Category: low-footprint living

The size and design of a house or apartment makes a significant different in the cost of maintaining it. Cleaning it, repairing stuff, furnishing it, heating and cooling it. The cost comes not only in terms of money and fossil fuels, but your own precious supply of attention.

Some incredibly clever folks created a 420-square foot apartment that two people can comfortably live in. It furthermore has space for two guests to sleep, and can accommodate a sit-down dinner for 10 to 12 people.

The same people went on to create a 350-square-foot apartment that meets the same criteria.

This is not to say everyone should give up their normal-sized houses or apartments and move to a micro dwelling. (Though I must say, some of my favorite dwellings have been tiny, including a 200-square-foot apartment in Tokyo and a 19-foot trailer in Austin.)

What it is to say is, there’s lots of room to push the envelope of design. Even in an ordinary house, a dining table could fold up into a wall. Bicycles can hang up, out of the way. There’s so much room for guests and additional residents in the average home, if space is used creatively.

Not everyone wants to live with other people (or more people than they already live with). But some would if they could, either to reduce their overhead costs, or to accommodate a friend or family member who can’t afford their own place — or for a social reason, such as to build community and resilience; share skills and ideas under one roof.

My dwelling, which I will grow old in if God’s willing and the sea don’t rise too much, is a 988-square-foot house. I have usually had one housemate; would like a second. During special events such as Bike Week, I have had up to nine friends and relatives staying here.

Officially, my house is a two-bedroom. But I converted the tiny utility room into my own bedroom-studio. And last March, when there were nine people here for Bike Week, I removed the table and chairs from the tiny dining room and put a cot in there. You know what? I never put the dining room table and chairs back in there. The chairs are used all over the house, and the table went to a neighbor who needed one.

So where do people eat? That’s easy. When the weather’s nice and there’s a large gathering, we eat at the patio table. When the weather’s not nice and we have a large gathering, I set up a long folding table in the living room. (The table is lightweight, and is easy to store when not in use.)

When it’s just me, or me and one or two guests, we use the little end-tables in the living room or porch.

Flexibility is what I like. Lightweight movable furniture. Folding beds. A 988-square-foot house can be vast; it’s much too large for me alone.

I have a rule that no furniture comes into this house that I would not be able to carry out the door myself, unassisted. Good rule for a single female, even a stronger-than-average one.

Some folks live in 3,000-square-foot houses where they are actively using every bit of the space. More often, though (in my house-cleaning and decluttering gigs), what I see is lots of opportunity for better use of space. It’s rarely the homeowner’s fault. Mainstream house design, cultural norms, have a certain inertia.

That’s why it’s so helpful and energizing to see examples of radical space design, even if you yourself don’t aspire to live in a micro dwelling.

Design is a major determinant of whether a living space is easily shareable or not. I once heard a home designer say she could break a couple up in two months just by creating a bad home layout (not that she was trying to do that; she was just trying to illustrate the power of design).

Makes you think, huh!

Design of our living space has a major effect on our moods, our energy, our creative capacity, our ability to live harmoniously with others. I greatly enjoyed the descriptions and photos of the LifeEdited micro apartments. And I’m eyeballing more opportunities to optimize space and flexibility in my thousand-square-foot palace!

Further Reading:

Can a Crowdsourced Apartment Design Save the Planet? (mashable.com): “What do you get when you take one 420-square-foot New York apartment, one green living advocate, $70,000 in prizes and a crowdsourced audience of forward-thinking designers? Hopefully an apartment design competition that can help reduce a country’s environmental footprint. The concept, called LifeEdited, aims to design an actual apartment that brainchild and guinea pig Graham Hill will inhabit. The apartment, just 420 square feet, must be able to accommodate a sit-down dinner for 12, comfortable lounging for eight people, space for two guests, a home office, a work area, hideable kitchen and necessities like bed, shower and bike storage (it is a green initiative, after all).”

LifeEdited2 (LifeEdited.com): This one is a 350-square-foot apartment! “Completed in 2016, LE2 is smaller than LE1 but amazingly manages similar functionality. It graciously seats 10 for dinner, hosts two in a guest room, and has a great home office.” I loved reading about the super clever foldaway/transforming furniture and the energy- and water-saving features. By the way, the article says the apartment is for sale. It was written awhile back but who knows? If it grabs you, contact the people!

“About” page of LifeEdited.com: – see more pix of their ultra-cool space-efficient micro-houses (including LifeEdited Maui) and apartments. LifeEdited Maui is a great example of an ultra-space-efficient small home in a wild setting, leaving more room for nature.

