Home Sweet Home – Static Caravan Life!

Welcome back to Home Sweet Home, where we check out retirement living options for Kiwi seniors. This month, we chat to folk who are living their dream – in a static, on-site caravan.

Overgrown lawns, branches tapping on the roof, paths overdue for water blasting – and less energy than ever to deal to it all. These maintenance woes, along with numerous others, are all too common for many seniors. What’s more, they arrive at the very time in life when family may be far away, and the savings to employ Mr Green are limited. It’s enough to make anyone think about downsizing to a more manageable home, and for some seniors, that home is a stationary caravan in a camping ground. For the uninitiated, alarms bells may be ringing at the thought, but many who have chosen this lifestyle (rather than those who have had it foisted upon them), have only good things to say about it. Let’s take a look at why they love where and how they live:

Joan

I’ve never liked living alone in a house, not even when I was single. You just rattle round, listening for noises at night. When my husband died, I moved to a caravan park. I love the security there. We’ve got a good camp manager who lives just a stone’s throw away, and security staff drive round regularly at night. My good neighbours are just 5 meters away. I’ve never felt safer.

Leni

When my kids moved to Auz, I was pretty lonely. I’m not all that social, but I like a yarn, and it wasn’t happening. I had a fishing mate who was living in his caravan down Raglan way, and he said he wasn’t getting much fishing done because he was too busy talking to his camping ground neighbours. So I thought I’d give it a go, and I haven’t regretted it once. Talk! It’s all I do all day!

Marie

When I retired, I wanted to live beside the sea, swim all day in summer, and walk on the beach in winter. But what I could get for my house in town was never going to buy that sort of lifestyle. That’s when I thought about a caravan in a camp ground by the sea. When I looked, there were so many choices – and now I have a sea view, and the ocean is, literally, 200m away!

Keith and Petra

We’re not ones to sit around, and we like company. I play tennis and Petra’s a bowler. We both like to swim, and have a long soak in the spa afterwards. But once we’d retired, we found our activities, and the cost of getting to them, were eating into our savings. We already had a nice caravan we’d take up north to a camp ground that had its own pool, spa, and tennis courts, and a bowling green just round the corner. It was a no brainer to give living there a trial run – and here we still are a year later. Absolutely love the life. It’s affordable, we use the car about once a fortnight, and there’s a great community here amongst us ‘permanents,’ as they call us!

Sue and Larry

One day, after Larry had come inside from mowing and spraying and pruning, and I was putting a second coat of paint on the bathroom ceiling, we just looked at each other. I said, “I don’t think retirement is supposed to be this hard.” Larry didn’t either, which is why we sold the house and bought a brand new 8.8m long caravan, and shifted it onto a caravan park beside a beautiful river an hour away. I’ve got the new home I’ve always wanted, someone else mows the lawns for Larry, and with the awning, there’s plenty of space for family when they come to stay. Don’t think we’ve ever felt so rested since we retired!

If you think a static caravan in a camp ground is living the dream – you’re not the only one. However, before you burn any bridges, be sure to do your own homework thoroughly – and look out for next month’s Home Sweet Home where we take a peek into the not-quite-so-perfect aspects of stationery caravan life.