Friends often comment that they’re not sure they could pair down their wardrobe for full time RV living. I’ll admit that if you can’t live without your shoe collection or your purse collection paring down will be more challenging for you, but here are some things to consider:
- You probably won’t RV forever, so if you can’t bring yourself to donate clothes, shoes or bags, there’s always storage or friends who will keep a tote or two to await your return.
- If you’re living and working remotely, you won’t need as many dress clothes or shoes or (as we’ve all discovered while working from home during the Covid era) so it should be easy to ditch some of those items.
- Most RVs do not perform well in freezing temperatures (and besides that you’re mobile so you’re able to avoid long periods of cold weather). This means your year round RV wardrobe wont’ require as many boots, wool sweaters, etc as you think. Use the idea of multiple layers to your advantage.
- Most importantly, the loss you feel for some material possessions will be offset by awesome travel experiences!
Most backpackers and RV blogs will tell you that a capsule wardrobe is the way to go…and it is.
The internet has a ton of information on what a capsule wardrobe is, why you need one, and how to create one. What I offer below is a Cliff Notes version with links to other sites if you want or need more details plus some RV specific tips and pictures of exactly what I chose for my year round RV capsule wardrobe.
WHAT IS A CAPSULE WARDROBE?
Remember Garanimals – all elephant tagged shirts go with all elephant tagged pants? A capsule wardrobe is kinda like that. It’s essentially a mix and match wardrobe. The premise is to create a curated wardrobe of essentials that fit your body and your lifestyle right now, remix the items to form multiple outfits, and then shop intentionally (only to fill in gaps or replace worn items). It’s safe to say you start with classically basic tops (tees and blouses) and bottoms (jeans, pants or skirts) in few base colors (such as navy, black, grey, and/or white) and then add in accent colors assuring that your tops match with multiple bottoms.
WHY DO YOU NEED ONE?
It will save you money, save you time, helps the environment (more in this article), and can reduce anxiety about what to wear. If you’ve ever worked in an office or gone on vacation, you probably already have a mix and match wardrobe for that purpose (e.g. work skirt, slacks, blouses and a blazer). This allows you to simply grab a top and a bottom and walk out the door for work (saving time) or pack what you need for a business trip and still have multiple outfits (saving anxiety). You also understand that a single good quality pair of black slacks with multiple tops will create a large number of work outfits so in purchasing them, you’ve saved the environment and saved money.
In an RV, the other very real reason for a capsule wardrobe is that you are so limited on space that you need to be able to put one top with multiple bottoms as well as dress it up or down with scarves, jewelry, or different shoes. A small number of clothing items needs to take you from a hike to dinner at a restaurant or a museum to a zoom call.
HOW DO YOU CREATE A CAPSULE WARDROBE?
There plenty of blogs that give you formulas for creating a capsule wardrobe and tell you what you must have – like a black and white Brenton shirt (which I don’t have), or a certain number of items. Realistically you probably aren’t going to buy a whole new wardrobe to make this happen. Instead, I suggest you understand the concept and start with what’s already in your closet.
- Pick base items (e.g. pants and tees) in base colors. You probably are drawn already to colors that look good on you – I have a lot of solid dark blue and solid grey items so these made sense as base colors along with black, jeans and white.
- Pick accent colored tops and layers. There are a LOT of colors that match base colors like grey, black and white so this in addition to the style of clothing you pick will make your capsule unique to you.
TIP #1: Complete your own color analysis and choose colors from that palette.
If you were starting from scratch on picking colors, I’d begin by picking those that look best on you. My mother-in-law, Doris, once gave me a great book along with color swatches to determine the colors that are best given my complexion, eye color and hair color. There are now a lot of on-line resources for this (click here for this quiz by Laurie Loo to find your color season). I’m a “winter” (not a summer, spring or fall) so the colors I tend to purchase (both for base colors and accent colors) are those in this “winter” palette.
TIP#2: Narrow your color palette further for the capsule wardrobe.
Most people advise that when creating a capsule wardrobe you should only select a few accent colors along with your base colors. This means you’ll want to narrow your winter, summer, spring or fall type color palette further to create a capsule wardrobe palette. Creating this specific clothing palette will guide your selections/ shopping choices to assure you get the most utility out of your capsule wardrobe.
When I looked at other tops and layering pieces that would be good for hiking, biking, travelling, etc that were in my closet, I had solid tops in light blue, pink, and dark raspberry but I also had light grey and minty teal. From the graphic below you can see that I had clothing in essentially two different but somewhat complementary color palettes. Ideally I would have picked one palette and then purchased new items to fit into that scheme, but rather than throw out slate grey hiking pants and that cute minty teal shirt, I ditched the strict rules and used both palettes. What a rebel!