Solstice Blessings, everyone! In my hemisphere and time zone, the longest night of the year was last night (Saturday December 21), and the official time of the Winter Solstice was 11:19pm.

This is a very special time of year for me, even beyond just the Solstice itself which I consider very special.

Some years back, when I was living in a cute little trailer in an RV park in south Austin, I started to think of this time of year as “the backside of the year.”

And I meant it in a good way. A time of solitude (most of my neighbors seemed to leave town); a time of unstructured days (most of my clients — I was making my living as a Japanese-to-English translator at the time — tended not to have any work requests for me from late December til early January); a time of long-wave introspection. A fallow time. Doubly so because Facebook was not yet a thing.

It felt like a very RICH fallow time. An incubation phase; a gathering-in of energies to recycle for future use.

For maybe the past couple of years, I have not experienced the “backside of the year” as fully and richly as I have described above. But this year, I’m back to experiencing it again and it is a real treat.

Every time of year is special to me. I’m a particularly great fan of long warm summer nights. And when the days start to noticeably shorten, I go through a brief gear-shift phase where I feel a little hemmed-in and mildly dejected. But that phase passes.

And I really do cherish the “backside of the year.” A time to get small quiet things accomplished; a time to reassess and discard what no longer serves; a time to savor the richness of the dark. It kind of feels to me like I imagine an earthworm in the fertile depths of the compost pile feels.

To be continued shortly …

OK, I’m back! Not unlike many other people, I am prone to the “Facebook Blues,” where I see how much other people are accomplishing (their award-winning films and best-selling books; their eco YouTube channels getting a million hits; their gardens producing insane quantities of fruit; their 6-year-old kid inventing a new molecule, which was just a side activity on his way to a command performance at Carnegie Hall to perform Beethoven’s Umpteenth Symphony in Z minor), and find my own efforts greatly wanting. What am I doing? Why am I doing so little? How can I just spend so much time just sitting around enjoying birds and books and all that kind of thing? Why am I not out there doing more?

The “Backside of the Year,” when Nature herself slows down, when most of the neighborhood seems to be off somewhere at the mall or with their grandkids or in Paris or trekking in the Andes or what have you, and my immediate world seems to get extra quiet, feels like an extra-strong invitation, giving me not only permission but an actual mandate to unhook and slow down and fully be present with whatever I’m doing, without reference to the seemingly much greater things other people are doing.

I remind myself that Facebook is not the world. I use it so much for my work (primarily, spreading the #GrassrootsGreenMobilization by sharing the many shoots of it that are sprouting up all over), that it takes over my entire day if I’m not careful. The Backside of the Year, when nature gets extra dark and quiet, is a precious gift.

Backside of the Year accomplishments for today:

– Listened to the tiny birds that flit around my house; managed to spot one

– Added cover matter to the compost pile

– Installed an old-school pencil sharpener that I inherited from Mom & Dad’s house; it had been sitting around for almost two years, not being very usable because it wasn’t screwed down. Now it is! Hooray! Seriously, this was a big deal, actually getting this done.

– Wrote the first bit of this post as a Facebook post; then decided to write you an expanded version; did that

– Listening to the roar of the ocean! It’s about a 5-min walk from my house to the sea, and I can’t always hear the waves from my house, but at this time of year I often can; maybe it’s to do with some combination of cooler temperature, wind direction, lower humidity

Later plans:

– Go out with my hand-cart and pick up the pieces of an oak tree that someone in my neighborhood chopped down and left at curbside. Their loss is my garden’s gain! Logs are great for landscaping, and for building soil.

– Read book; appreciate the sights and sounds and smells around me

I don’t know if there’s a word for this, but if not, there should be: That feeling you get when you read about how much good someone else is doing, and you start to question not only your own activities and choices, but the very validity of your existence on this planet. It can be a deep dark rabbit-hole.

The thing is, we need all of us. Every person doing what they’re drawn to do according to their best efforts and highest intentions is an essential part of the mix. And, inner accomplishments are an absolutely essential part of that mix, though they don’t look cool in a selfie on Facebook. We live in a physical dimension, but our fundamental journey as humans is a journey of consciousness. An unfolding of awareness; an uncovering of our deepest truest nature, the better to help and serve all of our fellow creatures.

