Me and my house

My little sister being here has given me a chance to get a few photos with myself in them that are kinda hard to take on my own. So, if you are wondering who it is that writes this blog and lives in Fy Nyth, here you go. This is me with my little house.

Little sister visits the tiny house

My youngest sister came to WY for a visit! Now Fy Nyth has had it's first week long guest stay here. We've had a lot of fun exploring the area, camping, eating, napping, hot springing, visiting the WY Dinosaur Museum, and hanging out in my little house.

Podcast interview

There's a live podcast about this house! Kyle has recently started a podcast dedicated to tiny houses  over at LetsBuildATinyHouse.com and I did the interview a few weeks ago. Now it's live. Go check our episode out over at his site:

http://www.letsbuildatinyhouse.com/ariel

Dinner party

Dinner last night with a few friends. It's crazy how much space this places appears to have even with three people in the shot for a sense of scale! And no, it's not any kind of wide angel shot, just your average iphone.

My mobile life

I've realized recently that I do have a very mobile life. I've been thinking about this as I work on remodeling my van to better suit my camping needs. More about this below. These various versions of shelters and lots of time spent living like this are probably why the switch to a tiny house was really not difficult for me space wise, even though I had been living in a much larger house before.

First, obviously if you've been following this blog, you know my house is small and on wheels. It has about 229 square feet of space. But as you can see in these first three photos. It's very comfy and holds all my large belongings.

But while mobile, my house doesn't actually move. And has no plans to anytime soon. A lot of dishes and other things would have to be packed if it did, otherwise they would all come crashing off their shelves.

So while traveling (which in the summer at least is just about every week, a little less often in the winter), we (my friend Seth and I most of the time) can go car camping with this lovely van I drive. It is my full time vehicle as well, but is really laid out for camping. And happens to have just over 60 square feet of floor space inside. The interior needs a lot of work to be more efficient for my needs and to look the way I prefer, but the photo below gives you a glimpse of the interior pretty much as it was when I bought the van. We've already used it lots of times, but I am hoping to redo a lot of the interior in some of my free time the next two weeks while I have off work for the off season here.

My van setup includes it's own set of beds, bedding, kitchen set up (plates, utensils, grill, burner, cooler, etc.), lighting, curtains, and so on. Since all of that, and most of my other outdoor gear, lives in my van, when I want to go somewhere, all I really have to do is fill a water jug, pack up some food, and take off. The roof tube I added holds a lot of fishing rods which is great, because now they don't have to live inside the vehicle, making the interior much easier to move around in.

I even have a large car camping tent that works as a guest room or overflow quarters while close to a vehicle. It's a 4 man instant tent with the poles permanently attached and can be set up in less than a minute. Below is the view looking out it's door. I don't seem to have a photo of the outside of this tent for some reason. It is very comfy and heavy though, so you certainly wouldn't want to carry it too far.

Then we have my truly tiny and mobile shelter. My backpacking tent. While my house weighs a little over 10,000 lbs., this set up is down to 1 lb. 9 ozs. And now we're down to 34 square feet of space. Amazingly, this is still fairly comfortable for two people to live in, even for a week or more at a time. Below you can see Seth and I both able to sit totally upright in our camping chairs inside, with lots of room to spare. 

Again, I have a third and totally separate setup for beds, bedding, cooking, etc. And the whole system actually comes in at about 18 pounds including luxury stuff like a journal and camera and all my clothing. All I need to add to that is food and water, and I can be very comfortable for a long time, anywhere in the wilderness. So as I said, being very comfortable living in all of these situations, the very smallest of which I've had longer than any of the others, makes living tiny truly easy for me.

I suppose starting with the tiniest end of things make it work kind of like the "Cow In The Kitchen" story for me. Everyone is different, but if you really want to go tiny and never have at all, maybe this kind of approach will make it easier for you?

Non-toxic grey water

As you probably know, my whole house is off grid. And since I have a composting toilet, all the waste water that leaves my house is gray water. To be able to use this for anything (like watering plants) I want to be sure it does not contain anything toxic. How do I do this? By not using chemicals in my house. ....ok, almost never. I did put some bleach on one thing. Much of what I do, I've been doing for years due to having skin that reacts to lots of things, not just since moving tiny or off grid. Here's a list of what I use on a daily basis that replaces the average 150+ chemicals that are used in the average household. 

1) Shampoo - home made soap nut liquid or a homemade Dr. Bronner's combination

2) Conditioner - apple cider vinegar or coconut oil

3) Body Soap - none, it's always irritated my skin and warm water is sufficient

4) Acne Cream - apple cider vinigar

5) Face Wash - pure liquid aloe

6) Body Lotion - olive or coconut oil

7) Toner - apple cider vinigar

8) All Purpose Spray - cleaners, not always sprays, I use vinigar, baking soda, and soap nuts for all cleaning/washing

9) Dishwashing Liquid - soap nut liquid or biodegradable dishwashing liquid from our local health food store

10) Mascara - I use very little, and don't worry about it's contents too much. I've tried making my own and never got one I was very happy with.

11) Laundry - soap nuts and baking soda or borax to freshen and whiten (See my whole post on how I do laundry here.)

12) Toothpaste and deodorant - half and half mix of coconut oil/baking soda

Everything's biodegradable, and mostly edible. And seriously, not only healthier, but way less expensive. If you can save money and improve your health, why not give some of these a try?

Composting toilet - emptying the solids

Another post you don't want to read folks if you don't want to hear about poop! For the first time since moving in almost exactly 4 months ago, I needed to empty the solids bin on my toilet. (For more details on my set up in general, see this post.) I do empty the liquid container every week or so, but this was the first for the solid side of things. 

