Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

I'm coming from tent camping and have held off on building the rear - interior cabinets since I'm not really sure I need them. I have a little space in the front for small items and a place for a water bottle and room to empty the junk in my pocket. I hate to clutter up the interior with knee-banging cabinets if I'm never going to use them. Have you found the need for more or less interior cabinet space?

Jim

Jim,

In my experience, unless you have a 30' travel trailer with cabinets built into every available space, having a few extra places to put things is not a bad idea.

In a tear, space is at a premium.
In a tent, you usually have a little extra floor space to put things, not so in a tear.
A place for clothes, a jacket, other little things is nice, as putting everything on the bed works, but moving all that stuff to the car each night to clear the spleeping space is a real pain...

I've never seen a tear with too much storage space.

Rob

48Rob wrote:I've never seen a tear with too much storage space.

I'll second that and follow it up with I've never seen a teardrop that didn't have every cabinet full of stuff. And that's one of the best parts about a teardrop; you don't have to unpack everything after a trip like you do when car camping.

Bruce

Love love love all my cabinets. What cabinets do for you beyond tent camping is you can keep all your toiletries there permanently, some clothes, first aide kit. Journal, towels, build scrapbook, flashlight, fuses, candlelight. When traveling, clothes, dedicated dirty clothes dropdowns and shoe place, small boxes for underwear. It just makes packing and unpacking so easy. We are unloaded and put away, except for washing clothes, in 30 minutes. That I LOVE. Our tear at 5 by 10 means no head, knee or otherwise bumping.
Front bulkhead



The bottom three are drop down for shoes and dirty clothes. There are bags inside attached to the door.

Inside front bulkhead. Plastic boxes are for toiletries and one for underwear.
. I keep microfiber super absorbent towels above too.

Rear bulkhead storage. I get one and randy gets one. Can hold a week of clothes.

Im a cabinet person. Other opinions will differ

I don't plan to have cabinets per se. I find it a PITA to shuffle things around in them to get to what you want and then pull whatever it is out of the cabinet as the door opening is typically smaller than the interior of the cabinet. I've used Rubbermaid containers placed on shelves versus cabinets and like em. They come in different sizes and you can make your shelves so that you use the space pretty efficiently. You can stuff a lot more into a container with sides, pull it out get to get at what you need w/o spilling the contents, and put it back on a shelf pretty easily. Also I find that things tend to get pushed to the back of cabinets and forgotten. I don't seem to have that problem with the Rubbermaid containers. Also if you want the whole kit and kaboodle out of the trailer it only takes a minute or two to get everything out.

I have the galley stuff in em also. If you leave the lids off they're almost like drawers and if you put the lid on em you can leave em out in the weather, and even if it rains, all of the contents will remain protected from the weather. They stack well, are easily washed, and nearly indestructible.

Yup one doesn't get to build a bunch of nice cabinets and nice doors but everything in life is a compromise. It just works for me.

http://www.rubbermaid.com/Category/Page ... D=RP091418

Cheers,

Gus

I don't think we have ever seen a tear with more cabinet space than ours!

The lower area (headboard) in the rear which holds the pump and water tank has room where the dirty clothes go. Small baskets hold clothing etc. and the blind areas behind center of the cabinets have baskets with less often used things the Maha Battery charger VOM electrical.
At Tearjerker gatherings the big entertainment is to see what others have done with their trailers and very often you see the 'bins on the bed'. Nancy tends to be a very organized person and hates "clutter" and what is in the cabinets is organized and easy to get to. Nancy loves the look of the CampInn but has repeatedly said she would not be willing to trade the space and storage we have to get one.

To answer SC the only things in our TV are the Waeco refrigerator and when wanted the AC. CR has all its own cooking utensils, pots pans, tools, some staple foods. The refrigerator gets plugged in and loaded in the house so essentially the only thing that needs to be packed is clothing and food.

Shadow Catcher wrote:To answer SC the only things in our TV are the Waeco refrigerator and when wanted the AC. CR has all its own cooking utensils, pots pans, tools, some staple foods. The refrigerator gets plugged in and loaded in the house so essentially the only thing that needs to be packed is clothing and food.