And regarding Facebook, I think that channel has been a boon to environmental movements (and other beneficial movements). Certainly I would not be able to reach nearly as many people without it. Regarding the “Facebook Blues,” I had to ask myself, “Am I just a pill, an envy-riddled sourpuss who can’t take joy in the accomplishments of others?” And the answer is no! But, that said, I think there’s a difference between hearing about someone’s greatness via social media and hearing about it person to person, either face to face or over the phone. On social media, the warmth of a direct social interaction is missing (or at least is way less), and all you get is the glossy postcard of fabulousness. Which probably is just another reminder of what I knew already: that if I’m feeling the Facebook Blues, it’s a sign I should put down the smartphone, walk outside, and go visit someone, or make something good happen.

I also have to say, regarding Facebook, that it has allowed me to connect with geographically distant cousins, and with bits of my extended family’s history that I would otherwise have no way of knowing. Just now I checked in to my feed, and one of my Dad’s cousins had posted pictures of a beautiful church that he and his father and other community members had helped build. St. Michael’s Catholic church in the town of Simpson, Pennsylvania. Both of my parents have passed. But, through the miracle of social media, I can read a post that several different cousins in several different cities chime in on, adding stories that enrich my sense of where I come from. (Growing up in a military family that moved every couple of years, and then, as an adult, taking a career path and personal path that led me to move several times, I always felt very mobile, free, and adaptable, but never had a very strong sense of roots. It’s nice to be able to fill in a few roots.)

Thanks for following along with this meandering post. I hope you found something useful here. And may the Backside of the Year enrich and recharge you!

Further Reading:

Most Accomplishments are Invisible (from David at Raptitude, one of my top favorite spirituality/consciousness blogs)

From a thread on the Journey to Zero-Waste group on Facebook, several reading recommendations:

Can One Person Really Make a Difference? (cbsnews.com)

Children’s book If Everybody Did, by JoAnn Stover. (“A teacher read this to my class 50 years ago; it was life-changing,” said the member who posted this recommendation.)

Can One Person Make a Difference? (80000hours.org)

Decline in plastic bags on seabed suggests measures to tackle plastic waste are working (Independent) “Despite the reduction in carrier bags, the overall amount of deep-sea litter remained roughly constant due to an increase in the number of other plastic items, including bottles and fishing debris” (emphasizing the need to keep moving forward with efforts to reduce all categories of plastic trash).

Watch This Man Walk Around NYC Wearing His Trash (YouTube video). I actually have met this guy, Rob Greenfield. He spoke at our Florida Permaculture Convergence in 2018. Here’s a guy who makes an impact that ripples out far and wide.

By the way, J2ZW is now 113,000+ members strong.

The following is something I wrote a couple of years ago and forgot about. It showed up on my “throwback” Facebook feed and I thought it worth pasting here. Hope you find it helpful!

Unfortunately, most of us at one time or another will have to deal with naysayers and haters. One friend recently had someone say to her, “What have YOU done for the world?” Implying that she hadn’t done much or anything to make a positive difference.

Well, I don’t know who the naysayer was, but I do know for a fact that my friend is a staunch advocate for the wellbeing of Mother Earth and all species, including her fellow humans. And, perhaps even more important, she is a living example of someone willing to be REAL, be herself. In the face of scorn, criticism, and the rough rock-tumbler that daily life can be, a good-hearted person being him/herself is practicing courage and service to a degree that often reaches revolutionary.

We must never, EVER underestimate the beneficial impact of a good-hearted person who’s willing to be his or her own self. This beneficial impact starts in the family or inner friend-circle, and ripples out wide to the planet and the cosmos.

There are many forces against being one’s own self. Thank you for not caving in to them. Thank you (all of you who are reading this) for showing up in the world as YOU, and doing the work you feel is most needed.

(Some very “logical” types might respond, “Well, who else can I be but me?” But most of us know there are lots of other options, including being a half-baked copy of someone we IMAGINE that society, friends, family, or some other admired figure wants us to be.)

#AuthenticityMakesADifference

There are many different ways to deal with naysayers. You can let them have their say, and then offer your viewpoint and leave it at that. Sometimes you can avoid them entirely, but that isn’t always the case. Oftentimes just ignoring them and getting on with your work is your best bet.

Sometimes the naysayer is your very own self, impeding the good works of others; there are ways to deal with that also and I’ll get to that in a bit.

Avoidance: With this blog and my book, I avoid naysayers simply by not having them as the target audience. This blog is designed to provide resources to people who believe we are in an ecological emergency, and believe in the power of personal action to make a difference. It doesn’t set out to provoke or convince people who don’t share that belief.

Ignore, or Speak Up: On social media, I most often just ignore people who think that some effort I’m involved in is stupid, naive, not enough, or whatever. There are simply not enough hours in the day. But sometimes I will speak up to share an alternative viewpoint. I try to just do this once and then back off, rather than engage in multiple go-rounds in an effort to persuade someone or have the last word.

