Hey

[Bacawind]

I'm a wife and mother to three grown children. I'm in search of new ideas. I seem to have crossed into a "too extreme" area. I'm having trouble finding thought provoking concepts.

I was searching the internet the other day and ended up at the post, "How many kitchen appliances do you have?" on this forum. I was drawn to the openness of the conversation, and the explanations people had for their answers. It made me think about, not only what kitchen appliances I have, but why do I have them, and mostly, is there another way.

I thought, this might be a place where I could tell others I compost humanure and make my own Family Cloths. Maybe I could tell people we got rid of our dishwasher, washing machine, oven, and bathroom sink because we didn't use them. And maybe they'd understand. Heck, maybe some of them do it to and can offer tips and feedback!

I hope I'm right. It's lonely being weird. lol

[catherine]

You are right! Please join in the discussion. We may not all compost humanure but we each come from different "places" bonded by a desire to live out simple living in a way that's meaningful to us. Our lifestyles are very diverse, but we all enjoy sharing our experiences with each other.

You can stop being weird here--or at least, you're the kind of weird we appreciate!

Welcome!

[Selah]

Welcome, Bacawind! Far from being labelled as weird here, you are more likely to spur the rest of us on to thinking even more deeply and openly about other ways we can simplify our lives and lighten our steps on Mother Earth. Can I ask, what do you do for cooking without an oven? You have my curiosity piqued!

[onlinemoniker]

Are you saying you saw that post on this site or another?

If you do all that stuff you mentioned and you're on this site, I think you're fine. Many people here do some or all of what you're mentioning and probably many do a lot more--and even weirder.

Hope this sets your mind at ease.

[Teacher Terry]

There is also Mr Money Mustache and the Prudent Homemaker sites. Welcome:)

[kib]

My first day back in three months and there are Pee Towels? YAY!!!

Lol. Sorry, Bacawind. I'm a bit of an extremist too, to the occasional eye-rolling sighs of my fellow simple livers. I haven't been brave enough to try humanuring, but I really want to. As it is, I compost almost everything else, don't use our dishwasher, hang dry our clothes... I was a lot more 'out there' before I got married, but I still do what I can. Welcome to the boards, I think you'll find many kindred souls here.

[pcooley]

We had a humanure system going, but my son, who was very young at the time, would not keep the bathroom door closed, and the dogs would go excavating in there. I finally gave it up. We do, however, have a worm composting bin in the kitchen.

[iris lilies]

I could live without an oven. I could and have lived without a dishwasher, when I was single.

DH is a huge consumer of dishes. Also, he is the baker in the house and would not live without an oven.

I remember Nan from many years ago on this board. She had a husband and two boys. She did not have a stove. She cooked using a slow cooker, perhaps a hot plate (?) and probably a BBQ grill.

[Bacawind]

Thanks all yall for the warm welcome! :thankyou: I guess I've written so many forum intros in hopes of finding people open to alternatives, only to be disappointed, that I may have been too brief. So here's "me" in a nutshell.

We live in the southeast corner of Colorado in a 100 year old rock house. Our nearest neighbor is a mile away, the next is 6 miles away. There are no traffic lights in our county. It's 30 miles to town, 90 miles to a Wal-Mart, 150 miles to a Home Depot, mall, or interstate ramp.

We have 6 dogs, with a combined total weight of 550 pounds. Great Dane, Mastiff, Great Pyrenees and their mixes, and a little Beagle mix.

I work part time in town, my husband works from home. My other part-of-the-time I work with my husband.

We are vegan. cow-hi But I have raised livestock.

Gardening here is hard. We just built a sunroom, so this will be the first year of indoor gardening. I'm optimist!

We have a toaster oven, an induction burner, and a little brick oven outside, like a rocket stove type thing. When the kitchen oven's top coil died, we just pulled the oven out. We tend to do things like that. When the stove burner went out, we questioned why we needed a four-burner stove.

When the dog ate the couch, we questioned if we really wanted a couch. We have since gotten rid of all our furniture except a few tables, and chairs.

We never used the bathroom sink and I needed the space for my toilet bucket, so out went the sink.

We don't use detergents, commercial soap, shampoo, or conditioner. I do use baking soda, vinegar, homemade soap, coconut oil, lemon juice, you know, kind of crunchy. I make washing soda from baking soda. I do have borax, bleach, and Dawn in the house, for rare emergencies when I absolutely have to do something stronger than what I'd like to use. This is a huge pain, since I reclaim my greywater, so I very rarely use them.

The dishwasher water supply needed to be hooked up, but then we wondered why. We'd been fine without a dishwasher, so we just took it out.

We took out the floor furnace. It wasn't efficient and we kept it off most of the time. We only regularly heat our office and adjoining bedroom. We use small heaters in the bathroom and the winter kitchen as needed.

The drain in the summer kitchen needed replaced, but then I realized, I can just take it off and put buckets under the sink to take out as greywater. The winter kitchen doesn't have a drain at all, we just use a bucket.

