My Interview with Ethan of the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast

Ethan Waldman did me the honor of interviewing me. I had followed Ethan for some time as he devolped his informative blogging about the many flavors of tiny house living. So when he asked for stories from people who had bought a partially built rig and what the advantages of outfitting a tiny house at this stage offered, I wrote to him my answer and offered to give an interview. We did not end up focusing on this aspect of my tiny house experience, but on other aspects I had created that was unique to my set-up. It was interesting to see what such an expert on the lifestyle found unique in mine. He also gave a very nice presentation on his podcast page with pictures he chose from this blog. Have a look and listen. https://www.thetinyhouse.net/amanda-kovattana/

Power and Refrigeration

My solar power system has stood me in good stead for three years now, though the battery pack is fading. If the sun doesn’t shine I may not have power the next day. I had to replace both the inverter and the controller along the way. I got the exact same components as I had before, but when the inverter died again, after a little over two years, I decided to look for something better. My freezer had also died the month before causing me to question why. My old inverter was a modified sine wave model and this might have had an impact on shortening the life of the freezer, so I went looking for a pure sine wave model among all the cheaper Chinese imports. It took me an entire evening until midnight to read all the reviews and watch YouTubers give their opinion until I found and settled on a beefy looking Xijia 3200 watt inverter with four sockets. Thank you to all the geek brothers out there reviewing equipment in such detail.

My next project will be replacing the battery pack. I am reluctant to go to lithium even though they are supposed to last longer. I worry about all the lithium being strip mined in Africa. We, at least, seem to have lots of lead which can be recovered. I do have a couple of portable lithium battery packs to tide me over and a couple of strings of Christmas lights I plug into the packs for on board lighting. As long as I have power for my computer and modem I can remain in residence, it doesn’t matter if the freezer isn’t running for a night. It just becomes a fridge temporarily. I can’t keep ice-cream in it, but otherwise can live with it. I am still able to get ice from it for my cooler. 

In the summer when I eat more salads I keep lettuce and other veggies in a vegibag that I keep wet. This is basically a Terry cloth bag that is meant to be used in the fridge, but it will keep food fine if hung inside the tiny house or kept hanging up in a net shopping bag.

I’ve become a lot more relaxed about storing food. As long as the temperature in the cooler is 50° or less its cool enough to keep food from going bad, despite the dire warning on my temperature gage. In the past people kept their food cool by floating containers such as mason jars full of food in a stream. They would also dig underground chambers called root cellars to store food longterm. I have has containers of yogurt grow a bit of mold in the summer and the cheese too, but otherwise no serious food harm was manifested.

Heating and Cooling

One of the reasons I wanted to live in a tiny house was to find out what such a lifestyle would teach me. What I learned is that we don’t ask much of ourselves when it comes to external temperatures. We are used to a controlled household temperature of 68°. I heat my house with my buddy heater only when I really feel the cold. I upgraded from the (Little Buddy because the button on the Little Buddy was so hard to hold down with just my thumb.) By waiting until this point I have taught myself how to keep warm by putting on more clothes, by always wearing a warm hat, by drinking hot tea and insulating my hammock. My body also becomes acclimated to the cold and I find that I don’t have to heat the house until the temperature drops down to the mid ‘50s. And when I’m sleeping I’m fine under the covers down to 49°. 

I have also kept up with using my flower pot heater. It dries out the air, is a nice hand warmer, offers a warm glow as a night light and seems to keep the temperature from dropping as quickly once I turn off my buddy heater. I just let the candles burn all night. I made my own jar candles in my solar oven, melting down my collection of used candles that clients and friends would give me. When I finally exhausted this source, I upgraded to buying bags of soy wax. The soy wax burns nicely with much less soot so it keeps the house from getting so dusty. The homemade candles stay lit better than the votives I could buy because the wick I use is thicker. I can make candles during the summer in my solar oven or by boiling water on the stove at my support house. 

In the summer, temperatures have gotten hotter too. I got myself a little fan and a spray bottle. Also a large polyester scarf I use when traveling worked very well to turn myself into a swamp cooler. I just got it wet, wrung it out and threw it over my head. The fan blowing on me created the cooling effect.

Off-Grid Laundry

During the pandemic lockdown, I had limited access to a support house, so I developed my tiny house laundry facility. It is fun to do laundry on a hot day. Plus you can reuse the water for thirsty plants. I tried a lot of different clothes washing equipment before I found what worked for hand washing. The hand crank tumbling washer called a WonderWash did not impress me though it looked good in the catalog. It was too complicated to get water hot enough to create pressure in the chamber The lid had to be screwed on and off which was not really worth the effort for this supposed pressurized effect. It didn’t hold very much and had to be emptied carefully so water wouldn’t run all over the counter. I also tried a washboard, but that was time consuming to apply to every item individually so I keep a small glass one for collars and cuffs. What did work was the plunger style hand washer made from galvanized metal, but the metal would rust if it wasn’t dried carefully and mine would fall off the handle regularly. Finally someone thought to make a plastic version with a firmly attached handle and that is what I use for agitation in a five gallon bucket. I mostly soak the clothes in half a bucket of water with the soap and give it a plunge or two every time I walk by as I’m doing other things. I save that water for another load and transfer the clothes to another five gallon bucket to rinse in a bit more water so the clothes can move freely. I do about three rinses.

