An accidental theme

Flagstaff occupies the largest contiguous Ponderosa pine [butterscotch tree] forest in the world.


I tell you that to assuage your growing suspicion that life is passing you by while you read this blog. Occasionally, I will include redeeming bits of information to assuage you harder.

We follow an RVing page on Facebook who just revealed the two of them used 60 gallons (2-30 gallon totes) of laundry on a ten-day camping trip. Look, I'm no one to judge. Still, you can tell I'm judging a tiny bit, can't you? I'm a flawed individual, and these are clean, clean people. Maybe they are teenagers; that's the detail that would pull it all together.

[On the off chance you clean, clean people read this blog: just kidding! You guys were the nattiest campers in the park! You know I'm just jealous.]

Annie was explaining to the cousins that we don't heat up much water. Stove-top for washing dishes, and if the weather is hot enough we don't bother heating water for our showers, which we take using a lawn sprayer.  Lori didn't look even slightly shocked or horrified, but graciously offered us hot showers on the spot. I guess it's good that I didn't mention we were no-poo. That could have made inroads in her equanimity. I've got to admit, all that hot water was pretty great. Thanks!

Annie just read to me that it takes 37 gallons of water to make a roll of toilet paper. Can this be true?? You could shower for eighteen minutes with that much water, although that wouldn't be an effective substitute for an entire roll. I'll have to think more about this.

What happens when I think too long about toilet paper.

It wears itself out before nightfall, and then we're left in the dark.

 

Trucks have been porting these potties into the forest for days. What you may not see here is that they have all the doors pointed IN, so that they are INaccessible. Today, they began hauling them back out again, unused (as far as I could tell). 

These trees could be sold to make toilet paper.

My hooves do not fall through! Annie convinced me to try, and that's one more thing crossed off my Blech-it list.

This ends badly for someone. Enough said.

That's us! I obscured the license plates for safety.

That concludes today's post, which took one pint of water and a Coor's Light to produce.

I'll be on the other side of the island. Please forward my mail.

We're on Laguna Madre now, Bird Island Basin.  Maybe three miles from Malaquite Campground, but a whole 'nother vibe.  This campground has pit toilets and levelish gravel sites.  Oh, and bay views to knock your SmartSocks off.

We read that this place starts to hop in February, but in January it's content to flop.  We're content, too.

What the Other Cat Saw

Houses in the lagoon

Imagine a young family living in a modest home in suburbia.  Now, trade the 'burbs for a yellow school bus, and you've done just what our neighbors did.  The children are active, cute, nearly-edible, and all under six.  The ones who can sit upright have chairs.

 Only 30W.

Isn't it cute? It's been keeping us current, although we did run the genny today to ward off a deep-cycle spiral. We cut our hair, microwaved rice, and turned the refrigerator to "AC" to load it up; if you need more information on Onanism, email me privately.   Or, hit the Google.  No one knows when you Google.

Over here it's quiet in a different way. People do run their generators, but occasionally. The fee is $10 for the year, with a 56 day annual limit (divided into 14-day stays). Over at Malaquite, it's $8/day. Not steep, but enough to sift out the hardcore boondockers from the daily generator-runners.

I've been feeling a boondocking post coming on, like a petit mal. Please assume a safe position.

An X-treme boondocker's best friends.

The B-team

This stuff works for body and Duck.   For example, is it already the day you wash your hands again?  Spray them liberally with a castile soap solution, suds up, then spray your hands with water.  No need to turn on the pump or run a quart of water into your gray tank for such a simple task.  I didn't invent this trick, I'm just passing it along.  I got a million of 'em.  

I've been no-poo for several months, and I like it.  I can't think of a reason to go back.  Some people no-poo with commercial shampoo that doesn't contain sulfates, and that works.  I've tried that, but a baking soda solution followed by dilute apple cider vinegar works a little better for me.  No-poo isn't mandatory for extreme boondocking, but it is very compatible.  There's a large component of boondocking that is a pursuit of radical simplicity, and this is a small piece of that picture for me.

The family next door wants to get a load of our composting toilet.  They're using a Luggable Loo, which works for them.  I don't think they're looking for another solution, they're just curious.  We met and immediately started sharing toilet tips, probably because we were waiting together outside the pit toilet with our buckets.  I love this life!  Micah said There's an enzyme solution, but don't buy it.  It doesn't work for crap.  We all appreciated the accidental poop humor at the same time.  Now I'm sharing so you can appreciate it, too.  [Crap absent on picture day.]
 
Tomorrow ... oh, it's too exciting for tonight's post!  We're going to ... oh, no, I can't.  It'll have to wait.

While you wait.

In-between talk of laundry and poop, meet HighlyUncivilized.  He writes a blog full of homesteading hacks and interesting conservation and environmental ideas.  Check out this worm tower - brilliant!

I've been trying out the no-poo lifestyle for about three weeks, and I would say it's generally a success.  I'm still using baking soda every time I wash my hair, followed by a thorough rinse, a spritz of water/vinegar mixture, and a second rinse.  I've read that many people don't use even baking soda after the transition period, but I'm still using it.  My hair is pretty short (max 1.5" after a haircut), and not oily anymore, so I don't have split ends or oily roots to worry about.  I don't style or blow-dry it.  It's free-range hair.  

The first time you try it, you will be weirded out by having no suds.  It will feel the opposite of clean.  Just give it a nice massage with your fingertips. [Do NOT use the plug-in muscle massager that promises to get the kinks out.  It's not talking about your hair.]

The only downside I see right now is sensory deprivation.  I'm used to my hair smelling like something - a tropical rainforest, a lemon grove, a rose garden - during and after its fauxpoo.  Not that I can get it to my nose to sniff, but it's just there.  Baking soda leaves me smelling like nothing, which is better than what I went in smelling like.  That might not be a complete bummer, either, because Annie and I have a hard time agreeing on shampoo scents, but we want something cruelty-free and preferably without SLS or parabens.  And cheap.  Can This Marriage Be Saved?   If we can't agree on a scent, maybe we can agree on having no scent.

Some of our face-friends read this blog, and I fear their fear.  If I weren't writing here, I wouldn't talk about my toilette at all.  If you're no-poo, do you tell your friends?  Or do you wait until they notice how environmentally-friendly, preservative-free, and frugal you look?

My two-pint shower.

This is a one-gallon lawn sprayer, like you might sling over your shoulder, filled with poison or margarita mix.  You might also rest it on the bench of your shower compartment, filled with hot water.  Different strokes.  I'm not here to judge.

I started out filling it completely with hot water, but by the end of my first shower I had half the container left.   

The next time, I filled it only halfway.  I got wet, I got sudsy, I got rinsed, I got clean.  It was the whole package.  Still half left.  

[PSA:  I just learned that suds have no connection to cleaning power.  I've been sold a bubbly bill of goods.]

Annie tried it, too, and declared it yucky.  And, no.  It's not wonderful like standing under endlessly hot water as though you were in a hotel.  It's wonderful like I don't have to decamp to go get more water.  It's wonderful like I feel and smell as though I just took a shower, because I did.

Have any of you gone no-poo?  I accidentally went SLS (sodium lauryl sulfate)-free when I started using Avalon Organics, and I know that my hair doesn't get as oily, and neither does my face.  I was crediting a phantom menopause, but after I started reading I took back menopause's credit and gave it to an SLS-free product.

I'm curious about no-poo, but a little afraid.