The older I get, the less time I spent packing for trips. When I was a younger man I would spend an hour alone going through my CD collection and picking “the best of the best” albums for a road trip. These days, most of what I need in regards to electronics stays in my laptop bag. I’ve got an Android table for reading books, my laptop for when I reach my destination, and my iPhone for everything in between. All three of those devices can be charged via a standard USB-C cable, and I always have a battery pack (or two) in my bag, too. I’ve been on enough trips to know what’s critical to have in my laptop bag (like earbuds) and what I can live without.

The same cannot be said for the van. I don’t have a good feel for what I need in my van, what I might need, and what I can live without. That became painfully evident on my last trip when my wife and I drove 2,000 miles roundtrip. As the saying goes, “we packed for bear.” For example, I knew we were going to be gone for six days and so I packed six days worth of water in the van… despite the fact that I ended up parking within walking distance of a convenient store.

I love, love, love those little plastic “shoebox” containers. Several years ago I bought a dozen of them, labeled the ends, and sorted all my spare computer parts into tubs. I’ve got one for HDMI cables, one for RCA cables, and one for USB cables. It makes things so much easier to find! I decided to use a slightly larger tub from Dollar Tree in my van for what I call my van essentials — remotes, chargers, adapters, etc. To be honest, I hadn’t been on a trip long enough to need “personal hygiene” items before, so on this last trip I packed a second tub with deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste, Dude Wipes, and other goodies. And because we were driving cross-country in a largely untested build, I packed a third tub with tools. I brought screwdrivers, and spare screws; pliers, scissors, Velcro, duct tape, and a bunch of other things.

By the time my wife had tossed her tent, two camping chairs, fold-up camping table, and everything else in the back of van, there literally was nowhere to move. We had the front seats and could reach back into the fridge, and what was about it until we unpacked. It worked, but it wasn’t how I had envisioned things.

On my first night in the van with my new bed, I realized I had made a silly error when building it. The side of the bed that runs along the van’s wall was not high enough to clear the wheel well, which made one side 1 1/2″ taller than the other. I spent a miserable night constantly rolling over, trying desperately to grab on to anything to keep me from sliding out of the bed onto the floor all night long. This was not a problem that could wait to be fixed until i returned home. I had to modify the bed while 500 miles away from home… and all my tools.

I suppose that’s one of the differences between living in one’s van and being a part timer, like me. I have a homebase and a workshop full of tools and spare bits of wood. When I encounter a problem I back the van up to the workshop and get crackin’. I quickly realized this was not possible when I was three states away from my house. Had I been at home I would have pulled the bed out, notched the wood using my jigsaw, and tolled everything back into the van.

That begs the question, should I have brought a saw and a drill with me? I’m learning real quick that vans have a finite amount of space. Everything you pack needs a purpose, and there’s a difference between needing an item and potentially needing an item.

Once I decided that this was a problem I needed to solve while on the road, I weighted my options. The simplest solution I decided was to buy a cheap jigsaw from Home Depot, pull the bed out in their parking lot and notch the wood. In theory I could have even returned the jigsaw there or back home, ethics be damned. It was my wife who came up with a simpler plan — by adding a flat 2×4 under each of the bed’s two legs, it would raise the entire bed 1 1/2″… just enough to clear the wheel well. Sure, it would temporarily put my head 1 1/2″ closer to the ceiling, but the logistics of carrying out this plan were much simpler. And also, cheaper.

At the Home Depot in Lexington, Kentucky, we purchased a single 2×4 and had someone there cut it into two 30″ pieces, leaving the remainder behind. Back in the van we lifted up the bed and slid the 2x4s underneath the legs. It wasn’t a perfect solution as the bed slid around on top of the new 2x4s a bit and had to be fixed a few times, but it did lift the bed up high enough to make it flat.

I’m kind of proud of this little repair we pulled off while on the road, not because it was ingenious or anything, but because we were able to use the resources available to us at the time and come up with a solution. Most of the tools and things I brought never got touched or looked at. I’m not saying it’s not a good idea to keep a screwdriver and a pair of pliers stowed away in your van — it definitely is — but there’s something to be said about bringing less and making do with what you’ve got.

Once we were back home I was able to finally fix the bed the right way. After removing it from the van I used my jigsaw to notch out part of the supporting 2×4 so that it now clears the wheel well. There’s a 2×4 on top of this one so I didn’t affect the integrity or strength of the bed, and it’s underneath the part that holds the back rest so it’s not a part I put a lot of weight on anyway.