When we go on an RV trip, we go FAR. Over the past four years of RV camping, most of our trips have been 4 to 6 weeks long with two trips slightly longer than that. And as we’ve mentioned, we’re gearing up for our longest trip yet. So you might assume that the hardest things about RV life with kids are the constant travel days and the lack of consistent routine. Or maybe you can’t imagine doing an RV road trip with your kids because it would be too hard to keep them entertained over a 60 hour road trip route.
Maybe cooking in a tiny RV kitchen with no oven sounds like a nightmare. Maybe the maintenance and constant set up sounds like a huge headache. Or maybe you can’t imagine planning your trips months and months in advance before everything books up. And then of course there’s the limited space and lack of privacy inside the RV. And what if there’s bad weather?
Are you spiraling yet?
Ryan and I definitely had these concerns when we started RVing part time. We knew it was the best way to travel around the country with our young family, but we also knew it would come with some sacrifices. And now that we’ve spent over 365 days on the road since 2021, I’ve narrowed down the hardest things about RV life with kids to my personal top two challenges.
RV Life Challenges: Mental Load
Mental load is a common struggle for a lot of moms. And while RV living is simpler in some ways, some things are more complicated and require more thought. When you travel in an RV, you need to monitor certain things you might not worry as much about in a permanent home. Things like the week’s travel agenda, the travel photos you want to take, how full your gray tank is and whether the next site has hookups. Deciding when and where we’ll next need a laundromat. Stocking up on groceries if we’re camping somewhere rural. But not stocking up too much, because the fridge only has so much space! Keeping an eye out for bad weather in case we need to change our plans.
You get the idea. It’s a lot! The decision fatigue can be exhausting, especially if you’re a perfectionist like me and always attempt to optimize everything even when you don’t need to. The faster we travel and the more we try to cram in, the worse the decision fatigue is.
But it’s not all bad! RV living does free up some time and headspace as well. We have fewer dishes, less square footage to clean, and fewer belongings to put away. We don’t have house projects to work on and I have limited errands to run, so when the kids are in bed for the night, we can rest too. RV life is a beautiful mix of adventure and rest, helping us slow down our busy schedule for a few weeks.
RV Life Challenges: Lack of Space
As you can imagine, living in a 19×7.5 foot box can feel a little crowded. We love spending time together as a family, that’s one of the reasons we like RV travel. But it does mean that your kids are constantly around and there’s not much space for them to work out their own problems. When everything they do is essentially done in your eyesight or earshot, you can’t ignore their annoying behavior or their sibling squabbles as easily. I find myself constantly inserted into their skirmishes just because I’m always present with them.
But of course we’re not spending 100% of our time inside the RV or driving around in the truck. For us, the whole point of RV camping is to visit amazing places. When we have beautiful weather and someplace to explore, we spend a lot of our time outside of the RV and everyone gets a bit more space.
The biggest difficulty in lack of RV space comes when we have multiple days of rainy or really cold weather. Bad weather when RVing with kids just makes everyone a little stir crazy! It didn’t take too many bouts of bad weather to start us wondering if a slightly bigger RV would work better for us.
RV Life Update: Our New RV
After 4 years with our first RV, we knew it was time for an upgrade. While lots of people RV with kids in a 35 or even 40 foot RV, we really love visiting state and national park campgrounds and knew that we needed to stay at 30 feet or shorter in order to do that. So we quickly narrowed in on the Stryker 2613 toyhauler travel trailer, because it keeps us at 30 feet while also helping us out quite a bit with some of our biggest RV life challenges.
With bigger tank space and more cabinetry, our new RV (which we’re calling Bex the Great) will give us more flexibility between hookups and grocery stores. Not running so tightly to our fresh and gray water tank capacity will help ease the mental gymnastics of trip planning and give us more room to do what we want when RV camping.
While we were happy our first RV didn’t have any slides, we knew we wanted our next RV to have at least one slide to give us a little more living space. (Side note: When is someone going to design a 30 foot bunkhouse RV with opposing slides? That would be amazing! Not everyone wants a really long RV!) Once I saw how much kitchen counter space the Stryker 2613 had, nothing else (at 30 feet long) would ever compare. The kitchen space is perfect and with the slide, there’s plenty of room for me to move around and cook even with a four person table set up in the same space!
Our garage patio gives us another option for extra space while RVing with kids. It was more of a bonus feature than a must-have for us, and I’m interested to see how much we use it. Right now, the RV has a tent-style screen panel leading out to the patio. Newer models have a more weather-sealed glass door option, which we’re hoping to retrofit so we can leave the patio door down more often.
The Biggest Benefit: The Kids’ Bedroom
The number one thing we wanted in our new RV was a separate bedroom for the kids. I wanted a door between myself and all the Lego chaos!
Most RV layouts with a kids bunkroom are 35 feet long, so we quickly started looking at toyhaulers. So many families who RV with kids have toyhaulers because of the flexibility the garage space gives. Many toyhauler layouts (like ours) have an electric bed lift above the living space, giving us a place to sleep so we could redesign the only bedroom into a bunkroom for the boys.
We are so excited about our bunkroom remodel. The boys each have their own toy & book storage space next to their beds, and while it’s not a huge space, there’s even some floor space to spread out their toys. This bunkroom is the perfect update for our next RV road trip adventures.
Because of this new upgrade, we didn’t do as much RV travel in 2025 as we usually do, and we are so excited to get back out on the road next year in a rig that will lighten our RVing mental load and give everyone in the family a little more personal space!
Want to read more RV Life posts?
Our Travel Story
5 Things We Learned on Our First Trips
7 Things We Bought After Our First Trip
15 Changes in the First Year
How We Boondock in Our RV
50 Things That Have Gone Wrong
8 Reasons We Didn’t Buy an RV with Slides
Two Hardest Things About RV Living with Kids
Best Meals for Boondocking
Favorite No Bake Camper Desserts
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