How we went from $42,000 to $6,500 and lived to tell about it!

[Beekissed]

Hey! I grew up with an outhouse! Ours had a pink, pearly seat, carpeting and a sky-light....no joke! It was still stinky, though.....

When we first moved there we had a two-holer. I have one of those in my back yard right now, but the second hole is toddler sized! It's so cute!

When I was young, everyone had an outhouse unless they lived in town...and even some of those had outhouses.

On a cold winter morning, it was torture waiting to see who would go out first to warm the seat. I sometimes took a towel to line the seat with so that I wouldn't have to sit on the frost.

I'm glad I still have one....one never knows if they will need a toilet that doesn't require electricity to pump water to flush.

 

[FarmerDenise]

Some of the apartment houses in Germany had what amounted to an outhouse. One family friend had one in their building. It was so nasty. I preferred to go into an ally and pee quickly and then run back upstairs to the friend's apartment.
When we moved to the country, grandma's house had an outhouse and that is what we used until the the new well was dug and the plumbing got hooked up. When my family started building our house up the hill, we dug a trench and used it for a while. We moved into the house in the winter, before it was finished. There was an old outhouse across the street (on a dirt road that was closed during the winter). It was so hard to get yourself dressed and out into the freezing cold to go to the bathroom. Especially in a storm or at night. We kept buckets in our rooms for emergencies
Once the first toilet was installed inside, we filled buckets with water to flush it. We had the well, but all the plumbing had not been hooked up yet. We had to wait for the weather to warm up, so the new pipes wouldn't freeze in our unfinished house.

Fortunately we could go down to grandma's house for showers. We also took showers at school.

 

[old fashioned]

There is something about being a little kid and having to go to that dark and stinky outhouse with that big hole. And sometimes there was no paper either

There were some that we had to use the Sears or Montgomery Wards catalog pages as tp. It really sucked when there was none.

 

[old fashioned]

Hey! I grew up with an outhouse! Ours had a pink, pearly seat, carpeting and a sky-light....no joke! It was still stinky, though.....

When we first moved there we had a two-holer. I have one of those in my back yard right now, but the second hole is toddler sized! It's so cute!

When I was young, everyone had an outhouse unless they lived in town...and even some of those had outhouses.

On a cold winter morning, it was torture waiting to see who would go out first to warm the seat. I sometimes took a towel to line the seat with so that I wouldn't have to sit on the frost.

I'm glad I still have one....one never knows if they will need a toilet that doesn't require electricity to pump water to flush.

You are rich! two holers? pink, pearly seat? carpeting? SKYLIGHT?? I always had to laugh when someone put in a tree car freshner, I never thought it really worked. Except to smell "freshened poop"

 

[Beekissed]

For those who can do it, instead of thinking too big and chasing after more money to find happiness and security, the answer can truly be summed up in the words of the Greek philosopher, Diogenes: "True freedom is in the minimum of needs."

I like the last line of the article and I have found this to be so true. There is really no security on this earth....not really. To believe that there is is a big fallacy. You can store up foods, bank up money, you can even buy up some great health insurance....but there really is no insurance against life and the things that happen while you are living it.

I often yearn for the off-grid life and I haven't ruled it out, even yet. For now, I'll live on the edge of it and prepare to jump over the line if things get a lot tougher. It's a little bit of comfort to me to know that I can and have done it before, so it's not as daunting to me as to most folks. I rather enjoyed it....stinky outhouses and all!

 

[old fashioned]

I agree. Some of my fondest memories were with people that were off grid. Outhouses, wood cook stoves, etc. They did have running water and 110 electricity, just no septic or 220. I've even helped do laundry with a wringer washer out in the yard and hung it out to dry. I tried a few years ago to hang out some laundry and it was stiff as a board. I don't remember that happening when I was a kid, so I think it had to do with the chemicals the city puts in the water supply. Or my memory is confused.
Personally, if I could I'd be as off grid as possible, but that would mean putting a bomb under DH to get him to move and realize doing things "MY" way isn't so bad after all. I would still have to have running water (I'm NOT packin buckets from a stream to do dishes, laundry or baths), and lights.
Oh well, one never knows what the future holds. If economy doesn't get better soon, I might get my way after all.....

 

[FarmerChick]

I read this article before in a few places.

I would like to know the rest of the story also. While it always sounds so wonderful....I want to know the real and honest financials on this..LOL

And then, you MUST want this lifestyle.

Not everyone who loses jobs, go into financial debt wants to chuck their current lifestyle and go into the country and live on no money.

So it is what the person wants definitely.

If I "lost it all" I would be trying to find jobs to rebuild what I lost ---not to the extreme I had it, but I wouldn't be willing to accept a low income and just get by in life. (Now that is ME...lol....many might want to do it.)


I like reading stories like this but my mind always says this would never be for me personally. One good thing out of stories like this is someone, somehow got what they wanted...lol

 

[lorihadams]

We had an outhouse when I was a kid and I locked my brother in there once.....he was terrified!!! Screamed his bloody head off. It was funny then but I'm sure if it had been the other way round I'd have been pretty scared too, it was dark in there. To this day he won't use a port-a-potty...........

 

[hikerchick]

That article is a thinly disguised advertisement. They are touting poverty as if it were a virtue while trying to rake in bucks selling you their bread scheme. What a huckster.

 

[hwillm1977]

We had an outhouse when I was a kid and I locked my brother in there once.....he was terrified!!! Screamed his bloody head off. It was funny then but I'm sure if it had been the other way round I'd have been pretty scared too, it was dark in there. To this day he won't use a port-a-potty...........

Here's a good outhouse story for ya:

My grandparents live in a little cottage, with one fuse, wood heat, they hand pump water, and have an outhouse (which we call the biffy). Grandma is in her late 80's now, but she still pumps water with a hand pump. If they want to bathe they heat the water on the woodstove, and bathe quick! You can only have one lightbulb on at a time in the house, and all the lights have to be off to turn the hotplate on

My grandmother lost her diamond engagement ring in 1953... she had no idea where it went, and they turned the house upside down looking for it.

Forty-three years later, while cleaning out the biffy (which they did every year), Grandma saw something shiny... turns out her engagement ring had fallen of her finger and into the biffy, and there it sat for 4 decades. She took it to a jeweller for cleaning and wears it everyday