For wringing out wet clothes, I loved the hand crank vintage rolling dryers that pressed the water from your clothes, but it’s hard to use. It really takes two pairs of hands. One to feed the clothes into the mangler and one to crank the clothes through, plus it took quite a bit of strength and didn’t really wring the clothes out as much as I would’ve liked for the effort. I sold mine back to bay.

As I browsed for ideas I tried the double bucket system for the DIY savvy. One bucket I drilled full of holes. That’s where you put your dripping wet clothes. Then the second bucket is put into the first bucket and by sitting on this second bucket I could squeeze quite a lot of water from the clothes. I had a shallow garden trug to put the bucket in so I could keep the bucket clean and save the water that was wrung out.

I also found that the Asian market really had this down for apartment dwellers with a hand crank spin dryer. It works a lot like a salad spinner. I got myself one of these nifty machines and got my workout pulling on the handles to operate the spinning mechanism. The clothes came out dryer than they did from the old washing machine at my mothers. 

A vintage style drying rack was my go to for many years, but when I set it up outside a strong wind could blow it over. I could weight it down, but I found something else. A bungee corded cargo net for strapping luggage onto the roof of your car could be stretched from tree limbs and weighted down with lengths of pipe. Then I just hung my socks and underwear in the holes of the netting. Shirts and pants I dried on hangers I could hang in the tree. It was easier to store than a folding rack too. All the equipment could be stashed in a big storage box.

I could also iron clothes inside the tiny house with a small ironing board I could lay on top of my pull out cutting table. I used a travel iron. When you have to go to this much trouble to clean your clothes you tend to wear the same clothes quite a bit more. Thus having one's own labor invested automatically reduced the tendency to use water and energy. 

The Dtao of Poop Update

Of all the aspects of my tiny house living that people are most curious about, longterm, is my composting toilet. Yes, I am still using the Bokashi fermenting system to process my poop. It works great. I really only have to process it every six weeks or so. I have devised a routine and have set up a poop processing station here at my current location.

The usual practice is to bury the contents in a trench in the ground. Curiously one of the effects of this burial is that for a month or so nothing grows where it was buried. Thus it is an effective weed killer. I think the acidity of the fermentation is what does it. Nowadays I seldom dig a trench because I’ve run out of places where I can dig as I have more of my garden laid out. Also in the summer months the ground is so dried out, it is too hard to dig into the ground. So I get help from the gophers. Every week I collect the soil from their mounds in a bucket and take it to my composting station to use as a cover. 

For processing the poop I use an old plastic tub, the kind with rope handles. I made a few holes in the bottom and put it under an oak tree where any liquid can drain into the ground and into the leaf litter. In fact the contents of the bucket is mostly liquid so I pour off the liquid first into a large planting pot which allows the liquid to flow though the drainage holes in several different directions at once. What is left in the bottom is a sludge I put into the tub. But first I cover the bottom of the tub with a layer of the gopher soil to give the sludge something to work with. As I pour I stop to add more soil until the sludge is totally mixed with soil and is no longer visible to the eye. 

All that is left to do is to rinse out the bucket. I also have a dedicated brush to scrub the inside a bit so I have a nice clean bucket to take back into the house. I put two gallons of rainwater from my rain catchment system into the bucket and I’m back in business. 

I leave the poop in the processing tub alone for a couple of weeks at least. The resulting soil is very nutritious for plants. You cannot detect any poop in it all. I use it to refresh the soil in my planter boxes between seasons or spread it over the hillside on top of the grass during the late summer when all the grass is dead and cut down. In terms of soil restoration I am doing what a herd of cows would be doing as they graze a pasture. 

I also add urine to the soil on a regular basis. The urine tank needs to be emptied every two or three days. I empty the tank into a three gallon bucket inside the house. Then I pour some into a watering can and dilute it with three or four times the water. In the summer months this is how I water my plants. I don’t use any urine water where I’ve planted radishes as it keeps the radishes from forming a bulb. I learned this from another off-grid homesteader. The rest of the garden does great with this ongoing drink of nutrients. 

For the winter months during heavy rains I have dug a trench alongside my garden beds. I filled the trench with manure from the pile across the street where my neighbor, who keeps a horse, has helpfully created such a pile to offer to gardeners. This trench is where I pour undiluted urine and diswhashing water when it rains or I have excess water. Storing water in the soil is what we want to do to contribute to the rain cycle and soil restoration. 

I also ferment urine for it has many uses as a cleaner when it becomes ammonia. This ammonia works for cleaning the shower pan in my tiny house. I have also used it to soak my clothes when doing laundry. It helps to lift the ring around the collar when I go to scrub it with Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap. I have even washed out a paintbrush with urine and liquid soap. A paintbrush I use with wood preservative. To find out more about my discoveries with urine and it’s many uses for healing and personal care, check out my book The Girls' Guide To Off Grid Living. 

My Off Grid Living Memoir Published!

During the pandemic lockdown I lived in my tiny house full time which allowed me to explore more options in tiny house living such as doing laundry, showering or more to the point not showering, gardening and cooking in my one burner kitchen. I was surprised at how self-sufficient I could be. I even had entertainment using my laptop to play DVDs onto a larger external monitor that I could view while lying in my hammock. But most of all the lockdown year was an opportunity to finish my book. 

