The RV Gear We'd Buy Again, and the Stuff We'd Never Waste Money On Again

Show Notes for Episode #632  of The RV Podcast: The RV Gear We'd Buy Again, and the Stuff We'd Never Waste Money On Again

This is  Episode #632 of the RV Podcast.

And this week on the podcast:

MIKE: Coming up, the RV gear we'd buy again in a heartbeat, the stuff we'd never spend another nickel on, and the appliance I bought last year that we have used exactly once.

JENNIFER: It's in the barn now.

MIKE: Hello everybody and Welcome to the RV Podcast, stories from the Road Edision, released Aug. 5, 2026. I'm Mike Wendland, and this is my co-host, my lifelong traveling companion and my bride - Jennifer. Hello, My Dear.

JENNIFER: Hello, My Michael. We should remind everyone that they can find complete show notes including links to all the resources we share for this episode at RVPodcast.com.

And remember, we release two episodes every week. This edition, Stories from the Road, focuses on the RV lifestyle, the people, places, and experiences that make life on wheels so special. Then every Monday, we bring you our RV News edition, covering the biggest stories of the week that impact your travels.

chit chat - what we’re up to

Recovery… light at the end of the tunnel… a little cabin fever..

Travel…

Busy fall…

RV CONVERSATION OF THE WEEK

   MIKE: Well Jennifer, since we've been home for a few weeks, we've had something we almost never have. Time.

Time to actually go through the RV instead of just living in it.

We've emptied cabinets, cleaned out storage compartments, and found things we forgot we owned. And it got us talking about a question I think every RVer asks eventually.

If we started all over tomorrow with a brand new rig, what would we buy again in a heartbeat, and what wouldn't we spend a nickel on?

JENNIFER: When you first start RVing, you think you need everything. Every camping store, every RV show, every YouTube video has one more gadget that promises to make your life easier.

Then a few years go by and you realize half of it takes up space you don't have.

   MIKE: Or it winds up in somebody else's garage sale.

So let's start with the good stuff. What's the one thing you absolutely would not give up?

JENNIFER: That's easy. Our washer and dryer.

And I know people are already shaking their heads.

"They're too small."

"They take forever."

"They eat up a whole closet."

All true, and you pretty much need a bigger rig to fit one.

But I love ours. I don't spend half a travel day feeding quarters into a campground machine, and I'm not hauling baskets across a wet campground at nine at night hoping nobody took the only working dryer.

If we spill something, it goes in. If we get caught in the rain hiking, those clothes get washed that night.

   MIKE: I'll admit I wasn't sold at first.

We'd done campground laundry for years, and I figured, what's the big deal?

Now I get it. It quietly makes RV life better every day instead of once in a while, and I'd trade the storage space for it without thinking about it.

JENNIFER: If we buy another RV, it will have a washer and dryer. No question.

   MIKE: Mine is different. Mine is the electrical system.

Two 270 amp-hour lithium batteries, so 540 amp-hours of capacity. 740 watts of solar on the roof from two 370-watt panels. A 3,000-watt inverter.

That sounds like I'm reading a spec sheet, so let me tell you what it actually means.

We don't think about electricity anymore.

We make coffee. We run the microwave. We charge laptops and camera batteries. We edit video and record podcasts from the dinette, and Jennifer uses her hair dryer.

The sun handles the rest.

JENNIFER: That is exactly it.

I don't know what an amp-hour is and I don't want to.

I just know that things work, and I never have to ask, "Am I allowed to plug this in right now?"

   MIKE: Before everybody runs out and buys lithium, be honest about how you camp.

If you're always in full hookup parks, you may never need any of it. But if you like state parks, Corps of Engineers campgrounds, Harvest Hosts, or any boondocking at all, it's the best money we've ever put into an RV.

JENNIFER: Can I add one more to the buy it again list?

Our mattress.

   MIKE: I was hoping you'd bring that up, because it's the most overlooked upgrade in the RV world.

Manufacturers have to hit a price point, and the mattress is one of the easiest places to save money. Almost every rig we've owned came with something that felt like a folded up gym mat.

JENNIFER: It looks fine in the showroom. You sit on the edge of it and think, that's not bad.

Then you sleep on it for four nights in a row and your back tells you the truth.

   MIKE: We finally replaced ours this summer with an RV size mattress made for RV beds, which matters, because RV mattresses are not the same dimensions as residential ones.

Ours is a queen from Brooklyn Bedding, their Aero Deluxe RV mattress.

