Sustainable living

Newish Utility Cupboard

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Laura

A few days ago I took out the shelves that I had been using in the kitchen of THO.  I built them last summer out of left over lumber from the house construction but did not find them deep enough to be good practical storage for dishes and so forth. When I took them down I thought that they would make a really great utility cupboard for tiny building supplies such as nails and screws, extra hinges and thingamajiggers.  I decided to put it up on the South facing wall inside of the cloth porch.  Truthfully, I had this stuff in one of those big exterior use plastic storage bins with all the stuff like the big tarps, string, rope, chain, oil and so on, and this was a nuisance because the containers were constantly popping open and dumping.  Can you just about hear me cursing?

Only problem with the idea of repurposing this, is that I wanted to put it up high and and I was both too short and not quite strong enough to get them up there on my one and screw the things in.  So, it turned out good that my husband decided to come down to help me with this task on the weekend.  I held it up and he drilled it to the wall.  Bammo-presto, in a few seconds the job was well on it’s way!

After this, he put on some 1×3 to trim it up while I attached hinges to some left over 12 inch wide boards from the kitchen construction, for doors.  Oddly, I also had two hook and eye catches in the odds and ends that would eventually go in here, so I put one inside to hold door one closed and then I put the other one on to hook the two together.  I also coated them with lemon oil although I am not sure that this is strong enough for exterior use, but if they start to look ratty I will simply finish them later.

In future, I will have to stand on a step ladder to reach any of the small thingies in the newly reused cupboard – but even so, I think that this is markedly more practical, than having to root around and find them in the abyss outside!

The bonus is that the abyss itself, does not seem all that awful now either!  Funny how simple stuff makes life so much easier sometimes!

Categories: Off Grid, Ontario, Re-Use, Simple living, Sustainable living, Tiny House Ontario | Leave a comment

Big Bonny and Tree Hugger

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Laura

Bonny is a huge oak tree.  She lives near the end of my driveway, since long before my driveway, and since long before I existed.

When my girlfriend Colleen Murphy came to visit, she took a number of photos of her.  We also noticed a coon up in her branches and today when I walked the dogs, I found that the coon was scurrying around up there, so Bonny must be her home.  I took a couple of photos of Colleen with Bonny and wanted to share the joy!

FYI: At about five foot up Bonny’s circumference is about five metres; I guess at her base she is more like 8 -9 metres.  She is a real living giant.

Categories: Environmentalism, Forest, Friendship, Ontario, Open your eyes, Simple living, Sustainable living, View | 1 Comment

Funny Drawers

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Laura

This Tiny space under the stairs has been driving me insane!  It is about 4 square feet of floor space but only about 12 inches of not very functional (low) kitchen counter top.  The thing is, that I knew if I could put drawers in there, that they would be totally wonderful because they would quadruple the space.  It is a work in progress and eventually, I will inset a pull out cutting board right under the counter top.  My grandparents house had these and they are super practical because they make more counter space by just pulling them out.

Cupboards would be easier and less expensive to build, but I enjoy cooking and to do this, one needs to have ingredients.  Kitchen drawers are simply a lot more funtional than cupboards, particularly in a Tiny space.

I really did not know what to do, so I googled, Utubed and so forth until I found a super easy way to do it.  Then I started a little bit at a time.  I went to Rona about ten times to get stuff.  The men who work there were really nice to me and cut everything perfect!  The drawers run really smooth and when the front face gets on there none of the yucky understuff that I am showing you in these photos will show up.

Since today was the last day that I had the rental car, so I picked up the front boards and had them cut to size too, but I thought I would wait to do the rest in the morning because today I actually felt like catching up on my blog posts.  Perhaps I will finish the job tomorrow or the next day?

Categories: Simple living, Sustainable living, Tiny House Ontario | 2 Comments

Wired For Light

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Laura

For the past three days Hj and I have been busy installing the 12 volt lighting and power system at Tiny House Ontario.  Like a lot of work that I do at THO, it is a longer task than I had expected it to be.  This is due to two reasons.  First, I have to be very careful when removing the wooden walls so that I don’t split or spoil any of the boards, which worked out perfect so far.  Second my drill is old and not very powerful so drilling through the joists is not a fast thing to do.