I hadn’t intended to write another memoir, my first, Diamonds In My Pocket having been well received by friends and colleagues if not fully appreciated by family (except for my mother who was very proud of the book). I was thinking to write a pamphlet about how to make your own composting toilet and manage the composting part of it, but YouTube was best for such DIY projects. I didn’t want to give up entirely on writing a book and it occurred to me that a more interesting story could be written about why a woman would want to design a life around living with a composting toilet. When a favorite teacher announced she was going to give a memoir writing class, I signed up and thus had the help of a supportive group of women who let me know if my topics were compelling enough to merit a book.

Once I got started I found that the desire to go off-grid was an incremental journey that brought forth stories going back to my first consciousness of my own thoughts as a largely free range child growing up in Thailand when it was not quite a fully industrialized country. The influences of a culture that sustained itself on so much less consumption than the one I would immigrate to, helped me retain this knowledge of how things could be done much more simply well into my adult life. The journey also offered a chance to investigate parts of my life I had refused to touch until now as society itself nudged me off the mainstream and into the American gay subculture. So much did my sexuality inform my life along with my spiritual quests and my thirst to understand how the world worked, that eventually every aspect of my life had veered off the conventional way of doing things. Moving into a tiny house tipped it over the edge completely and provided more details and practical aspects of my unconventional life.

It took me until the middle of 2022 to finish the book and publish it independently which was an off-grid project in itself and required that I learn how to use book publishing software. This took months and prompted a computer upgrade. I still had my graphic design skills to help me design the book and get a dynamic cover on it. I didn’t fuss with it too much. It didn’t have to be the best designed book. It just had to look professional. I also had a great deal of help proofreading the book which will spare the reader the distraction of my negligent punctuation. I was very pleased that I had come so far and having accomplished such a feat, I could envision many more books I wanted to produce just to leave a legacy of all that I had learned. It made me quite proud, too, that having witnessed so much history of the Bay Area, the emerging gay culture and the technological changes that took place I had captured a piece of local history. My love of film and movie theaters, in particular, as I worked as a projectionist during the transitional years when home video impacted this industry was also a significant part of my story.

The tiny house thus became the perfect writing retreat, sheltering me from the demands of the outside world. I named my publishing company after this blog, Tiny Red Desk Publishing. There are, now many accounts of people going off-grid mostly about logistics and the build, but rather short on character development. I often felt short changed; I was sure that there must be particular traits that would lead someone to seek such a life. My book is a long view with a deep dive into questioning how we live. It is also a woman’s journey, indirect, serendipitous and non-linear, with lots of tangents influenced by the people I met and loved. My early readers have found it to be a satisfying read and some have been quite moved by it. I am confident it will find its audience. You can buy the book in both hard copy and digital at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1093980893?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

Hardscaping and Homesteading

My new site presented a lot of challenges in that it was a virgin hillside full of weeds. And in the winter the mud. So my first order of business was to lay stepping stones and provide cement blocks as boot scrapers. I then discovered a pile of shredded wood chips at the bottom of the property that I was free to use. Pushing them up the steep hill provided me with leg strengthening exercise.

I also wanted to create a garden and had seeded a semi-circle of fava beans just to see what would happen to them. Those that survived the slugs provided a row of beans that was also in effect a fence. The gophers bit through one bean stalk and left the rest alone. The deer didn't seem to like them either. I also had plants I brought from my previous space, agave succulents mostly and a bucket of soil in which I had mixed bokashi poop mix. This bucket provided me with a brace of tomato seedlings and I decided to build a planter of the scrap redwood cut-offs I had been saving from the rebuilding of my mother's deck a few years ago.

The planter was a mathematical challenge so I eyeballed it and was pleased with the resulting planter tower reinforced with hardware cloth on the bottom to ward off gophers. Having fended off the gophers I also put up netting to fend off the deer. As the fava beans came to maturity I seeded some scarlet runner beans which are barely making it through the slug fest. In my hopes I took out some landscaping poles I had long had in storage and lashed together a bean teepee.

My gardening attempts were proving to be a wonderful pastime during this stay at home quarantine, giving me something to look forward to checking on every morning as I monitored the gopher activity and collected the soil they mounded up. It took over ten buckets of this collected soil to fill my planter. I filled the planter with tomato seedlings and had more bean seedlings of another variety and assorted other seedlings in my homemade newspaper pots.

These pots turned out to be a good choice. The seedlings thrived in them and their roots easily found their way out of the bottom of the bots so were not root bound.

I disassembled the toilet after months of looking at it as a discarded toilet as a note of irony from living with a composting toilet. It had come out of my landlord's bathroom when he remodeled.

The upturned toilet had a certain sculptural kneeling temple elephant look to it.

Before the ground could dry up much more I decided to mulch the patio area in front of the tiny house where my battery bank lived thinking to plant camomile between the pavers, but the ground was already too hard for much more than one.