And the difference is not subtle.

JENNIFER: You spend a third of your life in that bed. You can talk all you want about solar panels, but if you sleep badly you don't enjoy the trip, and that's the whole point of going.

   MIKE: So here's my rule now. If you buy a new RV, budget for the mattress the same week you budget for anything else. Don't wait two years and a sore back like we did.

JENNIFER: Not everything on our list is a big ticket item, though. Some of the best things we've bought are small.

   MIKE: Three of them, and none of them cost much.

The first is a dash cam. We run a Viofo, and mine is an older model I've had for about five years now.

JENNIFER: Why does that matter so much to you?

   MIKE: Because we're pulling a fifth wheel through traffic all day.

If somebody cuts across your nose and there's contact, it's your word against theirs, and the guy hauling the big rig is not usually the one people believe. A dash cam settles it in about thirty seconds.

In five years I've never once needed the footage for a claim. That's the point. It's cheap insurance you hope stays boring.

JENNIFER: It's also caught some wonderful stuff. Elk crossing in front of us, storms rolling in, roads out west we'd never be able to describe.

   MIKE: We've pulled clips off it for videos more than once.

Number two is a small cordless air inflator. Mine's a Milwaukee M18, and it runs off the same batteries as my other tools.

JENNIFER: Explain why that one made the list, because it sounds like the least exciting thing we've talked about.

   MIKE: Because tires are the number one thing that ruins an RV trip.

Fifth wheel and truck tires run at high pressure, and they need to be checked cold, before you roll, every travel day.

For years that meant driving to a gas station and feeding quarters into a machine that never worked right.

Now I set the pressure I want, hook it on the valve stem, and it shuts itself off. I do all six tires standing in the campsite with my coffee.

JENNIFER: And the third one is mine. The air fryer.

We use a Tastee. It's the smart one with the temperature probe and the window on the front.

   MIKE: I resisted that thing. We already had a convection microwave and a propane oven, and I didn't want one more appliance riding around in a cabinet.

JENNIFER: And now who uses it every day?

   MIKE: I do. The RV oven is unreliable and it turns the whole rig into a sauna in July.

The air fryer cooks fast, it doesn't heat up the RV, and the food comes out better.

One honest caution. An air fryer pulls real power.

If you're on 30 amp, watch what else is running, and if you want to use it off the batteries you need a serious inverter.

JENNIFER: All right. Now the fun part. What would we skip?

   MIKE: I'll start with camping chairs.

We have been hunting for the perfect chair for years, and everybody tells us the same thing. Buy gravity chairs.

We've owned them. We don't like them.

JENNIFER: They sit too low, they're lumpy, and if they get rained on they never really dry.

You fold one up a week later and rusty brown water runs out all over your hands. Always a treat.

   MIKE: We found our favorite chairs completely by accident, years ago, at a little Lewis and Clark store next to an Ace Hardware in Missouri.

They weren't fancy and they weren't expensive. They were just comfortable.

We used them until we wore them out, and we've never found anything as good since.

So if anybody listening has found the world's perfect camping chair, tell us. We're still looking.

JENNIFER: Now tell them about the ice maker.

   MIKE: I was hoping you'd forgotten about the ice maker.

JENNIFER: I have not forgotten about the ice maker.

   MIKE: Last year we were camping with friends who had a countertop ice maker. Beautiful little cubes. Clear. Perfect.

And they told me,   Mike, once you have one of these you'll never go back.

So I bought one.

JENNIFER: How many times have we used it?

   MIKE: Once.

JENNIFER: Once.

   MIKE: Exactly once.

And I've thought about why, and I finally figured it out.

Those friends drink bourbon. For them that machine was a load bearing appliance.

JENNIFER: And we don't drink bourbon.

   MIKE: We do not drink bourbon.

So we bought a machine that makes something we already had, in a shape we didn't need. It takes up counter space, it's noisy, and it sits there judging me.

JENNIFER: It's in the barn now.

   MIKE: It's in the barn now.

So here's the real lesson, and it isn't about ice makers.

Be careful buying gear because somebody you like loves theirs. They're not wrong. It's great for the way they camp.

Ask whether it's great for the way you camp.

JENNIFER: Here's one that surprises people. RV toilet paper.

   MIKE: This one I feel strongly about, because new RVers get scared into it.

You walk into the camping store, you see the RV toilet paper, and you think, I'd better buy that or I'll ruin something.

You're paying a premium for a smaller roll with a picture of a camper on the package.

