Space Waitress' Travels on Earth

It has been 52 days! The question I am asked every day is..”How is your tiny house?”. The answer every day is ..”I love it.”

In that 52 days, we, my sister and I, have learnt so much. My sister had her own small place delivered to the same piece of land a week a couple of weeks after mine, so we get to learn it all together, think things out together and babysit each other’s house if we are away. We would be roughly 50 metres apart so the perfect distance for morning coffee together.

What have we learn’t…..for the first 2 weeks we only had two Solar panels installed. The weather was shite and we had to learn what uses how much and plan accordingly. The generator became our friend and we often felt like a couple of pioneering women, buying petrol, starting the generator and being frugal wth the power. We also had the mud but thank god, no long dresses.

We now don’t take for granted that hairdryer that you just switch on in the morning after a shower! It pulls serious power when you are conserving it. For two weeks, we only used our lighting, the compost toilet fan and the water pump. Boiling the jug sees the solar use spike to thousands!!, but only for a couple minutes. One of the biggest adjustments is doing washing when the sun is out, charging the panels. This is also the best time to use the oven, so you will see us baking in the middle of the day on a weekend. I don’t have a microwave so I have become inventive with a gas hob and a frypan for reheating. Works fab. We now have all 10 panels so power use is good. We can watch TV, use the hairdryer, heat the Tinies and make a cuppa for visitors. Being in the middle of winter, some days the panels need the generator to help them charge as the sun stays hidden for a lot of the day. We have an APP of course to check usage. No pioneering with that.

Check in for the next post, and I will cover more of the steps to being off grid.