Staying clean while living on the road can be a challenge, so here’s all my secrets and tips on how I find cheap showers when traveling and living out of the car.

I’d say it’s one of the most common challenges road trippers and van lifers face while living life on the road.

My partner and I have lived out of our Toyota 4Runner and car camped for weeks at a time to save money on our travels. If you want to learn a little more about how we do it, I have an entire article about everything you’ll need to know to live out of the car, here.

But for now, I want to share with you all our top methods for taking cheap showers when living on the road which are the following:

• Camping shower bag
• Planet Fitness
• iOverlander
• Public Shower Directories

Let this post be your complete guide to showering while you’re traveling on a budget!

Camping Shower Bag for Cheap Showers

The first main way that we shower while living on the road is using a portable shower bag. This is the one we use, it also can be seen below.

This is pretty much our go-to shower method, especially when we go camping because it’s very simple. All you need to do is fill the bag up with water which we do before leaving the house for our trip.

To shower, we just lift the bag so it’s sitting upright on top of the car, pump up the foot pump to pressurize the bag, and use the hose to wash ourselves.

Finding Places to Use the Shower Bag

If we’re camping in remote areas, we usually have no problem finding a private spot in the middle of nature to shower. But if we’re living on the road and find ourselves somewhere where there’s people around, we have to get a little creative.

We’ve taken showers in National Parks before in a mostly empty parking lot and just parked as far away from others as possible and angled the car so that we could stand on the other side where no one could see us and shower.

Often times we’ll wear our swimsuits to shower in especially if there are occasional cars driving by.

You can also use a tarp or buy a special shower tent like this or this, but these are pretty much out of budget for us. They aren’t really a necessity but they will provide you with more privacy if that’s something that’s important to you.

Using our portable shower bag works very well for us. The only problem is that we can really only use it when it’s warm outside.

Using it during winter when it’s cold out, would practically be impossible. But cold weather isn’t enough to stop us from taking road trips, so we had to find a different way to shower that was still affordable.

Planet Fitness for Cheap Showers

For the colder months, we use Planet Fitness for taking cheap showers on the road. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the popular gym chain as they have locations worldwide.

Using Planet Fitness for cheap showers was such a key and important part of how we road trip without spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on hotel rooms or Airbnb’s.

Membership Options

Planet Fitness has two different kinds of memberships for purchase.

You are able to purchase the “Classic Membership” which provides you unlimited access to only your home gym (meaning the one you sign up for) plus their showers.

However, the membership you’ll want when living on the road is called the “PF Black Card Membership”. With this membership you have unlimited access to ANY Planet Fitness in the entire world. This means you can shower at any of their 2,500+ locations wherever you are.

As a plus, with the Black Card Membership, you get to bring a guest with you every time you come in. This would be an awesome way to shower especially if you’re traveling with your partner or friend.

Getting your Black Card Membership is an excellent way to not only get a nice shower, but also to get a quick workout in if you’re doing van life or living out of the car for extended periods of time.

Prices for the Black Card Membership go for $25 per month before taxes and fees. So it’s a pretty reasonable cost if you plan to use it multiple times every month.

You can click here to purchase your PF Black Card Membership.

Free Day Pass at Planet Fitness

If you don’t road trip as often to where it would be worth it to pay $25 a month for a membership, there is still a solution for you to get inexpensive showers at Planet Fitness’.

And that solution is getting a free day pass. Every Planet Fitness location gives out free day passes for their gym that you can get right from your phone.

A free day pass allows you access to their entire gym (and showers!) for the whole day without needing a membership.

All you need is an email and a valid ID to get your free day pass. I’ve gotten day passes at several different locations using a few of my different email addresses.

To get the day pass all you’ll need to do is download the Planet Fitness app on your phone and create an account.

You’ll have to enter your real name (so it matches your ID), country you live in, and your email.

Then, you’ll have to head over to your email to verify your account, so make sure that you use a real email that you have access to.

Once you verify your email, you should be able to get into your account where you’ll find an option to get your free day pass.

You will have to pick which location you want the day pass for because when the pass gets created, it will only work at the location you select. Passes can only be used at that location.

The pass will be a QR code that you will have to get scanned at the front desk at Planet Fitness. They will most likely also ask for your ID for verification.

And that’s it! As you can see getting your free day pass is a super easy way to get FREE showers while living on the road.

I’ve had all good experiences with showering at Planet Fitness’. Some showers had warmer water than others, but all of them were very clean. We will definitely be utilizing this hack on many our future road trips all over the world.

iOverlander for Cheap Showers

If we can’t find a Planet Fitness in the area we’re traveling to, then our next best thing will be to do a quick search on iOverlander to see if there are any other local gyms or gas stations that offer showers.

I’ve talked about iOverlander a few times before in some of my other posts, as my partner and I use it during all of our road trips to find free places to camp around the country.

Besides campsites, iOverlander also highlights shower options in your travel area that other travelers have used.

Users can write reviews on the app, which helps us and many others traveling on a budget. When searching for showers, we check multiple options in the area and read the reviews to find the best one.

People will point out how safe they felt there, how clean it was, and how much the shower was which is all very useful information.

Local Gyms

We’ve found local, hole in the wall gyms on iOverlander to shower at that we never would’ve found without the app.

Most of the time there is a small price to pay for the shower but for us that price has never exceeded more than $8 per person.

Some of the local gyms we’ve showered at even supplied us with towels! But this will vary depending on what gym you go to.

Gas Station Showers

One of the more popular gas stations that has showers available is the Love’s Travel Stops. We’ve showered at those a few times before and you can expect to pay around $10-$15 depending on where you are.

Another plus of showering at gas stations is that if you travel with your significant other, sometimes they will allow you to shower together. So you get two showers for the price of one! This really depends on the place you go to though.

I’ve found that most gyms will have men’s and women’s showers/ bathrooms but the Love’s Travel Stop just had single showers for either gender.

Public Shower Directories

If you’re traveling in the US, another way you can find showers when traveling is by using a public shower directory.

This site has data from various regions in each state sharing with you both free and paid public shower options.

It’s very user-friendly and you can even add to it if you find a shower on your travels that isn’t already on the list.

These are some of the best ways we’ve found to take cheap showers when living on the road.

Traveling can be really affordable when you think outside of the box and can adjust to non-conventional ways of doing things. Sure, getting an Airbnb is more comfortable but this requires you to spend quite a pretty penny on your trip.

Showering in a gas station or public gym is less pleasant, but it only lasts a short amount of time and you can save so so much more money.

I hope you got some inspiration from this post and that it helps you stay clean so you can keep on travelin’! Thank you for reading!