JENNIFER: And it's thin. Really thin.

   MIKE: Regular septic safe household toilet paper breaks down just fine.

We've used it for years, in every rig we've owned, and we have never had a clog caused by toilet paper.

JENNIFER: If you don't believe us, test it yourself. It takes two minutes.

Put a few squares in a jar of water, put the lid on, and shake it. If it comes apart, it's fine for your tank.

   MIKE: Try it with whatever you have at home before you buy a case of the RV stuff. Most septic safe paper passes.

And that brings us to the one I really wanted to talk about today.

The chemicals.

JENNIFER: The potions.

   MIKE: The potions. The drop-ins, the packets, the enzymes, the deodorizers in the fancy bottles.

There's a whole aisle of them, and RVers spend a fortune every year because they're afraid of their black tank.

Here's what we've learned after a lot of years and a lot of dumping. Water does most of the work.

JENNIFER: Say more about that, because I think people hear that and don't believe it.

   MIKE: Almost every black tank problem comes down to not enough water.

The odor, the pyramid of solids under the toilet, the sensors that read two thirds full no matter what you do. That is not a chemistry problem. It's a water problem.

Solids have to float to flow out when you pull the valve. Without enough liquid they sit, dry out, and cake onto the walls and the sensors.

JENNIFER: So what do we actually do?

   MIKE: Three things, and none of them cost anything.

After every dump, we put a couple of gallons of water back in the tank before we start using it again, so nothing lands on a dry bottom.

We use plenty of water every single flush. More than feels necessary.

And we don't dump the black tank until it's at least two thirds full, so there's enough volume to carry everything out with force.

JENNIFER: And when we're hooked up, we're dumping every few days anyway.

   MIKE: Right. And that's the honest version of this.

If you're on full hookups and you're dumping every few days and using plenty of water, water really does as well as anything you can buy.

We've gone entire trips without putting a single chemical in the tank and never had an odor.

JENNIFER: Now be fair, because it isn't always like that.

   MIKE: It isn't, and nobody should hear this and think treatments are a scam.

If you're parked in one spot for a week or two, boondocking, conserving every drop of water, that tank is sitting in the heat not going anywhere.

That's waste sitting in a low water tank for days, and that is when a good treatment earns its money.

JENNIFER: And we do carry one.

   MIKE: We do. We use Liquified, the tank treatment from Matt's RV Reviews. It's enzyme based, it breaks waste down well, and it handles odor.

But I want to be straight about when you need it.

If you're hooked up to water, dumping regularly, and generous with the flush, you won't notice much difference. Save it for the times you're stationary, dry camping, or stretching your water.

JENNIFER: That's the difference between selling somebody something and telling them the truth.

   MIKE: That's the whole show.

One more thing that just got retired by technology. Cell boosters and dedicated cellular routers. We owned all of it, and Starlink replaced both for us.

JENNIFER: Here's what it all adds up to for me.

The expensive gadgets are almost never what makes RV life good. It's a bed you sleep well in, a chair you can sit in all evening, clean clothes without losing a day to a laundromat.

Sometimes it's just buying something well made once instead of the cheap one twice.

   MIKE: And don't buy it because everybody says you need it. Buy for the way you actually travel, not the way somebody on the internet travels.

So tell us. What's the RV purchase that turned out to be worth every penny, and what's the one you wish you'd never spent a dime on?

JENNIFER: Email us, tell us in the comments, or bring it to everybody over at RVCommunity.com.

I think we'll all get some good ideas out of this.

   MIKE: And maybe, just maybe, somebody out there knows where we can find those chairs we bought in Missouri.

BREAK ! - RV Overnights

Hey, if you are like us, you’re getting a little worn out paying top dollar for crowded RV parks

We've talked about this one before, and Jennifer and I keep coming back to it because it just works. And last year we came across something that honestly changed the way we travel. RVOvernights.com.

One of our favorite stays was at a bison ranch in Indiana. Real bison, right outside the RV window. Huge animals. Absolutely incredible. And that's just one example. They've got wineries, farms, museums, even a lavender field. All over the country. Canada, too. Places you'd never find in any campground directory.

And it's really easy to use. Pull up the interactive map, see what's available along your route, book your overnight. Done. No digging around, no guessing.

These aren't random parking lots, either. These are unique, memorable stays hosted by real people all across the US and Canada. And the whole thing is just $49 for an entire year.

Right now they're offering our listeners 40% off with promo code RVLDEAL.

