In 2029, I'll be buying a van, having it modded, retiring, and starting the snowbird life. At least that's the plan.
A modded van gets a lot better mileage than most rigs, and fits in a parking spot. It's small, but my wife and I
are backpackers, so we're used to sleeping in small spaces.
I follow them on Youtube.
The only killer is I would need a real shower and a real toilet.
a few things to consider about van conversions....
to start with, check the interior height of any van you're considering. If you're over 6 feet tall, like me, you'll not be able to have enough head clearance in most vans. And that's especially true if you're adding an AC which will hang down from the ceiling 2-4 inches. And speaking from experience, if you're going to be tooling around in the summer, you'll definitely want an AC (although I have seen a couple of AC's mounted over the front seats pointing back)
speaking of summer, definitionally investigate screens. Unless you welcome mosquitoes, black flies and deer flies biting and sucking your blood all night long, you want screens on all your openings, and that includes the door(s). Those will be custom screens and expensive, but necessary. And always try to maximize the total square inches of screened openings. This includes the driver and passenger side windows because the sun turns RV's into hot boxes unless you have lots of ventilation
I'm not sure what you mean by "
real shower and real toilet". Obviously you can't have either in an RV if your standard is your home. RV standards are different because you're dealing with limitations. The biggest limitation is your fresh water capacity. If you have a 40 gallon fresh water tank, taking a shower that uses 30 gallons is crazy. You will have a 12V pump that supplies all the fresh water to sinks, shower, and toilet. It will cycle and it can be noisy. But it also is a bit of a water miser....and that's good. The head of an RV shower usually has a control that shuts off water flow (mostly), so you can soap up and wash without over-working the pump and wasting water. When I take a shower in my 5th wheel, I'm guessing I probably only use 2-3 gallons, and part of that is used adjusting the water temp. But to me, it's a "real" shower made better because the alternative is no shower
and keep in mind that every drop of water you use on a shower goes into your gray water tank...and that's another limitation
since we camp all the time out in the 'wilderness', mostly away from other people, we use the outdoor shower facilities. Almost all RV's have an outdoor shower. So there's one alternative. We take along a black 3 gallon bucket with a lid. In the mornings we fill it about 3/4 full and let the sun heat the water. Then prior to a shower fill a teak kettle and boil a gallon or so which allows us to adjust the water temp perfectly. And we have a $30 battery operated pump/shower (Cabella's). It's a perfect pre-game to happy hour
now, in that van conversion video you posted, they had a "wet" bathroom". That is the floor of the bathroom is also the floor of the shower. That's fine until you get up out of bed to pee and get your feet wet at 3AM. I hate wet bathrooms and would only be interested in dry baths. But if you're going small on an RV it's hard to have room for a dry bathroom
as for the toilet, kind of the same factors operating for a shower. There are no toilet tanks. Just a flush system to evacuate waste into the black water tank. By the way, if you're going to 'take a dump' make sure to charge the toilet bowl before with about a pint of water. That way you don't have to reach all the way down and clean shit off the bottom of the toilet bowl
for van conversions and smaller RV's, there can be cassette toilets. That means there's a 4-5 gallon tank directly under the toilet you can remove and dump into a vault toilet at a campground or park; or at a dump station. Often, the cassette is accessed by an exterior hatch. Cassettes are a bit of an upgrade from the porta-potties, but the same idea.
