Boondocking isn't about doing without, it's about doing it differently.
By that I don't mean you have to use your RV like a hard sided tent, cold, dirty and fumbling around in the dark. Then again it also doesn't mean long hot showers or running the incandescent lights all night with the thermostat set at 80 either. There is a comfortable point in between those two for every camper. It is usually a mix of both behavior as well as changes to your rig. The more you change your behavior, the less you need to change the rig
Conserving yet filling your needs is much easier than adding abilities and wasting resources. Others have mentioned navy showers, LEDS, Turning down or off the furnace, paper plates/ cups, so I'll try to add other things.
When we are getting ready to take a navy shower and running the water to get it hot, we stick a pot under the tap and catch the excess instead of allowing it to go down the drain.
That pot goes on the stove later to wash dishes. We put the all to be washed in a bin starting with the cook pot on the bottom, then dishes and glasses on top. Put the flatware in one of the glasses, add a few drops of dish soap and fill glass with hot water. Wash the flatware and glass, pour the soapy water into the next glass. rinse the flatware in the clean glass and it in turn is used to rinse the next glass. We rinse over the bin so any water loss is added to the soapy water and by the time we get to the pot, there is a good amount of water in there for scrubbing it out. That water doesn't go down the drain to fill the grey tank, it goes in a bucket that can be used to flush the toilet or out by the fire in case the worst happens. So far we have been lucky and it is used to put out the fire at the end of the night.
When we wash our hands, we use just a trickle of water to wet them, a small amount of soap to lather up, wipe the soap and dirt onto the "dirty towel". after that it takes just a trickle again to rinse and wipe on the "clean towel" (this water too is added to the fire bucket)
Before we had LEDs, solar and a generator, we still could go out for a week on our single 95 ah battery. That battery ran the essentials, fridge, hot water heater and pump when needed and yes even the furnace set to 50 if it was going to be in the 30s or lower at night. Should the battery get low, I turned the truck around and with a heavy set of jumper cables charged up for a hour or so as needed. The colder it got, the more often I had to do this. No furnace needed and I didn't charge for a week but we still can go 3 days with furnace and no charging.
None essentials like lighting and entertainment were on separate systems. Phones, laptops, portable DVD players and small TVs all go into the truck at night to be charged for the next day. $3 Harbor freight LED puck lights were our lighting. The can be hung by their hook, stuck to metal with their magnet or just set on a shelf pointing up to light up the trailer and the 3 AAA batteries they use last forever. We still keep a small 35 ah gel cell in the trailer for running things during the day like a small inverter, fans etc.
Our trailer has a 30 gal fresh water tank and for us that's good for a week with showers for both every other day. We augment that with up to six 5 gal water jugs that fit in a dispenser or can be dumped into the tank as needed. The dispenser allows us to get water for small things like making coffee with out running the pump and using the battery. More importantly I can get water at 5 am and not wake Honey with the pump that sits 18 inches below our pillows.
The first thing I do at 5 am is fill the pot from the dispenser and start heating it on the stove for coffee. That alone will start warming up the TT. After that I use a Melita cone filter to make drip coffee. If you have a auto drip instead, put the filter and grounds in as usual, open the top and slowly pour the hot water over the grounds. It will drip into the pot just as if it had been plugged in. After that I start breakfast which adds more heat to the trailer. A rack of ribs in the over set to low for hours doesn't use a lot of propane yet adds heat and the ribs are incredible. ( stove is propane so ventilate) Want more free heat? Cut some cardboard or tin pieces that will fit in the windows with a inch on top and bottom. The sun will hit these and they will radiate a fair amount of heat.
These are all behavior changes that cost little or nothing yet can have a big impact. It is how we have done it for 25 years but we never knew it was called boondocking, It was just camping and it was how everyone did it.
Now if they like boondocking and wish to make changes to their rig, it still doesn't have to cost a fortune.
The LEDs we use are cheapies from ebay. They ran $3 for the bigger panels and under $2 for the smaller cob styles. I replaced all of ours for $50 and still have spares left over. You don't really need to change them all out, just the lights you tend to use a lot. Momentarily turning on a incandescent to go wee or look in a cabinet isn't going to drain your battery. Turning on a few overhead double fixtures and leaving them on for hours will have a much larger impact. We found that four small LED cob style lights with 9 LEDs each on the ceiling will nicely light the whole trailer for less than a sixth of the power used by one incandescent. We use larger 48 LED panels in task areas like the stove or where we read, those use less than a fifth of the power of a incandescent each.
Via craigslist and ebay I created a smallish 230w portable solar set up for about $200. The panel travels on the bed and once set out will keep us charged up daily as long as we get decent sunlight. I point it at the sun when I walk the dogs in the morning and adjust it through out the day until the charge controller shows float. After that it gets set near flat for the rest of the day. I will add a second battery not so I can party and use power at will but rather as a buffer when the sun isn't optimal for a few days.
We do have a older used generator ($62) that is used to charge us up if it's too overcast for the solar or we need AC. When it's cold, I run it in the morning while I make breakfast on a dual hot plate or use a small electric heater to warm the trailer. Both saving on propane while the battery charges. When it's hot I wait till the heat of the day and charge while running the AC. Personally I prefer letting the solar do it's thing and leaving the noisy stinky generator chained to the tongue.
So these are some of the things we do to go boondocking without sacrificing comfort. As set up we are clean, warm, lighted and entertained. We did our time sleeping on the ground, being cold and only being able to wash up for decades, this way is much much better.
