Smallest Space Lived in Happily

[Teacher Terry]

JP, my son can sleep through anything. He gets up by 6 am. Yes him and I get along great. He has been living with me since April because of the pandemic.

[jp1]

Thinking more about my tiny apartment in NYC, my upstairs neighbor who had the same layout, had plenty of room. By the time I moved out he had lived there about 10 years and the only furniture he had was a sleeper sofa, a table height wide dresser that sat opposite it and on which he had a tv, a small bookcase, and a small table/chairs in the 10 x 10 kitchen. He was almost ultralight level minimalist, so he just didn't need a bigger place.

It would actually be kind of cool to go back to such a simple life like I first had there, but I'll never be able to commit to the level of decluttering necessary. The only way it will ever happen is if we have the unfortunate experience of this place burning down. There's plenty of stuff that we have that may get used from time to time (the box of orphaned computer cables for instance...) that wouldn't get replaced if we had to start from scratch with furnishing a place.

[razz]

In the 1950's when we moved into the farmhouse that I grew up in, water was drawn from an artesian well by a hand pump, the usual outhouse and the only indoor toilet was upstairs using a wooden throne with a bucket underneath that needed regular emptying. Within a year, my parents installed plumbing including a bathroom.
It was a rugged 2-storey large brick house beautifully built but most people on farms of that time used outhouses and indoor thrones.
I find it funny how many people today cannot imagine that life was like that and in many places still around the world.

[jp1]

In the 1950's when we moved into the farmhouse that I grew up in, water was drawn from an artesian well by a hand pump, the usual outhouse and the only indoor toilet was upstairs using a wooden throne with a bucket underneath that needed regular emptying. Within a year, my parents installed plumbing including a bathroom.
It was a rugged 2-storey large brick house beautifully built but most people on farms of that time used outhouses and indoor thrones.
I find it funny how many people today cannot imagine that life was like that and in many places still around the world.

Indeed. My grandparents' house was crazy primitive by today's standards. The electric pumped well that they had produced the most "flavorful" water I've ever tasted. And eventually produced water with so much iron in it that it looked more like V8 juice than water, so they spent the money to join the recently installed county water system in the mid-80's. And their electric service was pretty minimal with literally just a two circuit fuse box for the whole house. Basically one or two outlets in each room downstairs and in the two bedrooms upstairs the only electricity was one bare lightbulb in the ceiling of each room, activated by a pull chain on the fixture. They had strung a strip of old sheet from one to the bottom of the stairs so that one didn't have to climb the stairs in the dark. Seriously, they were so frugal that they didn't even spend money on a proper string or rope. When, in the mid-80s around the same time they joined the county water system, they decided to get central air for the four downstairs rooms they had to have a bigger transformer installed because the a/c unit was going to draw too much electricity.

[rosarugosa]

I think I told this story here once before but I'm happy to tell it again.

We lived way out in the middle of nowhere Missouri surrounded by cotton fields and the occasional soybean crop. Our outhouse was attached to a fairly large shed which also doubled as a chicken coop, there was a 55 gallon drum behind the shed which we used to burn trash. My mother sent me out with a paper bag filled with household trash and one kitchen match to burn it with. One of the items in the bag was a pair of pants that had apparently been patched enough times to not bother with another. When I started the trash fire, one leg of the pants was hanging over the edge of the barrel and I noticed that the leg which was inside was burning nicely. I grabbed the outside leg and pulled the burning leg out of the drum and waved the pants around over my head a few times just watching the flames. Now of course a burning section of fabric separated itself from the pants and flew into a pile of straw against the back wall of the shed and before I knew it, the entire shed and accompanying outhouse were in flames.

The closest fire department was about 20 miles away and we didn't have a phone to call them anyway. That fire did empty the fields for miles around as farm workers abandoned their work and headed towards the smoke they could see in the distance. All those fine folks began a bucket brigade from our well to the house, keeping it doused well enough to keep it from burning too.

