The Permaculture of Washing Dishes [Saving Water, From Thailand to the US!!!]
Stacking Functions is by far, one of my favorite aspects of Permaculture.
Shortly after meeting the girl of my life, I asked her out on a "date"... Not everyone would pick up and go on a 3 month date to South East Asia with a stranger, but she did!!! What a girl, right? She met me in Bangkok about 2 weeks after I had landed and on we went, from Khao San Road to Pai, in northern Thailand.
The first thing we did after a few days in Bangkok, was bolt straight towards the beaches. Of course, we hit most of the islands on the backpacker trail... it was February after all, and we were sick of the cold New York winter!
Than we went to Cambodia and played in more paradise beach settings, but this story is not about our trip to south east asia, it's about permaculture.
After getting our beach fix, we headed inland, towards the Golden Triangle. In Pai (Thailand) we stayed on a little permaculture farm wich during the dry season was impressively greener than most neighbors! The head honcho had been applying permaculture principals to his father's farm and the results were fantastic. We took in an enourmous amount of knowledge during our stay there. From mango trees that drop leaves year round to be used as mulch, to riding a bicycle that turned the drum of a washing machine, to stacking functions of water while doing the dishes and feeding ducks...!
This is where I want to bring you with this post.
The outdoor kitchen was a simple, four post rain shelter with shelving on two sides, a fire place and a beautiful curved piece of a log for a sink on another side. The spout was hooked up to a garden hose fixed behind the sink, a chunk of a coconut husk sat in a dish where you would imagine a sponge to sit and a basket full of wood ashes was hanging near by.
Doing the dishes there was such a great example of how many components and things were being stacked on top of one another...
Stacking Functions: In permaculture
every component should serve as many functions as possible and every function should be served by as many components as possible.
Breaking it down:
- The fire place in the kitchen is the cooker (stove).
- Some wood ashes are collected into the basket.
- Wet the coconut husk (sponge) and dip into the ashes as needed.
- Scrub, and rinse the dishes (please only use as much water as you need)
- Watch what happens!!!
Every time the water was turned on, a small flock of ducks would come wobbling over the drainage trench to quench their thirst!!!
So this is where components and functions stack and interact with eachother.... The wood cooks your food, the ashes clean your dishes and the water rinses, hydrates the ducks and keeps on going down to feed a patch of cat-tail looking plants! On top of it all the water was harvested from the rain... The same water was used 4 times you can even count a 5th time if you want to for returning the water to the atmosphere and the ground table!
On the homestead we use a 4 bucket system (no animals yet):
Always inspired by what we had seen in South East Asia and across the multiple festivals and Natural Building workshops, we created the same thing or something close to it.
It all starts (usually) with 4 buckets of clean water, and here is how we set it up:
- Bucket nunber 1 is our First Rinse. Every bit of food is sponged off. (THAT SPONGE STAYS WITH THE FIRST RINSE BUCKET)
- Bucket number 2 is our Soap Water, where the dishes are actually washed. (WE USE BIODEGRADABLE SOAP ONLY)
- Bucket number 3 is our Second Rinse to rinse off the soap.
- Bucket number 4 is our Sanitizing and Final Rinse. We use about two caps (not cups, it's not a spelling mistake!) of distilled white vinegar per gallon of water. (DON'T USE BLEACH, UNLESS MAYBE YOU PLAN ON DUMPING IT ON POISON IVY... I GUESS!)
When the first bucket is so dirty it starts looking like a liquid compost pile, we empty it at the base of a tree or edible plants. We should probably start making compost tea with that soon!
That bucket (number 1 or first rinse) gets cleaned, the same way we clean our dishes and then filled with clean water and vinegar. At this point it goes to the back of the line and becomes bucket number 4. Everything else also slides down the line. The bucket with the soap water becomes our First Rinse, the Second Rinse takes the place of bucket number 2 and we ad a little bit of soap... Our Final Rinse slides into 3rd place to become our Second Rinse bucket.
Simple enough, I think. If it didn't make all that much sense I will be happy to explain it again in a chat or here in the comments section!
I can count 7 functions starting with bucket number 4 the first time this system is set up. We do our dishes between the clouds and the water table under our feet.... After the cycle has been completed once, the water in each bucket serves mutliple functions, continuously!
How many can you count?
In the End, it Always works out
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Great article @senorcoconut. I am just getting into this culture and learning so much from posts like this one!
Thank you so much @steven-patrick, I'm happy to hear that I am reaching someone!
I find myself doing this sort of detailed analysis and ethical re-working of simple daily life chores all the time - you've done a great job on this particular one.
You could maybe add in the 'spiritual/ mindfulness function/ dimension' - which is going on simultaneously and tying you into a whole 'grounding yourself' historical tradition which has been going on for millennia.
