10 LOOSE CHANGE UPGRADES FOR YOUR RV

All these brilliant ideas range from $.50 to $50 and take no time at all to implement! 

$10 WASHING MACHINE
Cost: $10

Here’s a great example of a cheap and effective washing machine. Screw a funnel with holes in it to a broom handle, put your clothes and washing liquid into a bucket, and use the funnel as an agitator. Five minutes will have your clothes clean, all that’s left to do is wring them out and hang them up. Cheap, effective, and uses hardly any water – just what every camper wants!

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POOL NOODLES – AN RVER’S BEST FRIEND!
Cost: $5

Free campers are slowly cottoning on to the value of a pool noodle! It’ll stop you bumping your knee on stabiliser hooks, cover your guy rope pegs, bend one up in the corner of your gazebo to stop water pooling – there are a huge amount of uses for the cheap and readily available pool noodle.

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BARRY’S BRILLIANT DIY VICE SETUP
Cost: $50
We’ve run into Barry at four free camps across NSW now, and every time we do, he has another neat upgrade on his budget van to show us. The new addition? A rear bar-mounted vice. He reckons he uses it almost daily, tinkering with different bits of his setup. Sharpening axes and chainsaws, fixing broken van parts – so many uses for any free camper!

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LARRY’S MILLION DOLLAR VIEW 10-IN-1 WORKBENCH
Cost: $50
Fuel your passion for tinkering and modifying by taking your own work shop with you. Larry has attached some plyboard to a fold away ladder – there’s hanging spots for his saws, soldering iron, and other tools, there’s a vice at one end, and all his fish filleting gear at the other. It’s about a 10-in-1 system, that wouldn’t have cost more than $50 to put together. Best thing is it all packs down to nothing – this is perfect for long-term free campers.

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SIMPLE, SAFE DUST PROOFING
Cost: $10-$20
When you’re travelling a lot of dirt roads, you’ll find a decent amount of dust can find its way through the venting into your van. You’ve probably seen a lot of travellers tape their vents up, however vents are there for a reason (gas accessory compliancy), and we don’t recommend you tape them up completely. Instead, spend $20 on some polyester filtering. It’ll act like an air filter in your vehicle, letting air through the vent but not the dust.

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3 GUY ROPE TRICKS YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY BE USING

Cover your pegs
An ice cream container with a hole cut out works perfectly to cover your guy rope pegs. You might trip over them still, but at least you won’t bash your toe or cut your foot!

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Light them up
Here’s a new take on the old solar lights on each guy rope trick. A bit of garden hose holds them nice and neatly. Perfect for when you return in the dark from that happy hour that runs a few hours overtime!

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Pull them out
Stop struggling with your pegs – make yourself a cheap peg puller. It makes the unwanted task of packing up that little bit easier.

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NEVER LOSE A SPLIT PIN AGAIN
Cost: $1-$5

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best, and often the smallest items are the most important! Never lose a split pin again by attaching a colourful tag to it. Even a piece of bright string, or a bright zip tie will suffice.

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FAYE’S BINGO PEN LID TIE DOWN
Cost: $0.50
This is a brilliant case of Aussie ingenuity – a hole through a bingo pen lid, a loop of elastic cord and you’ve got yourself a perfect tie down point for your awning, or you can use it to hang things like lights, cooking utensils etc. from a range of different places on your caravan.

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REMEMBER: Weight is always an important factor. RVers should always keep their van weight in mind when adding modifications and head to their nearest weight station if they’re unsure of how much they have free.