Think you could live in a Prius? Five questions I’m always asked

The Toyota Prius Prime seats up to five people, and is based on the chassis and styling of the regular Prius hatchback. The difference is that the Prime is a plug-in hybrid that can run on battery power alone. (Photo: Toyota)

For four months in 2015, my boyfriend and I moved out of our rooms in Mill Valley and moved into his Prius. We did this to pay off debt and build up an emergency fund. In fact, we got so used to living in the Prius that even now, we still sleep in the car when we’re on road trips. It’s enough to make some people squirm with unease, but we like the fresh air streaming through the windows and the ability to pull over and sleep wherever we want.

Not only does it save a ton of money on hotels, but we don’t have to deal with bed bugs and nasty sheets. The last time we stayed in a hotel was in 2016, and it cost $120 for a Motel 6 and was disgusting. There were stains and hairs on the sheets and the floors were dingy. So, we’d rather stay in our own space, even if its tiny.

Over the past couple years of sleeping in the car, I’ve gotten the same questions from people over and over again. Here are the answers to those questions.

Where do you go to the bathroom?

I’ve gotten this question so many times that I’ve gotten very comfortable talking about my bathroom habits. Never in my life have so many people been so interested in where I pee at night. The truth of the matter is this: I don’t pee at night. When we first started living in the Prius, I felt like I had to go through some painful training to “teach” my body not to go. First of all, I’d limit my fluid intake a couple hours before going to sleep. Second of all, we’d find a bathroom and use it to pee and brush our teeth right before bed. Thirdly, I learned that if you kinda have to go, you really can hold it a few more hours. Eventually, I was trained and now I hardly ever get up to go in the night, even when I’m sleeping in a house.

Where do you shower?

This is another bathroom-related question we often get. When we lived in the car and camped full-time near San Francisco, we were both members of the Bay Club, an upscale gym in San Francisco. Every morning, we’d go there before work and exercise, shower, sit on the couches and use our laptops. They even have free coffee.

Now, when we sleep in the car on our road trips, we find places to shower. Certain marinas and campgrounds have paid showers, which are much cheaper than going for a hotel room to wash up. If we’re at a national park, we’ll often make a “Jet Boil” shower, which includes heating up water on our camp stove and pouring it over ourselves somewhere in the woods. Either way, we do find ways to keep clean while sleeping or living in the car.

What do you do in the evenings without a TV and a couch?

We did have many evenings to fill when we lived in the car for four months. We actually spent most of that time in a storage unit in Sausalito, which we fixed up as a jam space. Tom plays electric guitar and I’m a beginning drummer. We had amps, microphones, and a stand-up drumset in a shipping container sized-unit. We’d play and drink beer almost every night, and other people at the facility started calling us the “storage unit rockers.”

When we were doing that, we were at happy hours, or we’d park near a Starbucks for the wi-fi, curl up in the back of a Prius, and watch a show. Filling our evenings wasn’t very hard after all.

Now, when we’re on a road-trip, we fill the evenings by going on walks, seeing movies, or hanging out in pubs with wi-fi.

How in the world do you sleep inside that small car?

When we tell friends and family we like to sleep in the car on road trips, they often wonder how we do it. Some people imagine us simply reclining the seats and covering up with a blanket. But no. That would be very uncomfortable. When you lay down the back seats in the Prius, it turns out to be fairly roomy. It’s bigger than our two-person backpacking tent. We lay out our sleeping pads and bags and put a couple pillows near the two front seats. The windows are tinted so nobody can see in, and we leave them cracked for fresh air. It’s actually quite comfortable!

Where do you park?

Parking the car is interesting, because sleeping in one’s car is still illegal in many states and municipalities. When we’re on road trips, we sometimes park at rest stops, where it’s legal to sleep. We’ll also sleep in marinas, at campgrounds, and at national parks. A couple of times, we’ve slept in neighborhoods, but that’s not ideal because it could weird people out. The good thing about a new Toyota Prius V is that most people won’t think there are two people sleeping inside. It’s pretty incognito.

So, that’s that. Those are the five most common questions we get about sleeping in a car. What other questions do you have? Could you do it?

Kristin Hanes is a journalist and writer who lives on a sailboat in the San Francisco Bay. You can follow her on Twitter @KristinHanes. This story first appeared on The Wayward Home.