I remember outhouses. My grandfather built his own home, and it was years before there was indoor plumbing. When I was a kid I was not fond of outdoor plumbing, there were spiders in the corners and of course since their home was in Connecticut there was snow during the winter between home and outhouse.

Interesting memory. Isn't it 'interesting' that using the outhouse used to be a communal affair. Seems like I remember a 3 'holer' mostly and once a 4. We took our flash lights (that in itself was cool), and made that trek on the darkest of nights while getting ready for bed and visited the stars in that very dark sky. (Growing up in SF, stars were not so visible as they were in the farm sky) Seems like those were times, sitting there in the dark, when Grandma would tell us stories of living on the farm.

August 26, 526, is the official anniversary of the invention of toilet paper by the Chinese.

Never had the experience of an outhouse (lucky me). I have visited quite a few port-a-potties on various golf courses. Not the most pleasant experience but most welcomed when nature calls and that's all there is!

I lived in a big old white brick farmhouse as a child, with a brick summer kitchen, where the wringer washer, with its bench and two rinse tubs sat, through a door ahead to go into the woodshed, where they used to store a buggy, I guess, as there was a double door in it. Turn left to take the door outside, or right through a door into a lean-to porch, then left along a few steps to another door leading to a two-holer ... that I don't recall ever seeing used by more than one person at a time ... so I guess the second
was provided in case of extreme emergency. There was a fairly large sized pail under each hole. That was the facility that we used in fair weather.

Actually, there was a door going outside from that lean-to porch, then go down a few wooden steps and a few steps ahead was a small brick building, with no door on it when I was young, which had a large pile of wood, sometimes coal, ashes: it had been a smokehouse, in earlier years, I was told, where the people smoked their meat to preserve it for winter use.

For use when the weather got near teeth-chattering cold, in one of the six upstairs rooms, most of them bedrooms, we had a small metal rounded box with a wooden seat and lid on top and a door in the front, which held a large metal pail, which Dad would carry out to add to the pile of manure by the horse stable, when it got filled. There was a small pipe leading from the box into the wall, into one of the four inactive chimneys in the lower part of the roof near the corners. There was another chimney, built in the centre of the house on top of one of the interior brick cross-walls, with a pipe from the furnace in the basement leading up through the front hall to the hall in the second storey, then through that floor into the attic, where it led into that chimney.

We had a big old kitchen range, with a much larger pipe called a "fuel-saver" in the regular pipe just above the range, with its pipe going through the floor into the second storey, on the other side of the hall, so it had a bend over our heads to go to the other side, then travel a few feet to join the smoke pipe from the furnace on its way to the attic.

We had a cistern in the basement to catch water from the roof for washing, and a hand pump in the yard to fill a pail to bring in for drinking and cooking. Dad said that it needed cleaning, but that the rocks, stones and bricks in its wall were so loose that he was afraid that they'd fall in on him.

So he had a well drilled right beside the house in 1936, in the Dirty Thirties depression, so we got a tap in the house and trenches dug to carry water to three barns to serve the animals.

Mom had gone to psych. hosp. a couple of years before, was there about 6 more years prior to her death. If she'd been home, it's possible that we'd have both a bathroom ... but as it was, the first real modern bathroom that I experienced was when I went away to University. Dad's mother and a hired housekeeper were the women in the house ... keeping Dad and three boys more or less out of mischief: usually the "housekeeper" was the wife of a fairly recently married couple, who came to work on our farm as a couple, and needed to leave when they were about to have a family. One woman who'd been with us earlier came back, with a small child, after her husband went to war, more or less offering to help our family for room and board ... I don't know what financial arrangements there were between her and Dad. I had some connection with them, years later, after my return to this area: her husband was a taxi driver ... and they'd had trouble with a daughter related to drugs.

ole joyfuelled

Sounds like the prelude to book, think about it.

Chinese TP. Hmmmm. Sears Catalog was more interesting material. The good ol' days?

I grew up in the country of N.Y. state and we had a outhouse all our lives,it was still there when i left at 18 years old.We always had a 3 holer as my dad always made ours and we had a big family.Each hole was a different size,from small to large.

Those things were sanded as smooth as a babys bottom,varnished etc so there were no splinters.My mom had linoleum on the floor,curtains on the window and of course the sears catalog.

Every so often,my dad would pour lye down it.

We also had to go to the spring to get our water.I'm glad i grew up in those days.They never got plumbing or running water in that part of town until a few years after i left.
Kathi

I grew up in a farming community where everyone had outshouses - there were little to no indoor plumbing. Indoor plumbing requires running water and in most cases, running water used electric power. Electric power came to the farms in 1947 in my neighborhood and that changed the type of house construction, but change did not come quickly. Those old farm houses were used until they deterioated - most folks could not afford to throw away their house if it was still useable. In the rural area with no sewer lines, septic systems have to be installed if one is to have drains from the house. Old houses without an indoor toilet usually had one drain. It was the drain from the kitchen sink. This was piped or tiled away from the house and dumped on the ground beyond the yard.

That pipe led into what was called a leach well. I help my dad create one in the 1950s. And, to this day, I don't recall where we put all the dirt that we hauled out, using a pail on the end of rope.

my first experience with outside plumbing was at Yellowstone..it was on the order of a port-a-potttie, hugely deep! about gagged, lol...