Tiny house living strips life down to the essentials. Unfortunately, sometimes that includes your dignity.
It had been a good morning, sunny, still, deceptively calm. I’d just finished washing the sheets, made a smoothie, and was about to head into town to run some errands. My off-grid goddess fantasy life was thriving.
The plan was simple, lock up the house, use the loo, head to town.
Except I live tiny. And my loo isn’t in the house. It’s a separate little outhouse, just across the deck. It has fairy lights, a perfectly balanced composting system, and a framed print that says “You Got This.” Which, in hindsight, felt mocking. Because what happened next… was not that.
Now, I’m going to say this delicately. It was that time of the month. I was mid wardrobe change, if you catch my drift. Standing. Half dressed. Managing things. Keys in my cardigan pocket. Not my hand. Not wedged under my boob. Not balanced on a windowsill. I did everything right. Then it happened. The wind, that sudden, invisible menace, came roaring through the valley.
SLAM. The outhouse door flung open. And standing there, right at that moment, framed like a painting in the open doorway. Farmer Dave. Holding a sack of lemons, he came to give me. Eyes wide. Mouth slightly open.
In the shock of it, the door, the lemons, the eye contact, I flailed. And as I moved, the keys flung up and out of my cardigan pocket with perfect comedic timing… and disappeared straight down the compost toilet. Gone.
Let’s talk about Dave.
Dave is my neighbour. Sixty-something. Wears Crocs and short shorts year-round. Smells faintly of diesel, burnt toast, and existential dread. He means well, but in the way that possums mean well when they climb into your ceiling. He was just as shocked as I was. His eyes widened. The lemons fell. They hit the ground in a burst of citrus chaos. Lemons everywhere. It was like a Mediterranean confetti cannon had gone off.
There was a moment, very brief, very surreal, where Dave and I just looked at each other. Me, half-dressed and horror-struck. Him, ankle-deep in lemons, blinking like he’d just walked in on someone giving birth to a crisis. Out of sheer panic, I let out a squeaky “AH—SORRY!” and tried to pull the door shut. In doing so, my keys slipped from my pocket. And fell. Not onto the floor. Not onto the deck. But into the open compost toilet. Straight down. Gone. Then, mercifully, Dave disappeared. Not saying a word. Just turned around and left.
So there I was. Standing in my tiny outhouse. In a state of mid-change. No phone. No keys. No way into my tiny house, because, in a fit of responsible adulthood, I had locked the door before heading to the loo. My car was locked too. Even the dog was locked inside the house, probably napping smugly on my laundry pile. I had no dignity, no backup plan, and no spare key hidden under a rock (because I “hadn’t got around to it yet”). And all I could think was, this is peak tiny house living.
I couldn’t see the keys. They were gone, swallowed whole by the dark, mysterious layers of sawdust, and whatever emotional baggage lives inside a composting toilet. No glint. No jingle. Just vibes. Bad, bad vibes.
I stood there frozen, cardigan flapping in the breeze, trying to logic my way out of this moment. For five long minutes, I ran through my options like a Choose Your Own Adventure book written by a sadist:
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Option A: Walk across the paddock and find Dave. Ask him for something I could use to fish my keys out of the loo like this was normal.
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Option B: Break into my own house.
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Option C: Set fire to the toilet. File an insurance claim. Start over.
That left Option D: The one I dreaded most. The only one that didn’t require further humiliation or arson:
Reach in.
So I did.
Rolled up my sleeve. Swallowed my pride. And with the silent scream of a woman at the edge of sanity, I plunged my hand into the unknown. It was warm. Damp. Horrifyingly textured. I focused on my breathing. I focused on my ancestors. I questioned every life choice I’d made since the fourth grade. And then, something metal. Got them.
I yanked my hand out like it was on fire and held up the keys, triumphant and traumatised. I had never hated and loved an object more in my life. Once back inside I bathed the keys in white vinegar. Then Dettol. Then vodka. Then burned sage around them, just in case. The dog sniffed them once and backed away like she, too, knew things had gone too far.
What I learned
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Never take your keys into the toilet.
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Periods do not care about your plans. Or your compost system.
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Always say yes to a key hiding box.
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Dave needs therapy. Or perhaps I do.
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Citrus will forever be a reminder of a moment I would rather forget.
Tiny house living? It’ll humble you. Fast.
