Oh, I apologize. I thought you were talking about the “regular” squat people do over public toilets.
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Or just put it right outside the front door then. Or in a far corner of the room. I keep getting the impression from reading books set in the past that these were often kept under the bed or near at hand should one need to go in the middle of the night.
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Google Chamber Pot Stand, and you will see lots of images of what is about the size of a night stand. On top is a pitcher and washbowl. On the bottom shelf would be the chamber pot. At a local museum that I worked at one summer, they had a version that had a curtain around the lower portion, so you didn’t look at the chamber pot. That stand was kept in the bedroom.
My mother inherited one of those; the curtained lower half contained what she called the “thunderbucket”. The top was flat, of course, for the pitcher and bowl. The rear legs extended above the tabletop to make two vertical rails, where in a modern vanity you’d expect to see a mirror, but on this stand there was a round dowel between the rails, on which you could hang towels.
We still use a chamber pot at the cottage. Going outside to the outhouse is too far at night, plus frightening for the children (and sometimes too cold). Also, at certain times of the year you don’t want to open the door and let in a few hundred mosquitos.
The pot we use is metal with a lid.
I solve this by never using the bathroom at night.
Here’s one on ebay that is just like the one we used at my grandmother’s house when we were kids.
On my father’s side, Grandad kept a pot under his bed all his life. It was Gram’s job to empty it every morning.
BTW, nobody was shy about using the pot. The outhouse was a three-seater.
I wonder if anyone ever played the joke of covering the chamberpot with something like the old saran wrap over the toilet trick. Maybe a cheesecloth or sausage casing perhaps.
Curse you Jebadiah!
Are you me? We also had a three-seater outhouse and used an identical chamber pot. Into the 80s, though by the 80s no one lived in that house full time. Just used it in the summers.
I never understood the chamber pot idea, either, unless you were severely ill. As a man (and I’m not sure about women), why wouldn’t you go outside and take a whiz if you had to in the middle of the night? If you had to do #2, (and I would think that a rare thing at night) put on a coat and walk to the outhouse.
Excuse me, but my grandmother is still alive, and you’ll take her chamber pot off her cold dead hands… so far they’re cold but not dead. Gramps died two years ago, they had a matching set (not sold as such, but they’re the same model; his was the blue one and hers the pink one).
jtgain, going to another room involves lights and much more waking up than grabbing the gazunder; going to an outhouse would have involved using fire and again much more waking up. And many, many people through history lived in places without outhouses; what’s more, in places with no room where outhouses could be built (apartment buildings are only a little less old than villages*).
- There are BC archaeological sites in Spain where the houses are 3 rooms, one on top of another: the bedroom was the top one. No garden or suchlike. That kind of “floor”-plan was still in use in the early 20th century in some rural areas.
As a cottage chamber-pot user I understand it perfectly. In Canada, it is often either very cold outside - who wants to leave a warm bed to go out where it is -20 to take a piss? Or, conversely, when it is not cold, there are often lots of mosquitos. Opening a door to outside and letting in the bugs to annoy you all night = not welcome.
On those days when it is not cold and there are no bugs - say, the end of August and all of September - sure, go outside. 
It’s not just cold outside- it may be nearly as cold inside. Keeping a house heated over the night would be a waste, and the only warmish-place after bedtime may be under the covers. Spending five minutes at zero degrees is enough to wake most people pretty well.
In the summer, bugs come out as night. Snakes do as well. And it is DARK, and if you don’t have a flashlight you are not going to want to take the time to light a candle or oil lamp. The level of awareness needed to use the potty without any unfortunate encounters with creepy-crawlies or household obstacles is enough to make it tough to fall back asleep.
Duck Soup: Groucho Marx has a large jar knocked off a shelf and over his head when Freedonia’s enemy is shelling the building/house they’re in. Harpo draws Groucho’s face on it.
Groucho: The last time this happened to me I was crawling under a bed.
This thread makes me feel old. I used a chamber pot at night and an outhouse (only a two seater; we were poor) until I was in fourth grade, when we moved. I don’t remember potty training but I’m darned sure it happened a lot earlier than it seems to now days. I do remember using the outhouse when I needed a stool to step up on to get on the seat.
I’m used to a wood-heated cabin that was insulated - generally in winter what you would do is put a couple of big pieces in the stove and close the draft till it was almost shut - that would keep the wood burning very slowly for a long time; the place would stay warmish most of the night (well compared to outside).
A couple years ago when during the middle of a full-blown Midwestern blizzard, our septic system froze up and the household plumbing became inoperable we improvised a chamber pot (5 gallon bucket with heavy duty heavy bags). A tight-fitting lid will drastically cut down on odor, and yes, when it’s sub-zero with other hazardous conditions (white-out, 45-75 mph winds, snowdrifts over one’s head hiding obstacles like cars and pick up trucks, etc.) you will tolerate some odor over (possibly literally) freezing to death.
We did keep the shitbucket in the bathroom, though, not the bedroom. With the bathroom door closed, as well as a lid for the thing, the odor was not apparent in the rest of the house.
I imagine your budget allows you to buy wood fairly freely, and a couple logs a night through winter is not a huge outlay. But in leaner times, wood for heating and cooking could be a significant portion of the household budget, which was either obtained through hard work and carefully rationed through the cold months or bought with precious cash.
I’ve known a lot of Peace Corps volunteers in cold countries. In Mongolia, you typically let the fire in your yurt burn out at night, despite temperatures as low as -50. In Bulgaria, it wasn’t unusual for everything in your kitchen to freeze solid overnight. Having a fully heated house through the night is somewhat of a rarity in human history,