My dad was picking cotton in Texas that month and it took nearly a week before one of his uncles showed up with a hammer, a saw and a box of nails to construct a new outhouse out of scrap wood. That thing was ugly, drafty and leaked terribly when it rained, but it beat nothing.

Thanks for indulging us, Alan.

[frugal-one]

I know Alan is younger than I am and the only people I know who had outhouses were my parents years before I was born probably in the 40s or earlier? It just seems unfathomable to me. It sounds as though he came from a very poor family. Was that in the Ozarks?

BTW in the last month we updated our electric fuse box to a circuit breaker up to 100 amp service and buried all lines. House was built in the 40s. Thought it would be wise since we don't plan on staying winters in the future. If it storms tree branches could bring the lines down. The city water here also has loads of lead. We filter it out.

As a very small child I remember not having a central heating system and standing in front of the "furnace" to get dressed because it was so cold. That seems unfathomable now too.

[rosarugosa]

I'm 62, and when I was a kid (guessing around 10 or so) we visited some households in Maine where the only bathroom facilities were outhouses. This was on Deer Isle.

[razz]

Coming back to the OP's question...

IMHO, you need to decide what your absolute priorities are in a list, those which are flexible and coming back to the earlier observation, what place makes you sing.

As I think about all the diverse dwellings that I have lived in, I realize that each of us can adapt provided that those absolute priorities are met.

As a result of this discussion, I now understand better why my list of 15 absolute priorities was so easy to develop, the house was so easy to find and my utter contentment in the decision I made.

[Alan]

I know Alan is younger than I am and the only people I know who had outhouses were my parents years before I was born probably in the 40s or earlier? It just seems unfathomable to me. It sounds as though he came from a very poor family. Was that in the Ozarks?

Believe it or not there's probably a great deal you'd find unfathomable if you base everything on what you've personally seen. Yes, my family was poor and no we weren't in the Ozarks.

As a very small child I remember not having a central heating system and standing in front of the "furnace" to get dressed because it was so cold. That seems unfathomable now too.

When my family moved into town in 1965, we had a furnace set into the floor in the center of the house with a 2'x2' grate you had to step over when coming out of the bathroom, otherwise you'd burn your feet if you were barefoot, just out of the bath. I loved it though because it beat the hell out of bathing in a wash tub in the kitchen after drawing the water a bucket at a time from the well using a hand pump and then heating it on the kitchen stove. Then, if you wanted to warm yourself you had to stand by the coal stove in the living room because there was no furnace. My mother still lives in that little 800 sq ft house, the only one she'd ever lived in with running water. It has central heat and even central air now as part of the re-build after suffering a great deal of tornado damage in the late 80's or early 90's.

Given that you didn't know anyone living that way I'd have to say you were quite fortunate, but on the other hand I feel sorry for you too, for not experiencing enough of life to know otherwise.

[SteveinMN]

As a result of this discussion, I now understand better why my list of 15 absolute priorities was so easy to develop, the house was so easy to find and my utter contentment in the decision I made.

When I was living in the efficiency apartment, I knew I very likely would end up living in a house (mine or a possible future MrsSteveinMN's was the question). But figuring it probably would be just me for a while, I created my list of must-haves and nice-to-haves. The house I bought (the place we're still in now) ticked almost every box (missed out on "nice view" and I would have chosen a color other than yellow but similar homes in this neighborhood show me that yellow was one of the better choices). I'm still quite happy living here.

The place does not tick every one of DW's boxes, though she's slowly coming around (another couple of decades and she'll love the place ). We can't really fix what she doesn't like about the house (she claims the house is "too dark" but her preference is for operating-room levels of light and that's not going to happen) and it serves us better on many levels (location, finances, etc.) to stay here.

The point of my ramble, though, is that by taking a good amount of time to evaluate criteria, you can honor your absolute priorities and make a choice you won't soon regret.