In this article I thought I would take you through how we set up the HC1, the original plan we had for storing things in the HCT and some ‘aha’ moments we have already had with our new Happier Camper.

How We Set Up The HC1

If you have a camper on order, you probably have been thinking about all the possible layout permutations and what stuff you want to store where. Below is the layout that we most often used for the HC1.

I found that having a map like this made it much easier to know what was where on any given trip. I don’t know if it’s obvious, but:

We had the food/sink set up together. When you opened the door, directly in front of you was the sink and to either side of that was a cube with dry goods and the cooler cube. I’ve noted ‘& plinth’ on the picture, by which I mean the countertop. I’ve no idea how I got the term plinth into my head but that’s what we called it! In the sink cube, we had the silverware in a bamboo box, a couple of knives, dish soap, sponges, etc. Below the sink is where we kept the cast iron & the enamelware in an open front cube. Having these together made it simpler to get everything together for meals.
Right inside the door, on the left is where we kept the things that we were going to use all the time and that I wanted to have close at hand - the butane stove, Mike’s tea kettle and my French press.
The three cubes at the back were easy to get to by opening the back hatch and held things that we would use on every trip and we wanted to be able to get to them easily. Firewood, dog leads, the hose and extension cord and our bedding were all in those back cubes.
There are two more cubes to account for in this picture - one is empty, which we had as a sort of ‘floater’ cube to store something for a particular trip that was unique and the other stored things that we were less likely to use on every trip - the Mr. Heater, fix a flat, the tools, extra fuses, etc.
For the upper storage we had one dedicated to cleaning supplies, paper towels, toilet paper and the other we used for our clothes or other bits and bobs.

At night, we would take the stacked cube in the lower left corner and put it where the table top was and move the plinth to rest between the dry goods cube and the cube to the left of the door and put a folding cushion on it. That gave us a queen size bed for the night!

The Plan for the HCT

With this in mind, I plotted out, based on what we were going to buy with the HCT, how I thought we might use the space. Here is what I had envisioned before we picked her up.

My idea was to put our personal things & items we didn’t need to use often on the left and the things we needed to get to all the time on the right. I think we will still do that but a couple of observations on the layout and storage:

If, on the left, we are going to keep the bed in place all the time then we really only want to store things there that we use very infrequently. I don’t know that we need that much storage for those kind of items tbh but we will see.
I bought one cube too many. Cube 5 on the above pic isn’t used in that spot because the camper package we bought includes 1 double and 2 single table tops - meaning that there are 4 floor spaces that do not need to have cubes on them. That’s ok though - with the HC1 we also had an extra cube that we kept in the back of the car to store things we were bringing along and we liked being able to pull it out to have outside the camper to sit on.
There is no storage in the kitchenette base. I thought there would be a small drawer and storage underneath, but no drawer and the base is where the battery and heater are. That’s sort of a big deal to my plan because it means we need to put cooking related items somewhere that is not immediately near the sink and stove. There is a small storage area above the sink/stove top but it isn’t big enough to hold the cast iron or even a plate. Mike has already thought of a great option to solve for this that I will cover in a future article.
I envisioned cube 6 as being for dry goods but we got the cube with the opening and I want to put shoes there to keep the camper clean. I will probably want to keep them in cube 7 and put the cleaning supplies on the left somewhere.

Things we are realizing…

Storage planning aside, we have already had a few ‘aha’ moments.

The bathroom is actually a bit bigger than I expected. It’s not huge by any stretch but somehow I thought it would be a little more cramped than it is. That’s a win!
The sleeping area on the left is probably best for one person. Two can definitely sleep there but we move around a lot in our sleep and at home we have a king-size bed. In the HC1, we slept with the cubes to make a queen. This is more like a full-size bed, which means that we will probably use both sides of the camper for sleeping. In the morning we will just move the bedding and pillows from the right over to the left and set up the tables.
The fridge is a bit awkward for the space. Hard to explain, and it fits just fine, but there is something about it that just doesn’t seem as purposeful from a design perspective. I think there are some other options we can consider but that’s going to take some experimentation and time.
I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with the shallow profile shelving around the top of the camper. There is lighting there, so I don’t think you want to have a lot resting on the lights and I think it will look cluttered if we do put things on the shelf, but it’s pretty prime real estate to leave unused. I’m going to have to spend some time looking at what we might leverage that space for in a way that doesn’t make it look messy.
We got a trailer dolly to help move the HCT and boy do I wish we had bought it a lot earlier! Our driveway is on a slight slope. Moving the HC1 around was a little laborious on our drive but very doable. We figured the extra weight of the HCT would probably make it challenging - and we would have been right. The trailer dolly was an excellent option that made it possible to move the HCT into place easily - I wish we had bought it a lot earlier! We got a very inexpensive one because we weren’t sure if it would be useful but now that we know it is, we will eventually upgrade to an electric model. We are both 53 and buying an electric will be cheaper than regrading the drive as we age :)

Have any questions about how we set up the HC1 and our plans for the HCT? Just leave a comment below and I will reply.