When the Naysayer is Me: Sometimes I’ve gotten involved with some well-intentioned project, and realized I didn’t agree with the direction it was taking, or the methods being used. In a couple of those cases, when I realized I was the fly in the ointment, I gently withdrew my participation and got out of the way. The projects ended up being successful. And the groups didn’t have to contend with the friction of having a lukewarm or outright rebellious member in their midst. I was happy to end up being a naysayer who turned out to be wrong.

I have more to share on this subject but will leave you with this for now.

Can you think of any situations in your life where any of the above might apply?

At my church (Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ormond Beach, FL, USA), we have had some sort of composting program in place for awhile now. It sort of ebbs and flows depending on various factors (such as how many of the more green-minded members are in town — we have a significant percentage of “snowbirds” in our congregation).

One problem we run into is lack of understanding about the benefits of composting. Another is the perception that the compost container smells and attracts bugs (which it doesn’t; if anything, throwing food scraps and partially consumed cups of beverages into the open kitchen trash can attracts bugs).

Although not all of our members support the composting program or even know we do it, we have found ways to keep the program going. Right now it seems to be on the upswing. In fact, some members ask us to save the coffee grounds for them to take home for their gardens.

But not everyone loves the compost. Some people are absolutely convinced it’s dirty and attracts bugs.

To address the naysaying component, one of the more longtime members, who is very green-minded, suggested I write a short article in our newsletter to increase awareness and understanding. I was asked to keep it short. Here’s what I submitted; feel free to take what I wrote and adapt it to your church or other organization.

(Note: I apologize for the weird large font size below; I am trying but have so far been unable to figure out how to fix it. I may have to just retype it manually but I would really like to know once and for all how to manage font size because it is an ongoing problem with this blog, especially with text that has been cut and pasted from emails, articles, etc. I try “rinsing” it through text apps but nothing seems to help get rid of extraneous formatting that creeps in. OK, right now this ugly giant-sized mutant font is just bugging the crap out of me so I’m just gonna bite the bullet and retype it for you. Curse my techno-stupid brain but at least I can type! Just one example of how, when technology gets too fancy for our own good, good old-fashioned elbow-grease often saves the day. Update: I think I just figured out a robust “rinse” to get rid of that persistent pesky hidden formatting that wreaks havoc on my blog type sizes: Copy the text I want from an article, etc., and paste it into a phone text message to myself. Copy it from there and paste it into WordPress blog post. I tested it and it seems to work!)

Composting at Our UU: Small Simple Action Makes a Big Difference

You may have notice a small green box in the kitchen next to the recycling bin. That’s a compost collection box. We use it to collect our food scraps and other compostable items, and carry them to the compost bin in the garden. As this organic matter decomposes, rich soil is produced.

By composting, we embody UU values in several ways:

Care for the environment: Radically reduce the volume of trash we send to landfill.

Honor the interconnectedness of all life: Composting feeds the soil microorganisms, on which all life depends.

Respect our fellow human beings: By eliminating food scraps and other compostables, we reduce the weight of our UU kitchen trash by 50% or more. And the trash is much less messy to deal with.

The compost collection box has a snug-fitting lid; it does not smell or attract bugs. The kitchen staff handles composting. You can support our efforts by not putting liquids or food scraps into the trash.

To learn more about composting and its many benefits, ask Jenny or another green team member.

“… [W]e can expect the status quo of consume-and-pollute to continue on for some time. Most likely it will be pursued until it simply proves too painful than the remaining alternatives. By which time our other options are likely to be materially worse than they are today. That’s the bad news.

“The good news is that conscientious, critically-thinking individuals like you can choose to get busy living.

“There is much you can do during this time lag to invest in resilience and install regenerative models before the next systemic crisis is upon us.

“Whatever time we have left, and it may very not be much, is a gift. Use it.

“Many of the best defenses — like fitness, community, and valuable skills — require time to acquire. You can’t simply buy them off the shelf the way you can, say, a water filter or a backup generator. Once time has run out, you either already have them in place or you don’t.”

— From “Living On Borrowed Time,” by Adam Taggart in PeakProsperity.com

Also check out TransitionASAP.org, a website dedicated to spreading the grassroots resilience movement known as Transition; Transition Towns. On this page of their site you can download two adorable, practical, and uplifting mini-zines that explain “Transition in a Nutshell.” One of the zines is titled Transition Towns: Working for Smaller Footprints and Stronger Communities; the other is Habits of the Heart: A Primer for Embracing Lifestyle Practices.

Stay tuned for more posts on resilience. It’s a big topic!