My top five most amazing household items
I have no running water and barely any electricity in the construction trailer where I live half of the year. I do have a wood stove and a well. Here are my best household items for everyday use.
5. The Piggy Lid
My trailer was furnished and had a lot of household stuff inside it already when I moved in. There were three different pots and casseroles … but none of them had any lid! Luckily I had asked Ainur many years ago, when she went to Japan, to get me one of these piggy silicone cooking lids. I had no actual use for it back then, but maybe I had a premonition … Because since I moved into my trailer four years ago I use the piggy lid all the time!
4. Shared place: Wash Basin, Camp Shower, Washboard and Suction Cup
All I need to wash my laundry and myself. The basin I got off eBay for 1 €. It’s blue. Awesome. The camp shower can heat my shower water in the sun when it’s warm and sunny, and if it’s cold and cloudy I can just fill it with pre-heated water. The washboard is an amazing human invention. With it and the suction cup – for “stomping” the laundry: it presses air through the laundry and makes washing so much faster and easier – I wash and hang a normal load in less than an hour. I need to do laundry maybe once every three weeks, so it’s a perfectly acceptable work load …
3. This Candlestick
My mum won it in a skating competition as a teenager. Some years ago she washed it in the dishwashing machine, and the metal reacted in that horrible way that gives me spasms if I have to touch it. So she gave it to me. I soaked it in vinegar and it was back to its nice, smooth surface. And now it’s my main light source! Three candles is a perfect amount of light for drawing or reading after dark.
(Of course, with live candles you have to be extremely careful of the fire hazard, and watch that there’s nothing anywhere near the candles above, and that you can’t knock them over or that nothing can get knocked over onto them. Never leave live candles unattended. :< I of course have a fire alarm and a fire extinguisher.)
2. The Storm Cooker
It originally belonged to my parents, but for some reason I took it with me, or my mum gave it to me, when I moved away from home. It hadn’t been used for decades, but I sure am using it now … When it’s warm and I don’t need to heat up the wood stove, I cook with five tealights in the storm cooker (or seven for potatoes). I don’t use the actual alcohol cooker, because its flame is much too strong, and the alcohol smells disgusting and it’s a pain in the ass. I also heat washing water on the storm cooker – with the two pots on top of each other I can get 3 l of hot water. Yay!
I have a stash of tealights without aluminium cups, so I’m reusing those old aluminium cups over and over.
1. This Fucking Bucket
I got it from OBI. It’s not actually food grade but whatever. I carry all my drinking and washing water in it from the well. Without it, there would be absolutely nothing going on here. Best. Thing. Ever.
