Ever live without indoor plumbing?

I lived in a small cottage for a couple years. I built an outhouse. Some winter nights just got too cold, so I had a 5 gallon plastic bucket I could use. That bucket replaced the outhouse. I would dump it in the lagoon and then clean it with bleach and water.
When we would go camping and bring grandpa, he would say "Now don't forget to flush." when I would have to use the camp outhouse! :)
 

From the age of three until I left home to get married our house had no sink in the kitchen - we filled the kettle from a tap in the laundry. The bath was also in the laundry screened off with a wooden partition. It had a bath heater (gas) to provide hot water. The outhouse was halfway down the path to the back fence and was unsewered. The night cart visited once a week to replace the pan with a fresh empty one.

For some of that time Mum cooked on a wood fired oven and stove.

This was not somewhere out in the sticks. It was in a then outer suburb of Sydney.
 
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Started building this place almost 32 years ago, used a honey bucket at first. Then in the fall built an out house, which is still standing and functional. You learn to time things using an outhouse in winter when using the out house
Hauling water bucket up from the lake, heating shower water in a black plastic sack. Good memories...
Now I can flush, turn on a light etc...(y):devilish::)
 

For four days in 2003! We had a beautiful house in a country suburb with a well for our water and a scary propane tank squatting in the back yard.

One winter, the electric went out in our area so the pumps for these items went out and we were snowed in the whole time. The temperature went down to about 40 in the house which was miserable enough, but the worst part was no water, the toilets wouldn't flush and of course we didn't have an out house.

Those four days were such a nightmare for us that we put our house up for sale and moved into a new house on the edge of town where such a horrible situation can't happen.:eek:
 
People don't have to live with an outhouse so much now. Composting and sawdust toilets have changed that. You can set up a place inside your house for that. At my house, we made a downstairs bedroom into a bathroom when we first moved there. So it had clawfoot bathtub (BIG!) and the composting toilet (Sun-Mar).

After a bit of time, I read a book (Humanure) about sawdust toilets and my husband made one in less than an hour. We made a spot for composting it out in the woods and I have to say it composted to dirt within two years. You just need to keep a bucket of sawdust or other dirt next to the toilet to cover up what you do. I sold the composting toilet on eBay and started a bidding war. I bought it used for $200. and sold it for $800. to a couple who drove from the city to get it. They were building a homestead in Maine.
 
I grew up in the suburbs, but I've lived many places since then, including a tent in my 60s.

Outhouse, chopping wood, carrying water, melting snow, no electricity, no heat, washing clothes by hand, sure, done it.

Most of it was okay, and some of it was nice. What I really hate is vacuuming.
 
ElCastor said:
By some accounts the first flush toilet was devised at the palace of Knossos. Another thing we can thank the ancient Greeks for.
Click to expand...
This article says India perhaps 5,000 years ago. Indoor plumbing seems to be found in one form or another in many ancient civilizations, Mayan and Egyptian for example. But not in every house I have lived in...

When Did Indoor Plumbing Start? You Might be Surprised!​

https://www.1tomplumber.com/indoor-plumbing-a-brief-history/
 
A few years before I retired, was the engineer on site for a large water treatment plant expansion in a northern state. During the preconstruction meeting, I told the contractor they were not permitted to utilize the indoor restroom in the plant office area. Said they would need a portable toilet for their crew... outside. The contractor was not pleased, but the contract documents clearly stated he was responsible for his own crew sanitary facilities.

We saw temps that went as low as 35 degrees F below 0. Deep snow. As I was winding up my portion of the project, the Plant Manager thanked me for having the foresight to keep his facilities off limits. Knew, by that time, it would have been left a filthy mess. Pretty sure he would have had to deal with graffiti on stall walls, etc. What surprised me most was a thank you from the Construction Superintendent. Said his crews did not spend much time using the facilities!!! Their trips outside to use the portable toilet were quick and short. :>)
 
When my father and uncle returned after WW2 they built an indoor bathroom for my grandparents. When they were finished they burned the outhouse. It made my grandfather furious that they burned that outhouse. He thought indoor facilities were unsanitary.
 
I had indoor plumbing and baths as far back as I can remember. I was born in France, the daughter of Air Force father. I know they lived off base in a house, we were on the top floor and farm animals lived in a barn on the first floor. I think it was an outhouse set up. Both of parents were raised with an outhouse. This would not be strange to them.

We were there for about a year when my Dad got transferred to Germany were living high, indoor plumbing, ringer washer etc. I do not remember it but my sister does. She still bears the scar of putting her little hand through that washer.

After that, the only time we experience the outhouse was at the grandparents. My Fathers parents had a sweet little cottage on the shore of the Cheasapeake Bay/River, no indoor plumbing but a hand pump at the
kitchen sink. It was not really a kitchen. Just a small space with the sink and pump and maybe 3 ft of cabinet, countertop and storage under the sink. I do not remember if they had any kind of fridge or stove.

It was tiny, you went in thru the door, the so called kitchen/eating area with the table and chairs, then left was the family room which also served as the bedroom for my Dad and Uncle.

In the right of the kitchen area, back in the corner was a tiny door. You open that and there was a tiny dark stair case. You went up those stairs and my grandparents bed was there in the tiny attic area. It was like a little doll house. I remember my Grandma keeping little pots around the lower floor. In her older years she had bladder problems and couldn't get to the outhouse. She had candy dishes everywhere, filled with butter mints, they were her favorite. I never had any other type of candy in her house.

Of course all the family there is gone now, the magical, beautiful place of my childhood is gone, sold to others. I still have the memories and they are priceless.
 
Murrmurr said:
But did @ElCastor literally mean a flushing toilet? Ancient plumbing was usually designed around gravity
Click to expand...
Yes I meant a “flushing” toilet, although more than a bit different than the device in your bathroom and mine. Believe it or not I actually had a professor in college who credited it to the Greeks for the following reason …

”The Palace at Knossos is also where historians have found the first flushing toilet. Conduits were built into the wall of the bathroom, which made it possible to flush waste with water that was held in cisterns. A hole in the floor allowed waste to go into a drain that led to a nearby river or waterway, most likely the Kairatos River. The bathroom was even partitioned off with a small screen for added privacy.”
https://toiletology.com/resources/history/history-of-toilets-in-ancient-greece/
 
I had indoor plumbing and baths as far back as I can remember. I was born in France, the daughter of Air Force father. I know they lived off base in a house, we were on the top floor and farm animals lived in a barn on the first floor. I think it was an outhouse set up. Both of parents were raised with an outhouse. This would not be strange to them.

We were there for about a year when my Dad got transferred to Germany were living high, indoor plumbing, ringer washer etc. I do not remember it but my sister does. She still bears the scar of putting her little hand through that washer.

After that, the only time we experience the outhouse was at the grandparents. My Fathers parents had a sweet little cottage on the shore of the Cheasapeake Bay/River, no indoor plumbing but a hand pump at the
kitchen sink. It was not really a kitchen. Just a small space with the sink and pump and maybe 3 ft of cabinet, countertop and storage under the sink. I do not remember if they had any kind of fridge or stove. I just remember we ate well when we visited, a lot of crab, we caught, and a lot of veggies from the garden. The grown ups ate a lot of raw oysters that we gathered. Yikes!!
 
Yes until I got married at 28. No phone, no water heater, no central heat, outhouse, we had running water, one spigot in the kitchen. Before that, we had to carry buckets from the town pump. Laundry day was a pain. Still it was less worrisome than it is now with all the conveniences.
 

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