Now obviously the idea of a composting toilet it that the contents are composted. I've liked using mine so far, but still wondered how fast everything really would break down in there. If you read this post, or this one, you know I also added worms to my toilet to help speed up the decomposition. Well it seems to be working even better than I had hoped!

My best friend had assured me in no uncertain terms that I should never even think about asking for his help with this emptying chore. But really, it wasn't bad at all. In the first photo below you can see the bin with the last two days or so of deposits still pretty close to the surface. Mostly looking like dirt anyway, but the toilet paper is still intact. The only odor, even with the bin wide open was a damp soil kind of smell. Nothing sewage-y at all.

Below you can see what everything but the very top of the contents pictured above looked like. Nice loose potting soil texture, and again no smell other than a light earthy scent. Really, if I bagged this and told you it was potting soil, I don't think anyone would know the difference. You can even see a few of my little red wiggler worms sticking their heads out here since I had just dumped their whole world upside down.

Below is the outside bin that stuff will reside in as it further composts. I started with a large tub with some holes drilled for ventilation for my worms, a nice layer of shredded paper from a friend's office, and then just dumped all the contents of my toilet on top. 

I did pull out a bunch of my little worms and toss them back into my toilet along with a fresh batch of damp peat moss that you can see below. This photo contains nothing but peat moss and some worms. I wasn't sure if it would stay warm enough outside for the worms in my new big outdoor bin to be ok since I don't have a large amount of compost in there yet. But hopefully they make it, and if not, I still have my inside ones. 

I think I am very happy with my toilet despite it being one of the things I did have some misgivings about going into this whole off grid thing. And if I only have to empty it 3 times a year, that's not bad at all.

Fresh Snow!

It snowed! Now I know all of you on the east coast have way more snow than you want, but we've had a crazy warm winter here. And this is the first snowfall in almost two months. Admittedly it's getting close to 50 F today and melting rapidly, but it was kinda cool to see some nice fresh stuff brightening everything up for a bit.

Tiny pets and such

How do you have hundreds (maybe thousands or even millions) of pets when you live in a tiny space? Well you have very tiny pets of course. Here's a few of the critters in my house.

 Above are my two SCOBY's (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) that produce gallons of kombucha for me to drink. And there very well may be millions of little critters in those floating layers if I got out a microscope. But they all float nicely in the tops of two gallon jugs.

Then of course there are my pet worms. We've discussed them before. Hopefully they continue to multiply and will soon be in several kinds and stages of compost around here.

Then there's the tiny farming I can do. Like growing chia and alfalfa sprouts to eat. Above are chia sprouts after we ate most of them out of the dish. Below you can see them when they were just starting to sprout.

Below are alfalfa sprouts which grow well in a jar and don't need the open terra cotta dish like chia seeds. I can grow thousands of these little sprouts every week and and them to salads and other dishes. I'd like to get a few more herbs growing and maybe a few other things like ginger as well so I can buy less of my food from the grocery store. We'll see if I get around to starting all those kinds of things... But for now, my tiny house is full of lots of kinds of tiny life. And I like it that way.

Biggest current problem - Mold

I'm learning that despite living in a very dry climate, due to our extreme cold, there tends to be a lot of condensation that occurs. Especially when you live in a very well insulated house with very little square footage therefore little air movement. And when water condenses onto wood consistently, keeping it always a little damp, you very quickly get mold.

 I've now developed mold around almost all my windows. Even in this little place, I have 15 separate windows so there is a lot of space for this to occur. And on the thinner panel in the door. And along the baseboards in places where any item of furniture blocks the totally open flow of air.

The moisture come mostly from cooking in my case. With the propane heat and human breath probably being the next two largest producers.

I've now bleached all the mold spots to kill it, but between the moisture and the mold, there are already permanent stains as you can see in the photo below. Right now it seems to be staying under control since I've been trying to go around and wipe up condensation twice a day. As well as moving my small fan around the house to keep air moving in all the damp spots. And with the weather being unseasonably warm, I've also been keeping a lot of the windows open at least a crack to keep more air moving.

 All this helps. But I think the issue won't really go away until it's warm enough to keep the whole house wide open most of the time and not have condensation occurring. And I suspect the issue will return with winter. So I believe this will be a long term ongoing issue.

 I would certainly use composite window frames not wood if I had the design to do over again. It seems that having less windows but a few larger ones, without the little pane dividers would also help reduce the amount of edges where condensation could form. I'd also skip the thinner decretive panel in the door. The thicker parts do not form condensation. The metal hinges in the door conduct the cold well, forming condensation continually and dripping a steady stream of rust as you can see in the last photo. I don't know enough about building to know what could be done about that, other than maybe using a stainless steel hinge if such a thing even exists. I guess we'll see if I figure out a better way to stop/deal with this all this as time goes on.

Video Tour

I made a video tour of my house! Forgive the poor camera work, I've never posted a video before. But I think it does give you a fair idea of what my place looks like.

A little winter life

An easy way to add some new life to your house in the winter. I like to cut some willows (or any other small branches) and put them in a jar with water. Quite quickly, they grow roots and start to sprout little leaves and roots. It's nice sometimes to see new things growing when it's still very much winter outside!

Fox!

Just a minute ago as I was laying in bed typing replies to comments on this blog, a fox ran right by my open window! (The house is really warm from lots of cooking and I was cooling it down so I could sleep.) Pretty sweet part of where I live! I've seen his tracks around here before but never actually seen him.

(And no, that's not a photo I took. There is a pretty bright moon tonight, and he kicked on my motion sensor flood light, but I didn't get a photo.)

Worms are still alive!

I did a little digging yesterday, and looks like at least some of the worms in my toilet are doing well and are a healthy pink color. Now I'm curious to see how fast they reproduce and breakdown/condense all the matter composting in there.