That was a big goal for the Boxcar build; I wanted everything to ride in the trailer. We load a Waeco fridge in the truck and sometimes an EZ-up but that's it. I even keep clothes in the trailer, I wash them when we get back and then throw them back in.

Well, sometimes we throw an extra thing or two in the truck:




Bruce

pohukai wrote:I'm coming from tent camping and have held off on building the rear - interior cabinets since I'm not really sure I need them. I have a little space in the front for small items and a place for a water bottle and room to empty the junk in my pocket. I hate to clutter up the interior with knee-banging cabinets if I'm never going to use them. Have you found the need for more or less interior cabinet space?

Jim

Hi Jim, My wife and I came from tent camping too. When we were in the design stage I measured the total space for all our duffel bags and added 1/3rd more. That was the amount of space created for the cabinets against the aft bulkhead. I was also sure we would be finding the lower edge with our knees or other parts at some point, so we rounded the lower drawers. To make it easy to take things out of the cabinets we made them inlay instead of overly without face frames.


There's plenty of room under the aft cabinet.


There's enough space inside for us to turn around and play cards etc too.

I would highly recommend that you visit other builds and climb inside them. Once we climbed aboard Randy and Debbie's Monstro, we saw not only how much use the cabinetry would be but that it wouldn't take up a huge amount of space. It also sealed our plans to build a 4.5' x 10' trailer. that extra room keeps the whole thing from being cramped at all.

All the Best,

Dave

I chose not to have a traditional galley in my build instead opting for a slide out cooking cabinet.

With this option it allowed me to have a more open space with more foot room.

I also have a small cabinet in the front of my build for a few smaller items.


In the end it will depend on how you intend to use your tear and the level of comfort you desire. I installed a solar system, built in heat and air, hdtv, a decent stereo system, and extra lighting with dimmers and on a recent cross country trip I believe they all added to my enjoyment of my trip. The more open cabin is much appreciated on a day when you have to spend extra time inside your tear. I built my variable speed fan system with computer fans so that I could run one at a time or all 8 at any speed. All the extras require more money and some time to complete but they allowed me to have a tear that is very comfortable for me to use.

Side tent, canopy, and folding table stay on the mattress until arriving at campsite. Shoes are kept outside in the attached side tent. HVAC system is permanently mounted in tongue box which also holds a small collection of tools.



Towels, toiletries, and clothing are kept in the two outer cabinets. The middle cabinet contains the car radio/CD player, and the DVD player. The 19" LCD TV is in the drawer below the middle cabinet and "pops" up when needed.



The angled from cabinets provide a nice backrest when sitting up in the teardrop as well as a place to store clothing and miscellaneous stuff. (My HVAC supply air ducts are also run through this cabinet.)



The upper left galley cabinet contains my converter and the upper right galley cabinet contains spices and canned goods with a microwave oven in between.



I wish I had a better picture of the lower galley cabinets, but here is one "in progress" of construction.



The large drawer on the right houses our camp stove. The smaller drawer to the left of in stores cooking and eating utensils. The area below the large drawer houses cleaning supplies, paper towels, foil, kitchen wrap. (We use three plastic bins to keep things organized. There is an extra bin nested in one of the bins that we use as our sink.) The area below the smaller drawer houses pots and pans, cutting board, etc. The cabinet at the far left houses the battery and more electrics.

The only things we keep in the truck are our food cooler and box of dry goods (food). Porta-potty rides in the bed of the truck and then is placed in the side tent.

One of the things that I've noticed in a number of tear builds is people getting kinda carried away with a lot of drawers and cabinets. But that is just my opinion. Rather than several drawers, maybe 1 door with a couple of shelves or sliders. Lots of individual doors and drawers take up a lot of space, time and effort. It can also make a space or interior look a bit busy. Just my opinion. Doug

On TPCE I purposely have planned to leave out the cabinet doors until I am sure I need them. Maybe use plastic totes or cargo nets as needed before deciding to spend the money and effort on cabinet doors and hardware.