I also got it into my head that I would recycle all the tree clippings from my fire maintenance chores last fall by incorporating them into a hugelklutur bed which I dug out on contour just above the incline of my field. Cutting up all the little branches was time consuming, but was a meditative activity and it was done in a couple of days. This activity also allowed me to get to know the neighbors as they walked by with their dogs on this busy corner. One even remembered he'd seen me on TV. And another complemented me on my homebuilt planter tower. Just about everybody has made me feel at home in this mountain retreat full of DIY homesteading sorts.

With all this activity I was exhausted, but happy wth my plant companions.

Mail Ordered Accessories For Full Time Living

Like many home bound shelter-in-place people I took to mail ordering items to upgrade my existence. Now that I was cooking a lot more dinners at home with the Farm Fresh To You delivery of vegetables Catherine and I were sharing I had enough food waste to warrant a composting system. I didn't have an area protected from marauding beasts so I ordered the system offered by the same Bokashi company where I had bought my pet waste system. The idea being that you fill the two buckets with kitchen waste that when sealed begin to work their fermenting magic assisted by the bokashi bran provided. There was also a faucet at the bottom of the bucket to drain off liquid that could then be used as a fertilizer. I already had a built-in niche for my indoor composting bucket which hadn't seen much use until now so it was a perfect match.

I also ordered a Scrubba, a traveling washing machine suggested to me by a mud hut sister in Bangkok who read about it on a blog. This turned out to be quite useful as a pre-wash device that could also tote my wet shirts to my support house on laundry day. It has an internal washboard which I didn't find particularly effective so I brought out of storage my Amish glass washboard and used the Scrubba to soak my clothes in first. Then I pulled out a sleeve or a collar that needed attention and applied some scrubbing with the glass washboard. Since I was using a non-biodegradable soap I just poured the soapy water into the Scrubba bag for portage to the washing machine at my support house. So the Scrubba proved useful as a missing link. I'm a firm believer in missing links solving problems to keep an existing system simple. 

The Scrubba was also useful for washing a few items between my two week laundry visits. It was quite fun like kneading bread.

Shelter In Paradise

Shortly after I returned from Thailand having already gotten a taste of the mask wearing pandemic response in Bangkok, the Bay Area became the first lockdown area in the United States. At first I tried to commute the half hour drive to my support house as usual, but it soon became apparent that this was impractical and anxiety provoking for the household especially for the new housemate who didn't know me and had issues with my coming and going. In the 3 years I had lived in the tiny house I had not really lived in it full time. I was really only there for bed and breakfast as I spent a lot of time on the road going to clients and then having dinner at Catherine's house where I would cook for the both of us or she would.

Once we decided it would be best if I stayed at the tiny house I asked my friends who lived down the street from me if they would host me for showers and laundry. They were happy to and I would return the favor by making a meal for us all every now and then. The local country store had also re-opened with new owners so the town felt self-sufficient again. Once I settled in I felt enormously blessed to be in such a beautiful environment.

I had hiking trails I could walk to straight from the property that were not closed to residents and the views from on high were spectacular stretching all the way to the ocean.

Living full time in the tiny house became my sanctuary. I really had everything I needed that it made for a very efficient living space.

I just needed additional seating especially for zoom calls. I had two classes that would keep me in this chair for four hours at a time once a month.

For company I had my friends on FB to show off my endeavors. One of the friends commented that it was my smugness that made my reports so endearing so when John Kernohan and his wife Fin of United Tiny House Association invited me to participate in a video they were making which would require me to choose one word to describe how I felt while sheltering in place in my tiny house. I set about to show off my location with the new solar panels and my solar oven opened up to signify my off-grid independence. I chose the word "smug". It was my little inside joke to myself.

Posted May 24th. Backdated to keep timeline.

Tiny House Presentation at EM Workshop, Saraburi Thailand

In February while visiting Thailand my farm partner Clasina suggested we go to an organic farming workshop on effective microorganism technology or EM as it is called. EM technology was the game changing piece I had implemented for my composting toilet poop processing. This was the method that had allowed me to dispense with the required dedicated outdoor humanure composting bin and instead bury my fermented poop directly into the garden. I had been doing this successfully for two years now so I was eager to share my experience with this professional EM workshop being given at the International Kyusei Nature Farming Center in Saraburi just an hour and a half from Bangkok.

This university level facility with its modern buildings and extensive campus included a working farm. Clasina was particularly impressed by the sparkling clean bathrooms. The program was created in collaboration with the Japanese EM industry (so they would not be teaching us how to make EM ourselves, just how to use it as much as possible so they could sell product). Indeed the Japanese EM technology was being quietly introduced to all of Asia through such outreach while being offered to the public through spas, hotels and wellness centers with EM fertilized organic food, lush gardens and EM disinfectants and cleaners. It was through such a wellness center in Hawaii that a friend had heard about it. The same friend who insisted that I trade out my traditional composting toilet method for this superior (and faster) EM technology. Instead of waiting a year to season a humanure composting pile, the EM process only took 2 to 3 weeks to reach a pathogen free state.

EM was a disinfectant we learned. It was spritzed into the air daily to fell harmful bacteria. It was made into non-toxic household cleaners and hand sanitizers. From the first day we were given our choice to use EM hand sanitizer or the usual alcohol based ones to fend off the virus.

