Day 12: "Privy Counsel"

[Lawrene0]

Such nice and useful topics from the rest of you, and here I am talking about the bathroom.

But it's new! Brand new this month! I'm dying to tell you about it.

To begin, for six years I have asked my guests to carry their food, water, and sleeping bags a kilometre down a footpath through the woods. Once at the treehouse, they got no wifi, no electricity, no plumbing. Kitchen access? No. If they wanted to cook, they had to make a fire. Same if they wanted warmth. If they wanted a bathroom? Ha! They had to make that themselves, too. 

And they call me a superhost.

The secret to getting five stars for severe deprivation is to tap into the hiker crowd. You good hosts, understandably and wisely, discourage them, with their dirty boots and backpacks and toques. I love them. I'm one of them. 

But then our listing got noticed by non-hikers, who started to book in droves.

They are nice, too, and I can see why you want them, smelling of shampoo as they do. 

But leave-no-trace camping turns out not to be their thing, and suddenly our eco-friendly cat-hole system that had been given the green light by the rivershed conservation authority was unsustainable without extra hours of work by me. Like you, I don't have extra hours. I couldn't keep up.

With this influx of instant-booking new-to-the-outdoors guests, I would either have to delist or think up a system they might embrace. The solution was to build an outhouse 400 metres up the path away from the river. Less than 400 metres, and it would have been within the floodplain. Do not picture an outhouse in a floodplain. Oh, you have already? Sorry.

It's lovely though, this one, all piney and clean and following our township sanitation rules. Works like a charm. Harry, the designer, is brilliant.

Immediately a deer mouse applied to be co-host with the duty of shredding the toilet paper, but Harry is keeping her out now with a metal door sweep. I had to add a screen to the moon-and-star cutout to thwart the sparrows. The raccoons are hibernating, so they won't be trying to book it for a party until spring. 

I am upping my nightly price, given this great luxury, but no plans to apply for Plus or Beyond yet. 😉

[Rachael26]

@Lawrene0

That's awful that Canada is not given the same treatment as US - maybe the Magazine advertisers and articles would not apply across the border - but still.

Maybe we should get this addressed and a new clause put into the Airbnb NAFTA2 agreement! 🙂

[Rebecca160]

@Lawrene0 I absolutely love your new outhouse! It is clean, orderly and whimsical.

sorry that some of your guests do not understand Leave No Trace. It is not instinctual behavior and must be learned and practiced. 

[Lawrene0]

Thanks, @Rebecca160. Humans love leaving traces, that's for sure! 

[Alexandra316]

@Lawrene0 I love it! Looks great! I really have to make the drive and check it out in person.

[Lawrene0]

Absolutely, @Alexandra316. Any time. And I'm open to decorating tips! 

[Helen427]

@Lawrene0@Alexandra316@Rachael26@Rebecca160@Quincy

What a beautiful toilet, love the carved moon in it and so much thought has gone into it.

Bring back the outside toilets. These are from both Fiji over the water and New Zealand in 1940-50's

FijiNew Zealand Outside Toilet 1940-50's

[Helen427]

@Lawrene0@Alexandra316@Rachael26@Rebecca160@Quincy@Lizzie and @everyone-else

A must visit in New Zealand is to the Hundertwasser Toilets in Kawakawa, Northland close in travel distance to @Ria location.Friedensreich Hundertwasser Toilets, Kawakawa

[Sarah977]

@Helen427  Awesome! That's definitely my kind of bathroom (I'm a big fan of black or dark grey grout).

[Lizzie]

This is very cool, @Helen427. 

It reminds me of the work by artist Piet Mondrian. 🙂

[Lawrene0]

Wow, @Helen!

[Sarah977]

@Lawrene0  I absolutely love this post! And I love your outhouse. Although I don't now, I've certainly lived many years of my life with outhouses, none as nice as yours, though. When I lived in Canada, I had a big old 100 year old house- of course there was only one bathroom and it was downstairs, although 3 of the 4 bedrooms were upstairs, including mine. I hated having to get up in the winter in the middle of the night to go to the loo, so when I built my house from scratch here in Mexico, I put in both an upstairs (where the 2 bedrooms are) and a downstairs bathroom. I swear I never go into the bathroom upstairs, which is 10 steps from my bed, without feeling like some privileged queen.

You need a sign somewhere for the more gentrified guests you're getting now- "Take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints".

[Lawrene0]

And "Kill nothing but time".

Thanks, @Sarah977!

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Lawrene0

Your outhouse is lovely~!!!!

Brought back memories of when I first saw a thing called an "outhouse" in real life (I was 11 years old). It wasn't anywhere near as nice as yours........ imagine the horror I felt when I found out I was expected to use it!!!!!!!!

[Lawrene0]

Easy to imagine the horror, @Jessica-and-Henry0. I've seen some doozies, too. I have "decided I don't have to go after all" many times upon opening an outhouse door...

[Robin4]

@Lawrene0

Move away from your heritage! This is terrible....you deserter, you! 

I still have those pictures of your treehouse you posted this time last year Lawrene and this 'out-house' is a worthy addition. I can imagine you really agonised over doing this though. Next thing you will start thinking about putting in a small rainwater tank to collect the water off the roof and you will have a handbasin connected to it with a lever action tap....you traitor Lawrene :-))

I do not have a good track record with long drops!

When I left school in the 60' I became a 'Wool Classer' and worked with a shearing company that contacted to shear and package sheep wool from the paddock to the wool store. One year I classed on a property called Rawlinna station in Western Australia and the year we were there, they shore 72,000 sheep. 

All of these properties had shearers quarters for the 30 or more people who worked in the shearing team and these quarters in those days invariably had 'long drops' ....some of them up to 4 or 5 stands!

This 2 stander shows the principle involved. You could actually exchange pleasantries with another team member while attending to business!

One morning on a property called Mulgathing we were shearing lambs and there is not a lot of work for a classer were lambs wool is concerned. I was staring out the shed door to a corrugated iron 3 stand long drop toilet about 30 metres from the shed and I suddenly hit on this idea! There was a bicycle tyre tube hanging on one of the wool bins, so armed with this, I gathered up a hammer and a few of nails from the experts room and headed across to the toilet. I lifted the seat, stetched out the bike tube and nailed it to each end of this 3 stander and replaced the seat. I next took a reasonably robust tree branch and went around behind the toilet and through the space where the corrugated iron wall of the shed did not meet the ground (had a definite need of good ventilation) I levered down this bike tube. I stood back and admired my handwork and thought...'The next person who goes in there is in for a bit of "What for"

All that morning run noboby went to the toilet, between lunch and afternoon smoko nobody went, and I sort of fogot about it and moved on. During the last shearing run of the day I felt nature call and headed over myself. I was sitting there when all of sudden this amazing pain assaulted my rear end. Some keen observer saw what I had been doing that morning, word spread around the team and nobody was going to use that toilet before me!

So I have a certain caution where bush toilets are concerned.

Hey, congratulations on another brilliant contribution Lawrene....there are not too many areas you don't absolutely stand out in!

Cheers.....Rob