Laundry Day in a Tiny House

There are many options for laundry in tiny space. From laundry mats to all-in-one units, to your mother's house. This is the setup I've been using since before moving into my tiny house actually. I used it while living in a motel as well. It is more manual than many options, but  I don't mind this. 

I have a wonder wash as my washing machine. You just fill it with clothes, water, and your choice of detergent. I use soap nuts since they do not irritate my skin and keep my water totally safe for dumping in my garden. More about them in my post here.

Then you simply close the lid tightly and spin the machine back and forth to tumble everything. Drain and add fresh water and repeat to have a rinse cycle. When it's warm, it seems most handy to do all this on my little porch. In the winter I stay inside.

To drain the machine, you stick this little spout in, and it drains from the bottom. I collect the water in a bucket and pour it right on my plants.

Once everything is rinsed, it goes in my Nina Soft Spin Drier. This works like a giant salad spinner and gets an amazing amount of water out. Clothing is nearly dry to the touch when it comes out, but still a tiny bit damp.

Out of the spin drier, bigger items go outside on my wash line like the very first photo, and little things or delicates hang on the folding rack I have inside. At least with the dry air we normally have here, things only need to hang for an hour or so to be totally dry.

And that's my laundry day here at Fy Nyth!

Emptying My Composting Toilet

I live off grid and have no sewer connection. So I have a composting toilet. Pretty simple. "But how do you empty your toilet?" 

This is a very frequent question I hear. At least in the world of tiny house people. I suppose the rest of the country probably does not discuss this. Ever. And if poop grosses you out, don't read further! While I do empty the liquids container every week to ten days, the solids bin only needs emptied about every 4 months with mostly just me using it.

There are several ways to deal with this, but I am just going to describe the one I use. The urine I dilute with water and use to fertilize all my plants around here. They love it! And in the winter, it just goes around the base of my trees, who also seem happy with the arrangement. But what do I do with all the four months worth of poop? 

Eventually it will be used as fertilizer as well. But to be safe, I'm giving it lots of extra time to break down after leaving my toilet. I have two compost bins outside. One for all my kitchen and garden scraps and one for my toilet. The toilet one will get heated up before going on any plants just in case there are any nasty bugs in there, which I doubt, knowing my own health and diet.

 With a Natures Head toilet like mine, all you have to do to empty it is slide the lid/seat off the top. Then you can pick the whole base up and simply turn it upside down to empty it. You can hose it all out then if you want, I did this once, but there is really no need. Below is what the most recent four months worth of poop looked like when I dumped it. (I already warned you to stop reading if you are squeamish about this!) Mostly, it looks like slightly damp dirt or potting soil. In the very middle of the photo you can see a lighter spot, that's one of the most recent additions to the toilet and is not completely broken down yet.

And this does not smell like anything other than moist dirt. For real. If you can change an average baby's diaper, this is less gross and less smelly. Plus my toilet never kicks or tries to put it's fingers in there while I'm emptying it. ;-) So it's much better!

Now I put fresh coconut coir (or peat moss if you prefer) back into my newly empty toilet. This is what surrounds each "deposit" I make into my toilet and helps keep there from being any odors. As you can see below, my whole toilet is sitting outside on my step. Now it's almost ready to put back in my bathroom.

If you've followed my blog for any length of time, you probably know (And again, you were warned if you find all this gross!) that I keep worms in my toilet. They speed up the rate at which everything breaks down and help reduce how often I need to empty the solids. But I just dumped them all out when I emptied my toilet. And now I need some back in there.

Worms do not like being exposed to light, so they had quickly all retreated deep into the pile. I just used a shovel to scoop a hole in the middle of that pile and grabbed a handful of worms back out. Touching worms does not gross me out. (Spiders are a whole different story though!) And I added these back into my freshly emptied toilet. Where they quickly retreated out of sight again. This process did leave a lot of worms in my outside bin, but this is no problem, they just keep multiplying in both locations.

One note, based on the experience of someone else who tried this. If you plan to add worms to your toilet, make sure you keep the solids bin from getting too wet or too warm. If either of those condition occur, your worms may try to flee for their lives. I have never had this problem and as long as the conditions in there are good (for worms this means slightly moist, dark, and lots of poop to eat) they will stay out of sight and you'll never even know they are there.

I do keep a little spray bottle of vinegar and water in my bathroom to give the bowl a quick spritz after each use and help keep everything nice and fresh. You can see that in this shot with my toilet back in place and with the lid and seat back on top.

Now I have a toilet that's ready to go for months again! See, composting toilets really are not that scary. I am very happy with mine.

More Canning - Spaghetti Sauce

It truly is possible to cook and can a good bit in my tiny house! After wrapping up my pickles, I started on the tomatoes. I really like home made spaghetti sauce and don't like the store bought versions very much. I started out with 50 pounds of tomatoes.

I had to cook them down in several batches since they wouldn't quite all fit on my stove at once.

I added lots of onions, garlic, and fresh herbs from my garden.

After cooking everything soft, I ran it through this strainer which takes out all the seed, peels, onion and garlic skin, etc.

Then the sauce was back to simmering on the stove to thicken up.

And finally canned. I think next year I may be able to do a few less pickles, but I probably will need a few more tomatoes. This should last for a while though.