The center was part of the Asia Pacific Natural Agricultural Network and our workshop was attended by a huge group from Malaysia, but also Myanmar and Japan along with one other woman from South Africa and me the lone representative of the U.S. Lectures were given in English with detailed powerpoint presentations in the air conditioned fully technical lecture hall. In the afternoons we boarded a people carrier much like a an amusement park train to tour the working farm. Students showed us how mushrooms were cultivated and served vegetable roll snacks. We saw how biochar was infused with EM to make a more potent fertilizer. We toured the lush fields of vegetables and the chicken and pig houses. I was bowled over by the use of EM technology in animal husbandry. There was no odor at all not even in the pig pens. 

EM was also added to the animal feed as a probiotic supplement. The EM infused feed kept them healthier and they grew bigger than with conventional methods. Every time their pens were sluiced down the pigs came running to slurp up the EM infused waster. Their waste was washed away into large concrete pits where the mixture became fertilizer (just as my own poop did inside my three gallon bucket). Imagine such a solution putting an end to those problematic lagoons of manure that stink for miles and sometimes blow up like a geyser or overflow into waterways choking fish with algae blooms. EM worked in the same way I understood my composting toilet to work. The effective microorganisms ate all the harmful bacteria and were then eaten themselves in a probiotic fermenting process that ate up all the pathogens. This process was given the Japanese word bokashi. “Bokashi!” we shouted in every group photo.

We also saw how food scraps were treated with EM in 50 gallon drums from which the liquid was collected for use as a plant feed. This you can do at home too in smaller buckets. Hands-on demonstrations had us shoveling and mixing together ingredients so the EM infused bran could ferment the compost. The following day we returned to find that the piles were so hot they would turn our hands red and I wondered aloud if I could heat my tiny house with such piles or at least heat water. For fisheries EM could be made into softball size balls and thrown into the ponds to keep them clean. We had great fun seeing how far we could throw when we were all offered a turn. The EM balls reduced sludge at the bottom and had other applications including the clean up of latrines. In shrimp farming the shrimp poop is food for the microorganisms so EM made the water clear and cut down the stench. The meat of cows raised with EM technology was lower in fat and higher in vitamins.

We concluded our workshop with a visit to a recycling plant in Bangkok. Here the use of EM cut down on the biggest neighborhood complaint—the smell. Plus they were able to make toilet cleaner and dishwashing products from fermented rice water and other captured waste products. No harsh chemicals were used at all in this recycling and green waste processing. EM technology had also been introduced to the Thai military and was adopted as a method for large scale clean-ups. In the city it was offered as a drain cleaner in one of my friends apartment building. All of these projects had support from the Thai government which gave grants for outreach into the community to teach people how to make organic fertilizer from their kitchen waste. And because the late King Bhumipol had long been an advocate of a self sufficient economy and had been voicing his concerns about global warming since 1989, the reduction of carbon in the air through the use of EM technology and the concept of zero waste was considered a project of the King. This had enormous appeal for the Thais giving them not only a shared mission, but a way to further implement the King’s legacy for the good of the country.

In the evenings of our 4 day workshop participants representing EM companies made their presentations touting the benefits of their product while farmers showed their agricultural projects. I gave my tiny house presentation on the second night. I had rehearsed all my jokes and had enough pictures to show the whole tiny house trend to an audience unfamiliar with this American phenomena and its California origin.

I also explained about the composting toilet being a key feature of most tiny houses. They loved it. Having sufficiently explained why such a house needed to process their own waste, they had no questions about my EM methods so I was clearly doing it right. But the look of incredulity on the face of a Japanese woman who represented a health supplement company told me how out there I was. When I told them that in the course of a year I had buried 11 buckets of my EM composted waste they applauded. I have no idea why this single fact garnered such appreciation.

None of these professional EM distributors had thought of using EM technology in such an application. They did not know about the pet waste disposal system I was able to purchase in the States and asked how much I had paid for the kit. ($100). Like any other first world society it had never occurred to them to dispense with the flush toilet. Nor were they about to. Some teased me about it later, but I was happy that I had earned my place in the EM technological revolution. It was by far the most fun presentation I had yet given on any topic. 

Posted May 24th. Back dated to preserve timeline.

The Leap To Solar

While I was preparing to move, PG & E was subjecting the state of California to mandatory blackouts to relieve themselves of liability during fire season. My new mountain town suffered the bulk of these and it inspired me to think of going solar. And being 250 feet away from my landlord's house would mean daisy chaining three extension cords together to get power as it was. I didn't fancy this at all. The hillside I was on faced south so was perfect for solar. My landlord had himself wanted to try solar and readily approved my idea. With the help of a Kilowatt, I added up my power usage from my freezer (1Kw/day) and my toaster oven, electric kettle, stockpot, computer and lights. It came to a total of 4250 watts if I didn't count the stockpot which I only used to cook beans once a month. As it happened there was a man on craigslist selling a complete set-up that was just about the right size for a tiny house with four panels for a total of 1040 watts of power generation and a 235 amp hour battery pack. All for $1400 with a Flexmax 60 charge controller and 24 volt, 2,500 watt moderated sinewave Aims inverter. And it all fit into my Prius.

