Motorhome garage organisation is one of those things you swear you’ll sort “next time”, usually right up until you’re kneeling on frozen ground at night, blindly rummaging for a fuse with a phone torch clenched between your teeth. After last weekend’s chaos, this one’s been… quiet. Suspiciously quiet. So I leaned into it and did the most unglamorous vanlife task imaginable: making the garage actually usable.
Let There Be (Motion Sensor) Light
One of the first things I ordered was a set of Woobroo Motion Sensor Lights, the 20cm under-cabinet ones with three colour modes and rechargeable batteries. They’re technically meant for kitchens, wardrobes and stairs, but let’s be honest, motorhome garages are just wardrobes for regret and emergency purchases.
The logic was simple. I only ever go digging in the garage after dark. Why I do this to myself, I’ll never know. These lights mean I can open the garage and actually see what’s going on without reenacting a low-budget survival show.
Tools Over Blankets (A Radical Decision)
Next up, I went through the garage contents and asked a very honest question: what have I actually needed when things went wrong?
Blankets? Nope. Not once. Tools, fuses, tape, a breaker bar for the wheel, absolutely yes. Especially when the nearest help is 300, 200, or 100 miles away and your optimism evaporates faster than your phone battery.
The bottle jack is still on the list. Marty, despite best intentions, didn’t have a spare after all. The jack I do have is basically a wheel-cage release device. It was utterly useless when I needed to lift the motorhome on Boxing Day, so that’s lesson learned.
Repairs on Ice (Literally)
The replacement reversing lamp is finally arriving, albeit a week after I ordered it, to the girl’s house via AliExpress. Classic. I still need fibreglass sheets, resin mix, and a can of grey spray paint to make everything pretty again, but that’s firmly a future me in warmer weather problem.
Right now, I’m parked up on compacted ice in Springwell Forest Park, sitting at a glamorous -2°C. Even the number plate tape from Halfords politely informed me it only works above 10°C. We haven’t seen that temperature for weeks, so the number plate is currently living on the back window like Milo’s 2-dimensional yellow brother.
For now, I’ll probably use the plastic welder Gemma got me last year for my birthday. Rough patch now, cosmetic fixes later. This is not a Netflix montage moment.
Weekend Plans (Brace Yourself)
The plan is to head back towards Ballykelly to lift my Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones so I can crack on with a work project, quick stop at my daughter’s to build a radiator cover, then down to Swan Park to help Kathy film some TikTok content.
That’s it. That’s the weekend. No cliff-top sunsets, no dramatic drone shots, no “you won’t believe what happened next” nonsense.
And honestly? That’s fine.
Van Life Reality Check
Life in a motorhome isn’t always an adventure. Sometimes it’s just reorganising a garage, waiting on parcels, and accepting that winter turns even basic jobs into logistical negotiations with the weather.
It’s still van life—just the less Instagrammable, more realistic version.
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