I moved from a 3-bedroom apartment into a renovated school bus, and I don’t regret it at all

My husband, Charlie, and I met in 2015 and instantly connected over our love of travel. After a few happy years in Chicago, we were ready for something new, so we left our jobs in 2019 to backpack around Asia and Oceania. Prior to our small sabbatical, we lived in a three-bedroom, 1,000-square-foot apartment and had enough stuff to fill it.

But after living out of a backpack for four months, we agreed material possessions weren’t bringing us happiness and were ready to downsize . The global pandemic hit the US three months after we got back. Since our lease was ending and jobs were transitioning to be remote, we moved out of our apartment, packed our stuff into a storage unit, and settled into my dad’s house.

For several weeks, we were stressed about where we’d live next, trying to figure out the kind of home we wanted to buy and what would make us happy. We started looking at alternative options after some friends started traveling the country in an RV . New RVs can be expensive, and we wanted something that would actually feel like a home to us.

So when we saw a social-media post about a couple who converted a school bus into a tiny home, a light bulb went off. We realized we could make a school bus totally our own and also travel North America to find the place we want to settle down. In June 2020, we bought a school bus off of Facebook Marketplace for $3,500.

It was an empty slate for us to make our own, but we had no experience with carpentry, plumbing, or electricity. With help from YouTube, Instagram, family, and friends, we built the tiny home of our dreams in just nine months. We went through all of our belongings and only kept we what truly needed.

It wasn’t as hard as we expected, and we had more than enough storage on board. In March 2021, we hit the road and immediately headed to the Southwest for warmer weather after spending the winter in northern Wisconsin. Although moving from a 1,000-square-foot space into a 230-square-foot bus may seem like a big change, it only took us a few weeks to adjust.

However, that period was tough. Within our first two weeks on the road, we had an issue with our transmission, radiator, and windshield, plus three separate trips to the mechanic. We thought we had made a wrong decision and weren’t going to be able to handle the stress of living in a school bus.

But after everything was fixed, we made it to Show Low, Arizona, to meet another school-bus couple we had found through Instagram. We exchanged stories with our new friends, and our worries went away. We spent the next several months exploring places we’d never been, going to national parks , attending festivals, and making friends.

We’ve now been on the road for 16 months and have never been happier. We chase good weather, and if we want a new experience, we move our home. We still don’t know where we want to settle down full time, but the more we think about it, we suspect it’s not so much that there’s nowhere we want to live — we’re just not ready to give up living everywhere yet.

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