About Rich & Kathy
Welcome to RV Gear Guides! We’re Rich & Kathy, and we’re full-time RVers who live in a 32 foot Winnebago Aspect Motorhome.
We started this website as there are tens of thousands of RV accessories available for purchase, and we understand first-hand how finding the best accessories can be both confusing and expensive.
We also know that wading through endless RV ads, stores, and blogs takes time, and we believe you’d rather spend your time traveling in your RV and enjoying the outdoors! As two experienced, full-time RVers, we hope our gear reviews steer you toward the best possible RV products, while saving you time and money.
Our Background
We both grew up in central Massachusetts. in 1998 we migrated to Orange County, California to look for new opportunities and adventures. We spent 15 great years living there – hiking, biking, and exploring the West.
During that time, Rich worked for a web-based retailer. He was fortunate to spend 8 years getting an education in advertising, marketing, SEO, PPC, print media, web design, and business. During the great recession (2008) the company closed, and Rich launched his own web design and marketing business.
Kathy put her business skills to use in the staffing and recruiting field, working her way up to management roles. Today she works remotely part-time for a healthcare staffing agency as a recruiter. She’s also an artist, and has created a collection of oil paintings called Western Trails.
In addition to our project work, we enjoy writing RV Gear Product Reviews for this site. As long as we have good phone service we can work – thanks for the excellent 4G coverage, Verizon!
DIYers From the Start
During our time in CA we owned two homes. This gave us plenty of practice with home repair and improvement projects. Even though most California homes are fairly new, the construction quality leaves a lot to be desired, and as any Californian can tell you, they need repair from day one!
We also both have extensive experience living in and fixing up old homes in New England. They’re built a lot better than their contemporaries in California, but they make up for it by being 100+ years old – so they still need a lot of work.
We’ve always done all our own repairs and maintenance, so we consider ourselves true DIYers.
RV Efficiency Experts
After years of living in a ‘stick and brick’ home, we both decided that we wanted a mobile lifestyle. We love to travel and explore, and working in an office 50 weeks a year makes that difficult!
We purchased our current home – a 2012 Winnebago Aspect named ‘Artie’ and we’ve been living on the road ever since.
During that time, we’ve upgraded, decorated, and outfitted our RV to suit our lifestyle, while making sure every household item and RV accessory fits into our space (and weight rating) as efficiently as possible.
Rich is an architect personality, and it’s in his nature to focus on what works most efficiently. He’s researched every RV system, part, and product… you name it, he’s mastered it! He’s also very creative, and has a hand in all our design and decorating projects.
As an ‘organized artist’, Kathy not only loves to paint, she also has a certificate in Interior Design. She brings creative and space planning ideas to every project and RV product we buy! She’s also handy with tools and hands-on home projects, having run a custom sign shop in a past life.
All in all, we’re great project teammates, with complimentary skills that are well suited to RVing projects. We both love to research, tinker, and optimize every aspect of our home-on-wheels!
How We Can Help You
Through careful planning and a fair amount of trial and error, we’ve identified some of the best RV accessories and upgrades out there. At the same time, we’ve had plenty of RV accessory ‘learning experiences’ that we’d like to help you avoid. We include real-life pictures and examples of how we use these products, too.
We only recommend products we’ve tried or used ourselves, so you can be sure that we’ve used, tested, thought about, and weighed the pros and cons of every product on this site before recommending it to you!
We want to help you buy the right RV Gear the first time!
Sound good? Click Here to start reading Reviews →