Composting toilets in Stuff

Many years ago, when I got into composting, I was reading up on composting human waste and I became obsessed with the idea of putting composting toilet in the yard. Or, what most people would call an outhouse. I would have loved one inside the house, but technology was different back then and the idea of having a toilet like that indoors caused a series of other logistical problems.

Nonetheless, I loved the outdoor bathroom and the kids were on board too. The only problem is that for a good part of the year here in Boston it is completely unrealistic to actually go outside to use the bathroom. So it remains unused for long stretches of time.

If I wake up in the middle of the night and I need to pee, I would face two options:

1 - Walk about 10 feet to my bathroom.
2 - Put on clothes (or a robe at a minimum), walk down two flights of stairs, walk out into the yard, and then do everything in reverse to come back to my room.

I’m hesitant to blame that on laziness. I think it’s logical that I wouldn’t want to do that, regardless of if I’m lazy or not.

So this leads to the present day when I’ve known for a few years now that indoor composting toilets are easy and readily available. They don’t have all the issues that they used to. They don’t smell bad, and they look almost exactly like normal toilets.

When Megan had a contractor taking measurements for her new hot tub, I jotted down the number of the business so I could call them about installing a composting toilet in my home. The guy came yesterday. We talked about a few options.

We have three bathrooms in the house. One on the first floor that is the guest bathroom, one on the second floor that the kids all share, and one on the top floor in my bedroom. I chose to replace mine first. If it seems like a good thing, we’ll probably do the others as well.

The work will happen next week. I’ll update more as it happens.