Could you live in a van? No, I don’t mean a la Chris Farley’s SNL character Matt Foley:
Ontario couple Eamon Fitzgerald and Rebecca Moroney have decided to live in a converted cargo van this past spring and travel all across Canada.
Moroney, 27, and Fitzgerald, 25, are among thousands who have taken up “van life.” With more than 2.1 million posts under the hashtag #vanlife on the photo-sharing app Instagram, it’s one of the most coveted lifestyles on social media. I had no idea!
Today’s van-lifers aren’t the off-the-grid driveway squatters or Woodstock hippies of the ’60s. These millennial-aged wanderers (also known as digital nomads) are extremely plugged in; mostly freelance writers and entrepreneurs.
Some adopt the lifestyle as an alternative to paying high rents while others see it as the next step in the minimalist “tiny homes” movement. But even those who can afford spacious bricks-and-mortar housing have taken to #vanlife, such as former Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Daniel Norris, who made headlines in 2015 for moving into a van during the off-season, telling the Star at the time he did it for the “solitude.”
For Fitzgerald and Moroney, living on wheels was a way around Toronto’s skyrocketing rents that also let them expand their business, Chaiwala, selling natural masala chai to independent cafés.
“Sometimes we’ll go and sleep somewhere else,” says Moroney, “and every night we do, we’re like ‘Why did we do that? We miss our van.’”
Do you ever wonder about living the #vanlife? What would make you hate it and/or love it?