And then, expecting a freeze which did happen, I picked all my basil and made some pesto.

Now I should be set for a little while. At least until I start canning pickled beets anyway!

Mama Moose with Twins!

This family has been spending time around my house recently. They all look healthy and ready for winter. Both babies are still trying to nurse, but mama seems to be getting fed up with that. Especially when they both go for a drink at the same time.  I'm not sure how long they will stay here, but I am enjoying them while they are! 

I was able to get photos a few times, but didn't want to get close and freak mama out. And a couple video clips of them browsing on willows and of the babies trying to nurse. They are kinda cute gangly big critters!

How to Give Gifts to a Minimalist

I appreciate many of the things I see and read over at Joshua's blog. This article (www.becomingminimalist.com/dear-loved-one) has some nicely worded explanations if someone close to you is having a hard time understanding that you don't want more "stuff." Thankfully, I don't have this problem with too many of my friends.

I didn't start out with any plan to become a minimalist, I just never (or at least not since I was very young) liked clutter. This didn't start with my tiny house. Clutter stresses me out. Makes me feel like all of those items need cared for. Fills my space, time, life, and mind with junk. For years now I've gone through my belongings and if it wasn't something I used in the last three months, and wasn't a clearly seasonal item that I'd used in it's last season, like skis or a bike, it was out. Sold, given to someone who wanted it, or dropped off at our local equivalent of Goodwill.

Now I'm still not sure I'm a true minimalist. I have more than one outfit, lots of stuff in my kitchen, and in general, everything I want to be comfortable. I do find myself wanting far less stuff though than it seems much of this country does though. 

My exceptions to the rule that things had to be actively used were books, if they were very good or very old, houseplants, and photos. Those things are relatively useless, but are things I enjoy, so I kept them. And still do in my tiny house. Though some of the large plants had to go. I did have a beautiful fern that I'd raised from a tiny start to a 5 foot in diameter plant. That now resides in a friend's house since it would have filled nearly a quarter of my tiny house all by it's self.

But in general, I don't like having things that I don't use. And if you have a friend who feels this way, even if you don't understand the lack of things in their life and feel like they are missing out, please try to respect their lifestyle and "no thank you" when they say it.

Some of my favorite gifts I've been given that may give you ideas if you still want to gift something to someone you care about who doesn't want "stuff" are these. Even before living in a tiny space, these are the things that really meant a lot to me. Some I have received from close friends. Some from total strangers, thanks to having been a very active CouchSurfing host. There are a lot of very thoughtful people in the world! These kinds of things enrich my life, but do not add more clutter, or are consumed quickly.

Time with a close friend talking, eating, hiking, being, etc.

 Hugs. 

Someone willing to listen to me when I'm struggling.

Someone willing to leave me alone when I can't deal with anyone else.

Someone to hold me while I cry.

Letters, cards, or phone calls.

Photographs.

Fresh wild game meat, fish, veggies, or any food that is not processed junk. 

Toilet paper.

Gift cards to my local grocery store.

 A dinner out.

Flowers or plants (at least if they are not the monster size of that fern I used to have).

Candles.

Old books, the ones with brittle paper and that wonderful smell of old binding glue.

Bottles of wine.

Solar batteries.

Pampered Chef spatulas.

A Cutco chef's knife.

Rada pairing knives.

A beautiful handmaid wooden rolling pin.

A ticket - for a movie, show, flight, etc.
Crossfit membership.
Professional massage session.
Camera gear.
Chocolate. 
Candles.

This list won't apply to everyone you know, but may give you some ideas. These are all things I have actually received from people and been deeply grateful for. Thanks to all the wonderful people in my life who have given me the above!

Rain!

It rained here all day! A nice steady gentle rain that soaked everything with no lighting at all. This a good thing. 

Thanks to lots of rain early in the year, all the brush/grass/wildflowers are well over my head. Many plants topping 6 or 7 feet high. Even the grass along the lane in this photo is over 4 feet high. But now it's turning into fall and they were all dry as tinder, creating a massive wildfire danger. So much of the west is on fire already, if a big blaze started up here, we'd be in serious trouble. I am very thankful that for at least a little bit now, that shouldn't happen easily. 

Also, the rain has for at least a little while, washed the smoke that had settled all over the valley from other state's fires, out of the air. Letting me breath easier again. Hopefully we don't fill right back up with smoke, though that is likely. It's very nice to get a break to breath though. I love the western mountains, and have no desire to ever live anywhere else. But living here certainly has some different challenges than I grew up with in PA.

Canning in Fy Nyth

Have you ever wondered if you could still can things if you had a tiny house? Yes, it is possible! I made a whole bunch of pickles this week. Both dill and sweet. The cucumbers below came from my garden and there are babies still growing, but these were the only mature ones at the moment. Next year I'll have to plant more.

So I talked to our local grocer, and they ordered me 66 pounds of cukes!

I do have a pretty big kitchen for my little house, but this project filled it up!

I was able to use a lot of fresh dill from my garden for the dill pickles.

And did several batches of sweet pickles too. I ended up with about 35 quarts total.

Some of these will be going out as gifts to several friends, but I should be set on my pickle supple for the year. And I really like pickles!