Our bus project is going to be published in a book! The book will come out around May 2014. This is super exciting for us - especially for me as this bus has been my little (BIG) art/design project that has consumed my life for a good many months! Another book by this publisher about tiny homes inspired our project (scroll back in the blog and you'll see which one!) We'll share more details when the book comes out. For now, here are some photos that I took of the bus for our two-page spread:
(Aaaah. If only the bus were that clean all the time!)
I've also been meaning to take a photo of our "wardrobe" that is located above our bed. It is the dog house-like building on the back part of the bus. It's hard to get a shot of it because it's a little hidden behind the clothes. There is a 20"X 45" opening and there are 2 levels of shelving along 3 sides. Along the top is a rod on which to hang clothes. To access our clothes, we stand on our bed and try not to bump our heads (I'm saying this because it happened to me this weekend. I hit my head so hard that I'm convinced that I got a mini concussion - eeks!)
Otherwise, Fall is here and the new season has changed a few things about bus living. We've built a shelter outside the bus to keep us dry when we put on/take off our shoes. Not to mention to keep the shoes dry. The shelter also keeps the water heater dry and creates some storage area for recycling (the two containers), and soon we will be filling the shelves with miscellaneous things (e.g. vacuum cleaner, gardening stuff, tools, propane tanks etc.).
We have been using our heaters a lot. They are doing a great job of keeping the bus warm. So far, we are still happy that we went with them so that we have room for a couch (instead of a wood stove). We are noticing condensation throughout the bus though, so we are looking into getting a dehumidifier soon. As expected, we are losing heat through the windows, so...
we've put up curtain rods all along the bus. Now I
just need to get fabric and make curtains :)!
Our bus is surrounded by trees, trees and more trees. Which in Autumn means leaves, leaves and more leaves! The roof of the bus, including the skylights, are covered in vegetation, so tBOY...
has been up on the bus sweeping:
Speaking of bus chores... here is another one that tBOY is responsible for: Emptying the composting toilet!
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| tBOY is ready with his high tech tools for the job: large heavy duty garbage bag and an elastic (a.k.a. hair tie!) |
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| The top comes right off. |
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| tBOY insisted on showing the contents of the toilet. There is surprisingly NO foul smell. It smells like soil, which it now mostly is. Toilet paper takes a little longer to decompose, so you can see bits of it in the mix. |
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| tBOY placing the bag around the 'solids' container (with the help from the hair tie). |
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| Turn over and empty. |
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| tBOY with the 'goods' that we bring to the dump. Technically, if we had enough time, the compost can be disposed of in Nature (not my garden though!) But because we are using it full time, we are continually adding to it, so the dump is the best place for it. In the future, we may choose to purchase another container, so we would just switch one out and let the contents decompose while we use the second one. For now, a visit to the dump works for us. |
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| So who eats our waste? Our friend Peat Moss! |
We are trying to empty the solids container once a month and the liquids container about once a week or week and a half. We have learned our lesson about what happens when we wait too long. Without going into details, let's just say that we now know that earlier is better than later!
Ok. That's all for now. I will try to be back soon though. Since the home-building part of teeny tiny living is slowing down, I want to shift the focus of the blog more towards its title: teeny tiny
living. I want to start conversations about living small - what that entails and how we are trying to do it. I hope to inspire some discussions in the cyber and the real world about making a smaller footprint on this little planet of ours. I invite all you quiet readers (I know you are out there!) to comment and to tell me about you, your home and your lifestyle choices.
Happy Halloween everyone!