After more than 15 years on the road, we don't recommend something unless we actually use it ourselves. This one we keep coming back to.

Head to RVLifestyle.com/rvovernights and use promo code RVLDEAL to save 40%.

RV QUESTIONS OF THE WEEK

We get lots of email, some to both, some to me (   MIKE) and some to Jen. We like to always start wirth someone seeking Jennifer’s Know-How and that leads us to this week’s first question. This comes up more than almost anything else we get asked, and it's always a woman asking it.

The question is this. And the woman who asked us requested that we not share her name.

QUESTION: “I would love to RV, but I'm afraid of driving something as big as our toy hauler. And I'm honestly more afraid of what happens if my husband gets hurt or gets sick out on the road and I'm the one who has to deal with it. How do I get past that?”

ANSWER: First, that's not a silly fear. A toy hauler is about as big an RV as there is, especially if you are also towing a car behind it. That's a smart question, and I wish more people asked it out loud instead of just quietly worrying about it.

Here's what I've learned. The fear isn't really about size. It's about not knowing what you'd do.

So stop treating it as a feelings problem and treat it as a list.

Sit down together and write out the things that have to happen for this rig to move and to be safe. Hooking up and unhooking. How to level it. Who to call for roadside service and what the policy number is. How to get it off the road and parked if you have to. 

Shameless plug here: That’s why we created our RV Trip Dashboard. It’s a webbased app and it has a spot for all that information, checklists, mapping. Works on all devices, your cellphone, tablet or laptop. You can check it out yourself at rvlifestyle.com/tripdashboard. We’ll put the link in the description below.

But, the key to our email writer’s dilemma is knowledge. Understand what’s involved. And then practice.  Make sure both of you can do every single thing on that list, at least once, on a good day when nobody is panicking. Practice driving in a big parking lot at a shopping center after hours. Back uo a few times. Then drive it on an interstate. Take over at a rest stop and drive to the next one. Pretty muvh a straight line. T will give you confience. Learn hw to trn… make wide turns. 

You dont have to do it all at once. And look into joining the Family RV Association at frva.com. Their Medical & Travel Assist benefit comes free with memebership and wil get your RV, your towed vehicle, towing vehicle, or car, family members, and your cats or dogs home safely if you suffer an unexpected medical emergency while traveling anywhere in North America over 75 miles from your home.

That’s the best benefit any RVer could have, so even if pulling that you hauler is too much for you, you can halve peace of mind. But learn as much as you can. Really… you can do this.

Now here’s a question for you, Mike.

QUESTION: We’ve been RVing for almost 25 years and we love our 2019 Fleetwood Pace-Arrow. But we are now in our early 70’s and while we want to continue traveing, we are wondering if it’s time to downsize. Any advice?  Greg and Sandy

ANSWER: First, let me say that assuming you are in relatively good health, you have many years of quality RVing ahead of you. Secondly, we have to say, that after all the years you have had with all that room in your Class A motorhome, downsizing will be a lot harder than the general concept sounds.

I think you should probably visit a couple of RV dealerships or an RV show when they resume this fall and look at as many Cass Cs as you can go into. Try them on for size. See if you could get used to less space. And if you’re unsure, use RVShare or Outdoorsy and find a comparable model to rent for a weekend. Spend a night or two in it. That will give you a clear picture. 

Also, we have something that may help. It’s free. It’s a free chapter from our new Complete Guide to RVing in Retirement ebook. The chapter is about Choosing the Right Sized RVs for Aging Travelers. It's free. It’s a quick and instat download. Our gift to you. Just go to rvlifestyle.com/freechapter

It’s lifted from a very detailed book we just released on how to get the most our of Rving in retirement. And a big part of that is getting the right rv for your current situation. Again, it’s at rvlifestyle.com/freechapter

Send questions by the CONTACT link at RVPodcast.com.

JENNIFER
Thanks so much for listening! If you enjoyed today’s episode, we’d love it if you could take a moment to leave us a kind review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you’re tuning in. Your feedback helps us grow and reach more listeners just like you.

HAPPY TRAILS!

ROLL CREDITS

Show notes links

• Viofo dash cam: https://amzn.to/4fWoxlM

• Milwaukee cordless inflator: https://amzn.to/4fMqnpb

• Tastee air fryer: https://amzn.to/4g9zHEQ

• Liquified RV Tank Treatment (Matt's RV Reviews): https://liquifiedrv.com

• Brooklyn Bedding Aero Deluxe RV mattress - https://rvmattress.com/rvlifestyle