I delivered the panels to the site, hid them in the bushes for a few days, then screwed the sides to pieces of lumber using ordinary angle brackets that I had bolted to the holes in the solar panels. Two panels screwed to three lengths of wood. Three 8ft lengths of pressure treated 2 x 4's cut in half. I used my stash of conduit pipe legs from another project to shore up one side. It was a little wobbly but would suffice. Later I would add an 8ft piece to the top of the frame to stabilize the structure and keep it from sagging in the middle.

 I just needed a battery box so I dragged an old metal bathtub up to the site. It had been left over from a remodel and was just big enough to hold all four of the golf cart batteries. 

I got rid of enough books from my offsite storage to liberate a shelf so I could build a bench for the charger and inverter. 

Several you-tube tutorials later I was confident I could put the system together. I just followed how the wires were used by the previous owner. His battery pack must have been quite a distance from the charger so I cut the wire down to size. The wires from the panels were just long enough to reach once I angled the tub closer and pulled the panels up a bit.

And the hole where the stopper control was installed was perfect for the extension cords and the cable wires from the panels to enter into my ad hoc battery shed. I put it all together and had power. Such a quantum leap in off-grid living yet so simple. I needed 177 amp hours, 252 if I cooked the beans, but I could do that with my solar oven. I also purchased a mini coffee maker to heat water that used 600 watts as opposed to the electric kettle which used 1500 watts. Once hooked up the 235 amp hour battery pack just barely met my needs, but the owner assured me that the panels could handle another set of batteries in this size. So this project will be ongoing. I am also in the process of fabricating a cover for my battery box that would allow me to view the read-outs on the equipment. 

Prep For A New Location

Over the summer I learned I would have to move and spent 6 weeks searching high and low for another location. The drama of which I blogged for my friends. Thankfully I did find a mountain town to move to. It added some to my commute, but it gave back in a community full of DIY spirit and live and let live sensibilities.

My new parking spot was in an open field 250 feet from the home of my new landlord. It was beautiful, but would require the creation of a firm parking pad from scratch for the hillside was so full of gophers they would soon bury my wheels in the soft dry soil. I set to work right away and spent $100 renting a van to pick up free concrete from across the bay where a homeowner had been busy liberating his yard by jack hammering up the poured concrete. This concrete not being as thick as what would be poured today. It was the thickness of pavers, was not nearly as heavy and made nice pieces to work with.

My landlord gave me a roll of weed block landscaping cloth to lay down to create a barrier for both weeds and gophers.

I hired my handyman Tim to help me level the parking pad which required diligence and some spadework. Then he packed it down by driving his truck over it repeatedly. It took us three days and two truck loads (using his truck) of gravel and another run for concrete rubble and concrete driveway pieces I had scavenged for a project at my previous location. Tim used those to create a retaining wall on the downhill side. We then lay concrete rubble (picked up from the same guy) and a half ton of recycled concrete road fill from Lyngso a landscaping supply yard.

I love the rough mosaic of the pieces. It reminded me of what a Roman road might look like. We had enough pieces for the bulk of it and what holes were left in the middle we filled with the much thicker driveway pieces.

Once I swept the gravel into the cracks the surface was stabilized. It was ready for landing the tiny.

My TV Appearance On The 11 O'clock News

In conjunction with my being a speaker at the Tiny Living Festival John Kernohan asked me if I was willing to be interviewed by KPIX as an example of a tiny house dweller in the Bay Area. Of course I said yes. I love to give tours on camera. So I got a call from Susie Steimle the housing advocate on the program “Project Home” which airs every Monday and Wednesday on the 11 o’clock news. A commendable program of investigative reporting with a social justice component. My appearance appears in this segment for those who want to see it right away.

She brought with her Brian Yuen her cameraman with the largest camera I have ever seen. I’m glad I cleared off my dining table so he could set it down. I cleaned out a lot of accumulated clutter while I was at it. Just in time for my upcoming move. It’s still too cluttered for most, but Brian made it look good by avoiding my cluttered desk and such. His camera showed a lot of detail, but he also wasn’t invasive steering clear of personal stuff. And he had an eye for visual symbolism i.e. a doorknob as a symbol of home and security. He also made sure to get footage of everything I mentioned.

When she arrived Susie told me that her piece was going to be about tiny houses as a solution to homelessness because she was also going to interview a man who wanted to create a tiny house development for homeless vets. While Brian went to get his camera we had a chance to talk about my feelings about tiny houses for the homeless. 

“They should just build more low income housing,” I said and she agreed that was the crux of it. 

After my experience helping with a project in San Francisco involving tiny houses for a homeless woman I was left very conflicted at what was being offered as a solution. So I had a lot to say on camera about the whole homeless situation. Too much so Susie came back to the subject asking me to just talk about the tiny house solution and I was able to give her a more concise response.

I was trying to make the point that what is being offered with tiny houses as a solution is substandard housing for people who are priced out of the market. I think its condescending of a society to ask marginalized people to live in situations that they wouldn’t tolerate themselves. There are laws requiring landlords to have adequate bathrooms. When I said my line about asking your friends if they would give up the flush toilet both Brian and Susie held their reactions as though I’d just said something totally off the wall. But later I realized they were practiced enough to recognize a good soundbite when they heard one and give it air space. 