TIP 3: Pinterest; this website (click here) called the Vivienne Files that uses art, a scarf or nature for her capsule wardrobe color palettes; or this blog from Paper Heart Design (click here) are good places to start in creating a capsule wardrobe color guide.
Essentially, I try to stick to these colors in my RV capsule wardrobe as it ensures mix and match combos. As a rule of thumb, I also want every top to match a minimum of 3 bottoms, which are all in base colors.
- Add in a few items with patterns, texture or on-trend items. While solid color tops and bottoms provide lots of mix and match options, to prevent boredom, find a few items to add interest like this plaid shirt in white, grey, aqua and dark raspberry.
- Fill in what’s missing. If the sweatshirt you own is dark brown and doesn’t match anything else you’ve cultivated, you may need to buy one in your color palette. When you shop, you’ll be shopping with intention for the few pieces you might need in the palette (or in my case palettes) you’ve chosen to create a highly flexible wardrobe.
- Add Shoes and Accessories to Dress up Outfits. Scarves, hats, and jewelry are lightweight, small and can fit almost anywhere in an RV. Throwing on some jewelry or a scarf with a pair of heels can make a pair of jeans and a tee acceptable for dinner in most restaurants. Still too casual? Throw on a skirt or add a great blazer with earrings and kick it up another notch.
Here are some links to other bloggers who talk about different ways to create a capsule wardrobe:
- Unfancy
- Project 333
- LiveLoveSara
- The Vivienne Files 4 x4 Capsule
OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER FOR AN RV CAPSULE WARDROBE.
I had few evening gowns in the color scheme above but they didn’t make the RV cut. I created a few more specific rules to downsize my old wardrobe for RV living because, as noted above, this wardrobe needs to fit the RV lifestyle:
- 90% of my wardrobe must be useable for year-round (50F to 90F) outdoor activities (hiking, biking, paddling, etc) because my hope is that I can do something active most days.
- 95% must be washable at a laundromat since this is what I have access to. A single special blazer, leather jacket, or dress is the exception, not the rule. Dry cleaning is not easy to do while travelling in an RV.
- I aimed for 2 weeks’ worth of outdoor outfits that would fit in the allotted RV closet space. This meant I’d only need to find a laundromat every two weeks.
CREATING MY WARDROBE
Using the information above and my palette of colors, I chose my bottoms first – hiking pants, leggings, jeans and at least one bottom for going out (could have been a skirt, dress or dress pants and I would have preferred a skirt but I only had ponte dress pants) all in my base colors.
Then I chose long and short sleeve tees and tanks in my base colors and the accent colors in my color scheme to assure they’d match at least 3 bottoms.
I added some layers for interest and warmth (a jean jacket, flannel shirts, cardigans, sweatshirts, and a blazer) in base or accent colors.
Next was outer wear (rain jacket, puffer jacket, and winter shell) in base colors or accent colors.
Lastly, I picked a few dressier patterned tops and a moto jacket – all still in base colors or accent colors – to assure I could attend almost any event.
Shoes are in base colors or neutrals and included one pair each of hiking boots, trail-running shoes, casual tennis shoes, casual flip flops, dressier flip flops (in lieu of sandals), ballet flats, neutral booties, dressier heels, and a pair of boots.
Pajamas, slippers, undergarments, socks, bathing suit, cover up, hats, gloves, scarves, and jewelry rounded everything out. I included a daypack for hiking. The purse I chose has both an adjustable long strap for shoulder or cross body use and a small wrist strap for an evening out.
HOW IT’S ALL STORED IN OUR RV
Most of my clothes are wrinkle free since they’re machine washable and athletic in nature so many (leggings, hiking pants, jeans, tank tops, pajamas, all under garments, socks, bathing suits, biking shorts) are folded, Marie Kondo style (link to video examples here), in a closed cabinet above my bed.
Athletic tees, cotton tees, shirts, blouses and any skirts or dresses (not currently in my mix) are hung in the closet and the layering items (cardigans, flannel) are hung in the closet over the top of some of the shirts to save space.
All sweatshirts, outerwear, jackets, gloves and my blazer are either folded in a bin in the closet or added to hooks near the RV door for quick use.
All shoes are either in a bin in the closet or in the cubby storage space our RV has under the chair near the RV door for quick access.
Hats are in an open shelf above my bed.
THIS IS MY FULL RV WARDROBE
EXAMPLES OF HOW IT CAN BE USED
From hiking to touring around town or a night out.
Almost 6 month on the road and this approach is working out quite well. That being said, due to Covid, we’ve done very little touring around towns (shops, art galleries, etc) and no indoor dining so it’s still a little difficult to tell if I could find something to wear for almost every occasion. Let’s hope we get back to those activities later this year or surely by 2022 so I can follow up on how it’s going!
