The Permaculture of Washing Dishes [Saving Water, From Thailand to the US!!!]

Stacking Functions is by far, one of my favorite aspects of Permaculture.

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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!

Nice place to spend a winter ain't it?

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.

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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:

1. The fire place in the kitchen is the cooker (stove).
2. Some wood ashes are collected into the basket.
3. Wet the coconut husk (sponge) and dip into the ashes as needed.
4. Scrub, and rinse the dishes (please only use as much water as you need)
5. 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!

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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.

I know, crazy right? There's only two buckets in this photo... with so little dishes to wash we skipped a step or two! But I promise you a little video next week with the full on, "4 Bucket System".

It all starts (usually) with 4 buckets of clean water, and here is how we set it up:

1. Bucket nunber 1 is our First Rinse. Every bit of food is sponged off. (THAT SPONGE STAYS WITH THE FIRST RINSE BUCKET)
2. Bucket number 2 is our Soap Water, where the dishes are actually washed. (WE USE BIODEGRADABLE SOAP ONLY)
3. Bucket number 3 is our Second Rinse to rinse off the soap.
4. 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.

I must apologize for these crappy photos of our dishes! Firs I take you through a beautiful part of the world and than this??? I definitely owe you a good video of the system we use when more people are around!

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?

If you really want to know what is inside this Coconut, take a look at Humans Of Steemit.

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