Our bed seemed so big and bulky, it took up so much room, so we just put our mattress on the floor. We put swing hinges on the doors, and a really big doggy door in, so the dogs can come and go when they want. Wheels turning? How do you sleep on the floor with so many large dogs? It gets even more interesting....

We got tired of our office desks, chairs, so much stuff! So now we sit on the floor, our computers on little desks or on shelves on the wall.

The washing machine wouldn't drain. But I'd been doing laundry by hand off and on for years. I hate washing machines. I figure the drain hose is black because they don't want you to know how dirty the water is leaving the final rinse. If you knew, you'd want to hand wash! So no washing machine. We still have a clothes dryer but we seldom use it, only when it's really cold in the winter kitchen and I happen to have something needing dried.

This led to another of many closet guttings. My on-hand clothes are in three sweater boxes. The rest, off season and rare occasion clothes, are packed away in the basement. The basement is gone through every spring and fall, most things not used or missed in 6 months go away.

So far we haven't regretted anything we've done, and at most we may replace something by down sizing it. Like the oven to a toaster oven.

A few years ago I started questioning clothing. it's come up in my mind for time to time, but I haven't done anything major. I'm no seamstress, if I was I would have probably been able to wrap my head around an idea better. My thoughts go something like, what if clothing was made by fabric and round bands of elastic? What if I had an assortment of various sized elastic bands, and various pieces of material, and draped the material over the bands? I'm still trying to figure out underwear. I've tried a loincloth, it was too bulky and uncomfortable. Back to the drawing board.

I was searching the Internet for simpler ways of living, came across a site that lead me here, then I saw the post. They hadn't copied it or anything.

I had a similar dog experience may years ago. I didn't dig my hole deep enough. It was a good life learning experience for me! LOL I would like to learn more about worm composting. It's on my to-do list, I should get on that.

So that's probably more than anyone wants to know about me. :)

[pcooley]

It sounds like you fit right in. I first started worm composting after seeing an article about the flow kitchen in Ready Made magazine. The flow kitchen is here: http://www.studiogorm.com/flow_kitchen.html. It's such a neat idea. Ready Made suggested using a worm factory (http://www.naturesfootprint.com/worm-factory), (and some other things that emulated the kitchen, but which would have been a major pain for us). You can, of course, build your own box for composting worms, but in terms of something you would want in your kitchen, the worm factory works well. Our only problem is fruit flies. I've added nematodes to the bin, but we still have fruit fly outbreaks. I like to think that they're just an indication that the way we live is conducive to life. I'm lucky that my wife and kids indulge me. My kids are adamant, however, about resisting the return of the bucket toilet. I guess it's hard enough being my teenage children without their friends having to s**t in a bucket when they come over.

[Bacawind]

Thanks for the ideas!

Our kids are all in their 20's now. Your kids should talk to our kids about how to live with embarrassing parents!

Our winter kitchen is very similar to the flow kitchen! Just more....rustic? lol

I think when I was looking at worms before that was my hesitation, what to do in the winter. Seems I was thinking of taking them to the basement. I have more research to do.

[SteveinMN]

Welcome, Bacawind! DW and I do not live quite so far "out there" (literally; we live on a standard lot within city limits) but I've seen on this Web site that living simply means different things to different people, so there certainly is room out there for both my/DW's and your definitions of "simple". I look forward to your participation here -- I enjoy the kind of challenges you and DH have posed to yourselves.

[Gardenarian]

Hi Bacawind!
A humanure question - I live on a regular sized suburban lot (75'x100'.) If I were to do a sawdust type humanure toilet, would I have enough space to let it compost? Do you put it in with your regular compost?
Oh, and Welcome!

[Bacawind]

You should read the Humanure Handbook (http://humanurehandbook.com/) by Joseph Jenkins. There are several editions (and I think all are free now) on the website. They have a forum too.

Here's another great site, I've gotten a lot of ideas from this site and incorporated them into our home. It's Living outside The Box (http://www.omick.net/composting_toilets/bucket_barrel_toilet.htm) (I hope I'm doing these links right) Be sure to scroll down and read their new updated toilet, and they're home page. I really want to try the 55 gallon barrel plan. We are currently experimenting with kitchen scraps in 5 gallon buckets. I've also done dog poop in 5 gallon buckets.

I foresee your biggest problem being zoning, but some places are more open to it than others.

I put regular compost in with humanure. We have 3 pits, about 5 feet deep, about 3 ft in diameter, that we put humanure (urine is separate), kitchen scraps, leaves, etc., in. We fill the pit, dig out the oldest one, like you would with a compost pile. Depending on timing (we age humanure a year or more, depending on where it's going) the oldest pit will go to an above ground compost bin, or into direct use.

But our living situation is different, we live on the prairie. We tried normal compost bins but the wind, heat and lack of precipitation (avg 13.9 in/year) made it impossible. This is a place that when the septic man comes to pump out your tank, he dumps it in the pasture. Within a week you can't even tell anything was dumped, aside from the grass growing there. Our house was built without running water, needless to say no bathroom. Chamber pots and outhouses are not in the too distant past around here.

You won't have our issues. I think Jenkins and Omick would say it's certainly do-able for you. Good Luck!