or just whatever you can think of. think some other people I've interviewed from my site, this one woman makes custom campervan sinks, and that's what her type of remote work is, like doing art, and you can even sell printables on Etsy. mean, making money online and starting your own business, there's so many opportunities. Of course, there's a big learning curve. When I was learning blogging, it definitely was not easy. I had to take, and I'm still taking courses on how to make money online. I'm still learning, but there's so many ways.

And if you can just pick a way to that, like you're passionate about it, you're good at, there's ways to make money online. There's, there's, it's ridiculous how many ways there are. And so that's what I would recommend is start your own business, make money online and, you know, try not to work for an employer. Cause I think that's harder, especially as you said, with people being recalled back to the office now.

Less House More Moola Podcast (26:03)

Yeah. Yeah. I always say to figure out what that thing is that you can wake up for every day for five years. And you know, there's like things that we can get into for a short period of time, but you have to really like dig deep into your soul and figure out what can I get up because it takes that long, you know, it takes some time to build up both your, your skillset and your knowledge base and

also just to get any traction on the internet, right? This takes time. And so you have to be able to stay at it and keep doing it and be passionate enough about your message or your, or your product or your service that you will continue to get up for it every day for five years.

Kristin Hanes (26:31)

Mm-hmm.

Yes, it is hard and starting the blog I probably didn't make a decent income for like two years. So it is a long term thing like making money online but it is possible. It's definitely not a get rich quick scheme at all. It takes time and effort. I treated it like I'm getting a new degree in this thing in blogging and I got to treat it like that. Like you really have to learn and be invested in learning and putting effort into it as well.

Less House More Moola Podcast (27:11)

Yeah,

and that was probably a natural segue for you, right? Because you came from radio broadcasting.

Kristin Hanes (27:16)

Yeah, so I already knew like kind of what kinds of articles people liked reading and I already liked to write and so that was helpful for me. So it just fit well into my skill set, but I still had so much to learn. It's incredible. So, but that's fun. It makes it interesting to keep on learning after so many years.

Less House More Moola Podcast (27:33)

Yeah, awesome. So you have such a, you know, wide audience and you're hearing from people all the time. What trends are you seeing in terms of this has been going on for a while, right? Van life has been going on for a while. The tiny home thing is definitely been around for quite some time. People are at a crisis point right now with the housing market. So things have really, just

reached an all time on affordable level interest rates, all the things on the affordability front, but there has been plenty of time for people to get really excited. HGTV, YouTube about these ideas. Is there a coming down from the high of alternative living? Do you think, or is it just getting more and more important for people?

Kristin Hanes (28:23)

Yeah, I think it depends on who the people are. I'm not quite sure numbers wise what the trend is looking at, but I do know that as you said, the rents are going up, jobs aren't really matching the rents. And so what I hear from people interested in van life is some of them just don't want to pay for apartments anymore and they're looking for ways to get into it. so I get a lot of messages like that from people, but other people are also just retired and they're not really having financial problems. They just want to go explore in the van. And so there's different types of people who are getting into van

life and RVing. It's not just people who are squeezed monetarily, but it makes up many different vast aspects of the population, which is interesting. And some are just part-timers that want to go in the van for a few months a year. I get people like that, or people who are traveling nurses and want to live alternatively instead of just paying rent in various cities. So it really runs the gamut. And I do think there is more awareness about it. Of course, like in 2015 when I was in the Prius, there wasn't much awareness out there and there are hardly any articles about

So I do think in that sense, it's probably increasing with the number of people doing it and interested in it. I don't have exact numbers. I don't think anybody really knows because it's hard to survey van lifers sometimes. I think that people try, but there's like just so many people moving around and doing this that it's hard to know just how many. But there are places getting shut down because of too many people boondocking. So it's definitely increased. And some people don't know how to care for the public lands properly and they're throwing trash around.

stuff which is closing down sites for everyone. So that's one negative thing about more and more people trying this lifestyle is there's more and more like trashing of the environment. And so I just wish everyone could get into this mindset of like taking care of nature and not trashing it. So we are seeing it runs the gamut of what types of people are doing van life and where they are in their journey. So it's kind of interesting to watch.

Less House More Moola Podcast (30:17)

Yeah, interesting.

Yeah. I was just in court site for schooly Palooza and definitely it seemed like, because that's, that's a place where people, you know, do the two week boondocking and the BLM there. And to the large degree, it didn't look trashed. And then I saw a couple of places where, there had been trash accumulation and

I think that that is an interesting commentary. the trash thing, it's something that's always on my radar. When I remember my dad, every single time we were packing up from camping, he's like, leave it cleaner than we found it. Right. That was his motto. And so I would go around and pick up trash before we left. This is not something that everybody has taught to do. And so, I too wish that there was a way to have.

a lot more mindfulness around trash in our public lands because trash, you know, back in, you know, at some point in history, all biodegraded, but now it's all plastic. So it's going to be there forever. Like totally different trash today. So.

Kristin Hanes (31:27)

Yes. Yes, totally.

I know it's hard to see and when places are getting shut down because of that it's really sad too.

Less House More Moola Podcast (31:38)

Yeah.

Are there other changes you're seeing in the conversation that are different than they were even five years ago?

Kristin Hanes (31:46)

I think just that it's more accepted because back in the day, if you said you lived in a vehicle, people would think you were really weird or crazy. And sometimes they still do, but I think that just because it is in the public eye, it's not as weird. And the normal reaction I get is people think it's really cool, probably because it's like out in the media more, it's in movies, it's just part of the mainstream now. And so, but back in 2015, I definitely didn't want to tell anyone I was living in a Prius. So it's become way more accepted, I think, over the years.

Cheers!

Less House More Moola Podcast (32:17)

Yeah, that's a

huge positive change, right? People don't just assume that you're homeless, right? You choose to live this way and, and get to see a lot more and, and meet a lot of different people. And it's just a completely and appreciated lifestyle now, which is awesome because it invites more people to do it.

Kristin Hanes (32:20)

Mm-hmm.

Yep,

Yes, definitely. So that is a huge benefit.

Less House More Moola Podcast (32:43)

Well, I've got some links that we'll definitely put in the show notes for you. If listeners are trying to find or follow you, how do they track you down?

Kristin Hanes (32:52)

Yeah. So they can go to the waywardhome.com. That's my main website and that's on Instagram as well. But I do have a Facebook page called the van life collective. And that one is just about van life where my website is different aspects, alternative living van life collective has a lot of different, posts all about van life. So that's another good way to reach me. So those are the main venues where I'm Yep. That's it.

Less House More Moola Podcast (33:14)

Awesome. TheWaywardHome.com

Great.

Well, Kristen, thank you so much for taking the time out. I hope that this boat project turns into another dream version of your tiny living and you get to have a really cool space in there for all the work you do. And thank you for being here on Less House More Moola podcast and sharing your expertise.

Kristin Hanes (33:40)

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. That was really fun.

Less House More Moola Podcast (33:42)

Yeah, awesome.