When you’re camping, you tend to spend a lot of time outdoors. The interior space offered by an RV tends to be minimal at best—and besides, the whole point of parking your rig in a beautiful place is to get out and enjoy it, right?
That said, it’s a lot more fun to hang out in your campsite when you have a nice outdoor living area set up. In this article, we are going to discuss the key components of an outdoor living space so you can make your campsite the most inviting one around.
Put Down a Rug
First, we highly recommend putting down an outdoor rug. This helps pull everything together, creating a sense of being in a personal bubble even when there are no walls around you. On top of that, the rug makes it comfortable to walk outside your door barefoot and even helps keep your RV floor clean by removing debris before you walk inside.
Create a Kitchen
Cooking inside the RV will make it hot in summer and cause issues with condensation during winter. Obviously, you won’t always be able to take the cooking outside, but when you can, it is an ideal solution to this problem. Of course, you’ll need an outdoor kitchen set up in order to do this and if your RV doesn’t have one built in, you will need to put it together yourself.
For this, we recommend:
- A grill and/or outdoor stove
- A portable sink or dish pan
- An ice chest or mini fridge that can be plugged in outdoors
- A tablecloth to put on the campsite picnic table, and/or a folding table of your own
Grab Some Chairs
Obviously, you will want to be comfortable in your outdoor living area. For this reason, comfortable camp chairs are must-have items. Luckily, there are tons of great options out there. We recommend the following:
Put Up Screens
Sometimes the awning isn’t enough to provide sun protection while hanging out in your campsite. For this, we recommend awning screens. There are both front screens and side screens available, and if you invest in both, you can create a whole screen room!
Shelter in a Clam Tent
Alternatively, you could simply grab a Clam Tent and pop that up in your campsite. We love that Clam Shelters are super easy to set up and take down, and that they are tall enough to stand in comfortably.
These tents come in a variety of sizes, so you can get one to fit all your family and friends. And, you can choose to pull the sides down for an enclosed space or open them up to allow the breeze to flow through the mesh, meaning you can use the shelter year-round.
Invest in Lights
Hanging out in a dark campsite is no fun, and the outdoor lights on some RVs simply won’t cut it. If your RV outside light is a bit lackluster, consider picking up some lighting for your outdoor living space.
We really love to line the outside of our campsite with solar lights, but you could also choose to put a rope of LED lights on your RV awning. If you have a permanent campsite and won’t have to move often, some cute string lights could also be a fun and festive touch.
Get a Fan
Last but not least, you will want to put a fan in your outdoor living space. This serves a couple of purposes that make it an indispensable item at any campsite:
- The fan gets the air moving, helping to keep you cool when the weather is hot.
- Because the fan moves the air, it helps keep bugs off your site and away from you.
There you have it, everything you need to make your outdoor living space irresistible. We’re willing to bet you spend a lot more time hanging out outdoors once you have these items set up in your outdoor living space!
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About the author: Chelsea Gonzales
Chelsea has the amazing opportunity to take part in full-time RV living and traveling with her tiny tribe. She homeschools her five-year-old son as they travel, and takes full advantage of their unique situation by using the entire world as her son’s classroom. A group of total Disney fanatics, Chelsea and her family often find themselves in the Orlando area in order to visit the Disney parks, but they have also visited over 25 of the 50 states with plans to see many more along the way. No matter where her travels take her, Chelsea enjoys riding bikes, gazing at beautiful sunsets, finding new coffee shops, Irish dancing, and sitting around a campfire with her family.
You can join her adventures through her blog, Wonder Wherever We Wander.
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