We have installed four of the lights now.  We put them up in order of our perceived importance, so the main floor, front entryway, loft, and the cloth porch all have illumination.  Really bright: easy to read at night: see the lights as you come up the driveway, lighting!  I have to say that he LED yacht lights are great!  I would suggest to any off-grid person to put at least a couple of these in because you don’t need too much power to run them because they are straight up 12v and there is no inverter involved.  They are a little bit costly but very, very bright!  When I need to use the inverter, I will just plug this in!

My battery guy says that I have 6 times the power I need because of the awesome little LEDs!

You will notice in the bedroom that I maintained the LED battery operated lights.  I have not been too thrilled with these because the batteries have a short life with them, still I think because they are already there, I might as well keep them as back ups.  Then the Coleman LED camping lights are back ups of the back ups and then the flashlights are backups of these!  Hilarious really – but I want to be sure that the lighting really works as I am sure it will, for a year before I start purging the extra gear despite the space that it takes up.  Plus, for the bedroom the battery LED will be used to get up because it has a circular switch.  I can turn this on/off downstairs/upstairs whereas the yacht lights are simply switched at the surface.

It took a lot more 16 gauge wire than I thought.  I had to buy an additional 150 feet (!!!!).  The cost was $75 plus tax.  This means that it took 250 feet of the stuff to wire the little Tiny house!  That is about six times around the house!  There are only  seven lights and one outlet so the wire that was needed for the job was mind boggling to me.

I have to say, if my camera worked better I would love to take and share some photos of the exterior of THO because it looks positively cute as a button in the dark with its new lights on!

Categories: Forest, Off Grid, Stuff, Sustainable living, Tiny House Ontario, View | 4 Comments

Ubiquitous Assimilation

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Laura

What is ubiquitous assimilation?  This three minute clip from the 2011 film, Detachment sums up what it means really nicely.

I am pretty sure that no sensible person can argue about the fact that we live in a period of time where society suffers from ubiquitous assimilation in a way that is scarily similar to the Borg.

As a Tiny Houser, I would like to think that the Star Trek: Next Generation writers were wrong.  The Borg are science fiction characters, right?  Sadly, I don’t think the concept of them is really so far fetched.  I think that most people claim individualism but really, in this society, your distinctiveness is not assimilated into the group; Borgists of the world have their distinctiveness written over, disposed of, like an old floppy disk.

This Borgism applies heavily to the way that we live.  The marketing holocaust reaches into every area of our life right down to how we live.  Really, I would like to believe that we do not live in a world where everyone is not madly consuming stuff.  Taking way more than they need, building huge homes which they cannot afford, filling them with stuff that they also cannot afford… just because advertising, television, and social pressure are telling them that this will make them happy.  Assimilate, assimilate, assimilate… shop, shop, shop… CONSUME!

The crazy that is packed into this doublethink is lost on most people.  I can’t tell you how many people I have heard bragging about the fact that they LOVE to shop… Love to buy… Even LOVE to be capitalists!  Funny but these people never seem that happy.  The seem too busy, too rushed, with never enough time to sit for a coffee.  They don’t have time to enjoy any moments.  They explain that they “gotta get to work, gotta get to the mall… My life is too busy to stop” they say.

Ubiquitous assimilation/doublethink.

I encourage you to consider if any of this post applies to your own housing and/or your stuff collection situation.  Does this apply your life in any way at all?

I am not saying that you should all buy land, build a Tiny House and set up a farm.  This would be as absurdly Borgist (though not as wasteful or consumeristic) as the current big pile of crap in a big house.  When everyone does the same thing it is conformity.  a Tiny House may not fit your NEEDS.  I am not asking you all to mould yourself into something that does not fit you.

The current way of life for most of us in the (so called) developed world is not something that every person should want to do… still, they do it.  What I do ask is that you to consider is all that stuff really making you happy?  Or, is the way you live your life being constructed and ruled by marketing.  Are you living beyond your needs and if so, whom are you are making happy while complying with the ubiquitous assimilation to advertising and consumer culture?

It is obvious, that this constant assault of advertising has created huge social pressure because it has triggered in us the need to do better so that we can be measured by some artificially constructed corporate concept of success.  It is human nature (for most of us) to want to be accepted and looked up to, but are we doing this in a way that is truly giving us a better quality of life?  Are we happy?  Are you happy?

I ask you, have you been Borged or are you still an individual?

Too, if you have just now come to understand that you have been Borged, are you already so much a part of the corporate collective that you can no longer escape it and find your individual route?

Categories: Environmentalism, Family, Open your eyes, Simple living, Stuff, Sustainable living, Writing | 1 Comment