Minivan Conversion

Feb 7

Or - How can this car sleep four people (five in a pinch)

It all started quite innocently. I had arranged a four-week stay in Denver for Kimana (almost 10) and Fire (8) and needed to take then two-year-old Ciquala with me too. Now how on earth was I going to keep three kids quiet and entertained in a hotel room for a whole month? Rental apartments were booked out or way over my budget. Then I spotted a state park just on the outskirts of Denver and instantly had a solution: Camping! They would be able to build fires, run around, and be noisy. All good. But scary. Unless…. I brought the dog and slept in the van. Now I had two new issues. First, I can’t leave the dog in the van during the appointments. Second, how do you sleep four people in a van, while retaining five seats with seat belts? The first issue was easily solved. I found a good dog daycare and it worked out great. For the second, let me show you how we managed and I’ll let you be the judge. For us it worked so well, that out of our four-week trip became a ten-week trip from Indiana all the way to the California coast.

Converting a 2012 7-Seater Toyota Sienna Minivan to sleep an adult and three children.

Jens was planning on spending two of the four weeks with us in Denver and sleeping all of us in the van for that long was never something we envisaged, hence only one adult. A feature that really benefitted us in the van model that we had was, that the last row of seats could be folded into the vehicle floor, leaving a flat surface to work with, while retaining four seats. I consulted many van life blogs. however non of them met our criteria regarding the temporary nature of the conversion and retaining enough seats. So it was time to get creative.

First things first, I knew we needed a floor covering to protect the van. I found a cheap thin carpet made of recycled bottles that was easy to cut into shape and big enough. I cut it so that the seats could still move and also so that the third-row seats could come up in their two or one seat combination. As we were planning to continue school during the trip, I fixed an office drawer stack into place in the back. This could hold all the homeschool materials and all other needed documents and maps in an organized fashion (at least in theory). The next step was built on the premise that both, Kimana and Fire, could still fit across in the back of the car. Miraculously, our Decathlon camping table fit across in the back too. It is great, as it is variable in height, allowing me to build a structure just as we needed out of Quadro climbing frame elements that we also had at home. I now had effectively created a bunk bed in the rear of the car with the top bunk for Kimana and Fire, and the lower bunk for Ciquala and myself.

Since ten weeks is a long time to be sleeping on a camping mat and in a sleeping bag, and the climates we were going to visit were going to vary quite a bit, I opted for a proper mattress and bedsheet with a cover option. I ordered a king size 3-inch mattress pad and cut it to size for the lower and upper bunks.

What to bring on a ten-week road trip

If you’ve been following our blog or know our family, you have probably already guessed it: Yes, at least one cello had to come on board. Those are the times you wish that your kids had taken up the harmonica! Apart from this luckily deemed necessary piece of car furniture, we took school things and a few small games for the evenings. Each person got a daypack’s worth of clothes plus a coat and a change of shoes.

If like us, you are not too much into fast food, kitchen items become essential on long trips such as these. My children really enjoy the southern Indian idlis, and I found that this was an easy thing to make on camping trips if you bring a mixer and idli inserts for your pot. Most of our camping kitchen gear is collapsible silicone. We did bring a two-burner camping stove since it was such a long trip. We weren’t the only ones needing to eat. Indeed Egan needed his dogfood too. It took up space, and definitely needed to be in a sealed container if we didn’t want to dream of dogfood at night!

The Minivan with Tent Solution

If you are thinking that this sounds like a lot of things to pack when you intend to sleep in the vehicle, you are right. This is where the next solution comes in. While I do mind being the only adult on a tent camping trip, I don’t mind if my things sleep in a tent while I am safe in the car. In comes the rear hatch tent, that seamlessly attaches to the car. Since the Sienna’s rear hatch can be opened with the remote from the inside, it was perfect. We now had a living room in the tent, and a bedroom in the car, giving us a big protected space. At night I would simply close the car hatch.

We spent many evenings with campfires and eating by the fire or in the tent before a cozy night in the car and breakfast sheltered in the tent in the morning.

This is the setup that allowed us to go on tour the way we wanted, study time, sleepy time, and playtime all-inclusive, all while discovering large parts of the USA.