Laundry. What is so great about laundry? Dirty laundry is not very nice and if you don't do it very often it can really become a smelly situation. Here on our little hill, which I call "Strawhill", we don't get to do laundry all that often, and depending on the weather it can be sometimes 3 to 4 weeks before we get to do the wash. One really does take having running water for granted until you have to 'run to town' to get the water, not the kind of running we are accustom to. What determines if we can get enough water to do laundry? Weather of course, weather or not it is freezing-frozen hoses don't work to well, rain-creates such mud that we can't get up our hill with the truck , much less with 250 gals of water. We have been having beautiful weather this last week and our mud hill is mostly dried out.....weather report: SNOW ....so we (rather I) had better get the laundry caught up so we can get the water tank filled back up (Kirks job).
Now it is rather important for 2 things to happen when you have to do laundry this way, besides running to get water. First, you have to have alot of cloths, think about that one. Second, you must wear your cloths more then once, some of them are changed once they can stand up by themselves....VBG. Really, none of this wearing them once and tossing them in the laundry.
It has been 3 weeks since I last did laundry, and I did 6 loads including sheets and rugs (rugs, now there is a topic).
Another issue of not having running water, is showers..........oh I love my HOT, LONGGGGGG showers, sometimes twice a day. No, not, nada. Now we are not the one shower (bath) a week type as you can see, but depending on what we have been doing, twice maybe 3 times a week and short little showers. I must tell you though, that this is an improvement......when we were residing in the 5th wheel the hot water tank was only 5 gals, now I have 40 gals so I do get to wash my hair twice and instead of a 4 min shower I take about 8 minutes. Improvements!
No, I don't have a dish washer anymore, except me of course, but I am not minding that, gives me a chance to get the dirt out from under my fingernails.
Toilet? You wonder if we have a flush one, yep....but that has not always been the case. When we first started this homesteading thing, we realized that we would not have this item. We had the 5th wheel of course and it has its head, but you have to dump that thing and it is 23 miles, one way, to the nearest dump station, which means alot if you have ever moved one of those puppies. So, we started looking into compost toilets, and we found the bucket. What is a bucket? A bucket compost toilet, it uses sawdust or ashes, you put a layer over your deposit each time and it really works, no smell whatsoever. Ok, that is all well and good but where do you put a bucket in a cramped trailer? You don't, so it goes outside.....which worked out just fine where we are located, we put it out back where no one could see, except maybe the deer, it was really quit nice one really could enjoy the stars on night visits. All went well as long as the batteries in the flash light worked and it didn't rain. The rains did come so we moved the bucket under the part of the trailer where the 5th wheel is and that was fine, too until it started getting colder and colder, and we had plywood proped around for some privacy and we could park the truck or quad around for this purpose too. Does this ring of REDNECK to anyone, LOL. Then another problem besides the cold came along, it is call HUNTING SEASON...so it was time to move the 5th wheel to a better position where we could put the bucket inside the shop, which was now up and inclosed, besides it would be closer to where we were working and we wouldn't be using the gas in the quad to go back and forth. So we moved and we bucketed in the shop, behind things to give a little privacy. Ok now I can hear you asking the question, how do you sit on a bucket? We built a little box to go around the bucket and attached a seat, the bucket is inside. So when we finially got "indoor plumbing" we were quit excited, we moved up in the world. We have not retired the bucket, cause sometimes nature speaks to us both at the same time. LOL. Don't worry though, if you come to visit, you can use the indoor plumbing.
So you see, sometimes it is the small things that mean the most, because they really are not that small after all.
Watch for PART II of Its the small things.
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