Meanwhile I was showing how I myself lived in substandard housing because I wanted to as my own personal experiment in reducing my consumption of resources. I’m glad Susie let me make this point about tiny house dwellers being innovators. The pair spent an hour and a half with me as I put the house through its paces. I even got Susie up in the loft so we could experience it as a living room and show off my closet which I claimed was the biggest tiny house closet I’ve seen. 

When Brian asked if she wanted to be in the shot when I got into my hammock she declined. “I like you,” she said, “but I don’t want to get intimate with you”. And she winked at me. Ha ha. I love it when a straight woman is not afraid to flirt with another woman.

I was nervous about how I would come across in the piece especially because I think tiny houses are a great solution if done right. What I left unsaid inspired me to really think about why I am conducting my tiny house experiment. The crux of it is that we who are fortunate enough not to end up homeless can be housing innovators and show that living simpler is a social justice choice. It is not fair to force the poor to live this experiment while the rest of society sets a cultural standard for a very high standard of living that is so expensive it is no longer a given that the poor will even have housing. It is this social justice component to the tiny house movement that inspires me as well as being able to live affordably myself. Tiny houses are the glamorization of simpler living much like the Tesla glamorized and elevated the electric car as a social status. Living simpler as a social good is the point I decided to make in my talk at the Tiny Living Festival the following Saturday.

I was very pleased with the piece and it was fun seeing myself on a news program. I liked that the report allowed people to decide for themselves if tiny houses were a viable solution. The footage of people in sleeping bags lying on the street making it obvious that anything would be better even the bunkhouses they showed. So many homeless people have mental illness and drug addiction issues that is compounded by lack of residential services for such people so the situation is more complex than just lack of housing, but housing is key to their recovery as Susie points out. But given the direction we’re going with the wealth gap more people will be made homeless who are not thus challenged. And our capitalistic society seems to be ok with this. Many people have suggested to me that tiny homes are a good solution to homelessness, but they don't usually want "those people" in their neighborhood. They don't even want tiny house homeowners in their neighborhood. Susie didn't talk about this in her piece as an issue and I wasn't quick enough with the soundbites to point it out, but then I decided it was better just to let people think that tiny houses are allowed in backyards. It will normalize them. And I liked how she pointed out that the housing crisis is so bad in the Bay Area you can now rent dirt for what an apartment would cost in more reasonable parts of the country.

Catherine’s favorite line is when I say I’m a housing rebel at the end. I don’t even remember saying this. But paired with the shot of me going in the door and shutting it with a thunk to punctuate my statement made a nice light hearted ending.

Tiny Living Festival Speaking Gig

Through my main blog I was discovered by John and Finn founders and operators of the United Tiny House Association. They were bringing their Tiny Living Festival to the Bay Area and were looking for local tiny house dwellers to speak at their two day event. I was happy to and wrote a speech on Friday which I then spent all night memorizing to deliver today at their location in Richmond (in the East Bay north of Berkeley). Three of my organizer pals came to root for me and quite a nice size group assembled to hear me. There was no AV so no powerpoint to show my notes and pictures. So I relied heavily on old fashion storytelling which I preferred. I achieved my goal of keeping the audiences attention and they asked some good questions. My pals said it was a very good talk. The following is the transcript of the talk I gave.

“I have been a professional organizer for 20 plus years here in the Bay Area. My work is all about stuff often in huge houses. At the height of my glamorous career I worked for a closet designer. Linda London would fly in from New York and design all the closets and cabinets, the pantry, liquor cabinets and broom closet. This being Silicon Valley the job was for a CEO of a tech company and his wife. It was a brand new house that was just being finished and it was our task to move all the clients clothes into the new closets and cabinets. 

On the first day on the job the construction captain came to us and told us that he had good news and bad news. “The bad news is that the elevator is out of service.” We all groaned thinking of all those armload of clothes. “But the good news is that we could use the elevator around the corner.” 

One of my colleagues called this the house where the closets had closets. There was the usual walk-in closet off the bedroom with his and hers dressing areas, but then there was the elevator in one wall that went down to the basement where there was a room the size of a California living room and it was lined with closets. Closets for ball gowns, fur coats, hunting gear, one just for suitcases, one for the massage table and the clothes steamer. And in the middle was an island covered with a suede surface. That was for laying out a suitcase to pack for when you went to visit the house in New York, L.A., Palm Springs and possibly Hawaii. 

The final irony of this brand new custom house was that it was a one bedroom house. This couple knew exactly what they wanted in a house. And what they didn’t want were house guests sharing their space. They had a guest house built 100 yards away by the pool.

I tell this story as a tiny house dweller because not only is it such a contrast to tiny living, but we too know what we want. Just like Linda’s clients we want the best use of our space. 

I thought a lot about Linda London as I designed the interior of my house. I borrowed her methods. She started by measuring everything the client owned, counted every shirt, every piece of jewelry, all the ties and shoes they had, what kind of bathroom products they used, what was in their pantry. And she built spaces to fit everything.

So I measured everything that was going to go in my house and I fit my shelves and my cabinets to the glass storage containers, my one pot and the wok. 

I have a pull out island between my cabinets on which I can put either a cutting board or a table top ironing board and have somewhere to store those. So one unit serves two purposes.

