Carliving.info (Thanks, just some guy!)

Carliving.info - which is also confusingly located at the url vandwellers.org - is a hideously formatted guide to the depressing world of living inside your car. As its introduction explains:

"The aim of this web site is to provide practical advice for people living in vehicles. Practical tips on how to manage living in your vehicle is what this site is about."

Two redundant websites, two redundant descriptions. How fitting!

The site is a labor of love for an Australian man named Romanadvouratrelundar (please, call him Romana!) who has dwelled in his fair share of vans. He's accrued enough know-how over the years to fill an ebook with handy tips like "put garbage bags on your windows." Here's a PDF that links to the password-protected actual PDF, a needlessly cumbersome measure to combat piracy of his free ebook, or something like that.

As Romana explains, there are two types of car-liver-inners: people who choose this lifestyle and those with no other option. Don't feel bad if you're part of the latter group, just keep this motivational maxim in mind: "Vandwelling is not homelessness, you have a home, it just happens to be on wheels." Which is just a step above "Hey, at least you're not dead!"

Should you find yourself living in a car, you'll want to read this primer, which highlights all the really important words in unreadable yellow. When it comes to going the toilet, ("This is something we all need to do. If you do it the wrong way, it will make your life a misery."), Romana recommends springing for a $100 portable toilet, but there are other options:

A basic bucket half filled with water and detergent will serve as a potti. It will smell though. A layer of oil on top of the water will help keep the smell down. But that can be messy. You can use a bucket filled with sand, but that gets smelly too. A bucket filled with kitty litter works pretty good. You can pee into bottles, Gatorade bottles do well.

As for food, here's how to cook beef cubes with your engine. Yum yum! "I can't see this as being a very economic way of cooking," he concludes.

So, with all the hassle and downsides involved, why in god's name would anyone want to do this by choice? As with all worthwhile human endeavors, to make other people jealous, as "Wendy the Wanderer" attests:

My relatives have always thought of me as a bit of an oddball, but brag about me anyways. Most have indicated they wish they could be like me on occasion. The longer I live, the more jealous they get ;-) At my 20th high school reunion I had just got back from a 15,000 mile trip across and all over the US. It almost made some of my classmates weep. They were stuck with high mortgages and car payments and conventional lives.

Oh, you have a nice house and family... that's cool. I shit in a bucket of cat litter. Jealous much?

– Adam "rubber cat" Jameson (@robbercat)