Doing dishes is one of the most perfect chores for just concentrating on what it is you are doing, so...
Sorry for the late reply... it's been very busy over here!
Yes I guess dishes and washing them has been a long part of our history! I personaly like doing the dishes. You get in the zone and it's almost meditative...it's my me time!
Thanks for the awesome comment, I'm off to wash my bowl now!
Great post!
We need more people learning and being more environmentally conscious...
Keep the good work coming!
I'm starting a project soon in Argentina... Gonna make a post about it maybe next month!
Looking forward for more of your posts :)
Thank you @lavidaesunviaje that's very sweet.
A project in Argentina... sounds very intriguing. Please tag me when you write that post, I want to know more.
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Thank you @travelfeed!!!!
This is how I will be doing dishes come Saturday, in buckets, we will be out at the cabin getting our build on! :)
Have a great build! The bucket wash is great when you have a bunch of people and they can each wash their own dishes. That's how we've done it for workshops.
What are you building?
We are building a 16' x 32' timber framed cabin/shop, we are doing the shop first as its an easier build and since it's technically our first build we'd like some practice before we start building the actual cabin.
So after the shop is up we will be staying in there until we get the cabin built, still aren't sure on the size of a cabin we'd like to build yet.
Yea that's cool, we thought about doing something similar. Make the shop first, live in it till we build the one we want to live it.
I want to do a timber frame structure and fill it in with strawbales, call it a barn (for tax reasons) as our workshop.
Can't wait to see those posts! 16 by 32 seems like a good size too. Tall enough for a second story or lofted area?
Right now we are staying in a canvas prospector tent out here, lol.
We looked at insulating ours with wood chips, we have a chipper so we’d just need to get the wood; its definitely not hard to get around here ;)
It will have 8ft walls and a 45 pitch roof, there will be room for beds/storage up there. 👍🏼
Oh cool, wood chips for insulation? Never heard of that. 8 foot walls.. isn't that a bit small for a workshop?
We have to figure out a way to insulate out camper for next winter. I'm guessing straw bales all around on the ground, perhaps with an extra layer of blue foam board insulation under the floor. But for the walls and ceiling, I'm starting to think about some sort of insulating board, an outer frame and skinning it all around with live edge boards we can cut here. Would look lole a cabin!
I think the 8ft walls in the shop will be ok. It will eventually have double doors too! It would be like a tool shed/storage with a work bench or two.
We don’t have a shop at home either, only the tool shed, lol.
After seeing the roof for the shed, the 8' looks great!
Love it. We used to have a similiar system living in vehicles. Wouldnt even get through 25 L a day. Then we moved into a house... wierd to have water on tap!!
We're going the other way around!!! Butblots of experience living on and off in trucks or vans and caravans! On the house thing, I find it even weirder how much stuff we've collecyed over the years!!! SO much shit...
Oh I know right!! YOu know when I moved to England, I had my 5 year old and two suitcases. We had half a container shipped out to Australia, mainly bikes and books and other kit like solar panels and waterbuts. Not a lot. Now we've a housefull. Saying that, we are pretty good minimalists too. Our most precious things we'd keep (a rug from Morroco, an ammonite, a few other things) but I could easily walk away from the lot - non attachment BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wow, a half a container!!! I can't get ris of book, and anything that was collectes whilst traveleing either! Those are precious memories and because we want to build a bunch of lkttle cottages, now we have decoration for them (we kept them that long, can't give up now!).
I thinknin the end I could walk away from it all too... but we are in the middle of living the dream right now, so no walking!
I love to see more of these posts, because I find it very useful learning more about permaculture. We are living in an apartment where we will probably stay a few more years, but we actually have been looking around for communities before we moved here. It is quite possible that in a few years we will be living a lifestyle like that, in nature and using all your sources to the max. I pressed follow :) Thanks for this post!
You are very welcome and thank you for the follow and this comment,
I wish you all the best, learning whike you are in the apartment and loolong for the perfect place! What city do you live in?
We had been thinking about this new life for a long time. I can harsly believe we so close.... a few more days till we are full time, heading into a permaculture homestead building.
If we build it they will come???
I hope so because one part of this dream is to have multiple families living here with us, each in their individual natural material home. A community that would act a little more like a tribe than an commune.
And right now it's just the 3 of us, wich is still very fun.
Great read. It's so easy to take fresh running water on tap for granted. Thanks for doing your part to protect our resourcesGreat idea for saving water, especially if living on the road. Thanks for doing your part to protect our precios resources. Good one!.
Thank you @rainbowrachel, it means a lot! It's a lot easier to do when you are forced to save water! Eventually we will dig a well but I'll still wanna use as little water as we need only.