I didn’t want a fridge because they are not designed to be efficient. You open the door and all the cold air falls out. So I have an expedition grade cooler and I built a second bench that slides over it. Again I am using this space twice. I make ice for it in a medium size freezer I keep outside of the tiny house.

And yes I do have lots of books. I have 20 feet of books. And I built 16 feet of shelving for them plus installing floating wall shelves, which took a lot of tine and effort so motivated me to give up more books. But if you really love something you can make space for it. 

When you’re designing your tiny house it becomes obvious that you only have space for what you use and I mean everyday or at least every few weeks. One pot, one pan, a couple of mugs, just the dishes you use, smaller appliances, etc. A lot of what you owned you won’t be able to use in the tiny house. And there’s really no room for it might be useful one day.

Still the best tip I got from a tiny house owner was that you can fit quite a lot in so don’t be too drastic about throwing it all out. Unless you want to. 

I had it easy when I moved into my tiny house I just left everything I didn’t need at my ex’s house. And I’m still downsizing my hoard 3 years later. I just sold the Olivetti typewriter last week and my old 35 mm Nikon camera earlier this year. I started in 2008 selling off the family heirlooms

So if something is worth any money at all sell it and if you can’t take comfort in the fact that no one wants the heirloom china, the furniture (unless it’s mid-century modern), hardback coffee table books or the silver plated stuff, so there’s no need for you to hang onto it either. If you can’t sell it give it away. I have seen silver plated trays in the metal bin at the recycling center. It’s the copper underneath the plating that has value.

In the end it will all have to be given away. The only difference is if you are alive to do it or not. And it’s better if you’re alive because you know the most about these items and how best to give it away. 

People pay me good money (up to $100 an hour) to coach them through the process of letting go because this isn’t an easy process. Stuff brings up some very emotional feelings of loss and regret. It requires making many many decisions and decisions are tiring. 

To help with this process make rules like if it’s broken, doesn’t fit, hasn’t been used in two year toss it. Sort by category. Sort room by room, drawer by drawer. Weed out a third of any given collection. Then a third more. Once you take stuff out of its home and put it in the giveaway area you will find that you are already letting it go. 

You have probably heard of the Marie Kondo method. Her Netflix show and her book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I’ve heard of people being able to follow her method. One tiny house couple on youtube did their downsizing in four days with her method. But they were young and didn’t own a lifetime of stuff. Her method is very overwhelming and exhausting. What she asks you to do is pull out everything and touch all of it asking if each item brings you joy. 

It doesn’t work for the clients I work with because everything brings them joy; they get an emotional charge from everything they own. In fact we advise the opposite to the Konmari method to not touch an item, especially clothing. So have a friend hold up the item as you make your decision. Take advantage of this social component of organizing. Do it with your partner, a friend or several friends who’ll keep you on track.

Downsizing quickly will give you the advantage of momentum. If slowly you can take time to sell things, have more time to take things to the right person or place. And you can always keep moving stuff out. 

I didn’t grow up thinking that I would be living in a tiny house. I more had in mind that I’d live in a house like my great grandfather had in Bangkok. He lived in a three floor mansion with marble floors filled with dark furniture with mother-of-pearl inlay. He had rooms for each of his nine wives and all of his children. Off the kitchen were rooms for the staff. I loved the community of it. I liked the idea of the nine wives too. I grew up in Bangkok in an extended family compound that my grandmother had. She built herself the big house with two stories, but there was room for everyone.

We each had a room. Me and my parents were in our own smaller house. My three aunts, the maids, chauffeur and gardener all had their own rooms at my grandmother’s house. It was great fun for a child to be able to visit all these people and be in so many different spaces. We all had what we needed and we all lived quite simply. My grandmother had just a mattress that was rolled out every night under a mosquito net. 

Then my parents got jobs in the U.S and we came here to the Bay Area to live the nuclear family experience. It was very different for me. I saw a card once that said “one nuclear family can ruin your whole life”. That was my life at ten years old coming here. But I made the best of it.

And over the years I watched as the houses got bigger and bigger. And then I heard that teachers and fireman could no longer afford to live here. And my friends and I barely managed to stay sharing rooms in houses. And when I became an organizer and was working in these houses I saw that our lives had become mostly about things and not so much about people.  The contrast of it brought to mind a bumper sticker I remember from a few decades back — Live Simply So That Others May Simply Live. 

Tiny House living is not the anorexia of consumerism. It is an adjustment, a discipline of priorities. A way to be more mindful of how much consumerism has taken over our lives. But you don’t have to live in a tiny house to do it. And it’s never too early to start downsizing.

That’s my introduction. And now we can go onto questions.”

The following were questions that people asked that gave me a chance to offer more tips. 

Where do you sell things? Craigslist, e-bay, Nextdoor

What to do with old coins? Coin dealers, e-bay.

Where do you give away things? Freecycle, Nextdoor, on the sidewalk, but only in San Francisco to discourage hoarding. Also Goodwill and other charities.

My mother left me her paintings. I don’t have room for them, but I want them to go where they’ll be appreciated. Do you have any suggestions? I didn’t.

What about garage sales? Yes go for it. Takes a lot of prep, but can get rid of all kinds of little things.