This is the second edition of a Twitter Blog-off, initiated by Paul Anater of Kitchen & Residential Design.

Living Large defined

Firstly, what is the definition of  ”living large”? Is it being a trendsetter? Is it being happy with what you have? Is it being green (whatever that means)?

For this discussion, let’s say “living large” means, living responsibly in terms of consumption. Consumption of everything, be it space, carbon footprint, utility usage.

There is small, and there is ridiculous.

Paul links to an article about a couple of grad students who are living in a 127SF space. That is basically a 10′x12′ room. While it isn’t impossible to call such a small space home & a place to lay your head, it’s not practical for everyone. People who work from home, for example. Or families of more than 2.

That being said, I’ve written before about how much we actually need in a home. It occurred to me while staying in a hotel suite for 2 weeks, that I was perfectly comfortable. That suite was about 300SF. Granted, it was inhabited by one – me.  And my belongings – mainly clothes, toiletries and work gear like a laptop & phone.

It’s not the space. It’s the stuff we accumulate.

The 1st real problem is the stuff we accumulate over the years. How many times have you moved & never opened any of the boxes after you settled? I’ve done it. I know many people who’ve done it.

We don’t really need whatever’s in those boxes. But we lug them around like it’s life support. And the bigger the place we live, the more crap we gather. We’re magnets for clutter; the more we have the more we attract. It’s a viscious self perpetuating cycle.  read more >>>>>>

SlideShare Preso is up

Yesterday I uploaded a short presentation I made to highlight our kitchen designs for multi-unit residences.

Kitchen designs in a dense urban setting are a tremendous opportunity to exercise efficient, clean design that integrates the cooking/eating zone with the social living zone.

Oh the Urbanity

Living in the heart of a city not only requires well designed spaces, but also doesn’t rule out newer practices in a kitchen. It’s possible to include a composting and recycling zone into even a small kitchen.  We’ve come a long way from the antiquated “work triangle”. We include these zones in all kitchens we design.

Inside /Outside

One thing not mentioned in it is how often people think the inside style of a home must match the outside. This is not a law, you will not go to jail if you have a modern kitchen in a craftsman home.  There are no fashion police out there looking to throw offenders in the pokey. But I’ll save that discussion for a future blog post.

Check out the preso here.

HR 875: Food Safety Modernization Act

A bill called HR 875 was introduced recently to address food safety issues in our food supply chains.  The last link in those chains is our grocery stores.  Given the increasing trend toward growing our own food, there has been some misconceptions about how the bill applies to folks who have a small backyard garden, or container gardens.

Just the facts, ma’am

The always wonderful Eat.Drink.Better. blog has a great article by Derek Markham which debunks 5 myths surrounding the HR 875 bill, & clarifies its main purpose. From the article:

Myth: H.R. 875 “makes it illegal to grow your own garden” and would result in the “criminalization of the backyard gardener.”

Fact: There is no language in the bill that would regulate, penalize, or shut down backyard gardens.  This bill is focused on ensuring the safety of foods sold in supermarkets.

Speaking of myths: “We’re not an agrarian society anymore!”

That’s what I overheard an elitist designer say last year at a cocktail party. I disagree, and I think the separation of our lives from where our food comes from has been a significant detriment to our quality of life, our health, and the health of the planet.

We *should* re-embrace gardening & farming – in an adapted smaller scale way. Like small gardens sprinkled everywhere. So the big bad HR 875 bill won’t impede that practice – keep on rolling with those gardening plans, be they community, container, or backyard.

I learn so much from my clients!

A current one told me about this local company called Bountiful Backyards, which installed a bunch of fruit trees, edible landscape and some water management things on their property. They don’t have to mow their front yard, AND they can eat the blueberries and other fruit from their new trees!

Drool control needed

Ok so it’s possible that coming off my weekly 24 hour fast has a teeny bit to do with it, but every food item pictured in the header on the Bountiful Backyards site looks delicious.  They specialize in edible landscapes, and they are right down the road from us!

It’s a system

Believers that everything is connected, Bountiful Backyards takes a holistic approach to helping folks learn to grow their own, & include multiple areas of expertise:

• Food Production
• Soil Restoration
• Native and Beneficial Flowering Plants
• Water Management and Conservation
• Working with what you have

Whatever tack you want to take, they work with you to cultivate a regenerative ecological design and restoration project, large or small.

Why?

If not mowing isn’t enough to convince you, maybe 10 good reasons to opt for a garden over grass will. Reason #1 is my favorite:

1. Americans spend $30 billion every year to maintain 23 million acres of lawn. That’s an average of $1200 per acre, per year. The same sized area could still provide a beautiful space for recreation and feed a family of six if converted to edible landscaping as opposed to traditional landscaping.

Save the date!

Raleigh’s Annual Tour of Urban Chickens and their Coops is scheduled for May 16. It’s from 10am – 4pm, rain or shine, at several neighborhoods inside Raleigh’s 440 Beltline. Raleigh’s chicken owners invite you into their backyards for a first hand look at keeping chickens in an urban environment. From the Tour d’Coop site:

Discover the variety of breeds that might be nesting in your neighborhood, learn about raising chickens, and see how families integrate chickens into their gardening practices. In addition, you’ll be impressed by the ingenious coops that can be devised to shelter these feathered pets.

Previous years’ Tours have been huge successes, with hundreds of visitors enjoying the event. This year’s tour will be better than ever, including new coops and informational booths.

Tickets / Admission

Tickets are available only on the day of the tour. They can be picked up at the following locations:

Steven B. Andreaus, DDS , PA: 1637 Glenwood Avenue , across from the Rialto Theater
Ornamentea: 509 N. West Street, one block south of Peace Street
CupAJoe: 2109-142 Avent Ferry Road, in the lower level of Mission Valley Shopping Center
Whole Foods Market: 3540 Wade Avenue, in the Ridgewood Shopping Center
Seaboard ACE Hardware: 802 Semart Drive, across from Logan ‘s Nursery

Bring a non-perishable food item and/or a money donation to the following locations for a ticket and coop location map. 100% of the food and money collected goes to Urban Ministries of Wake County.

Worthy Cause

Last year’s tour, the 3rd annual, raised over $3000 and 1600 pounds of food!  As advocates of responsible urban living & consumption, we’re excited about the tour & happy to help Urban Ministries, especially in this tough economic climate.

See you there!

After the lights go out, what do you do?

• have a drum circle
• enjoy the stars
• brush up on your braille :)
• play poker with glow-in-the-dark cards
• grill out
• take a walk with the dog
• organize a neighborhood bike ride
• meditate
• do fun things in the dark with your sweetie

From the Is My Blog Burning blog:

At 8:30pm on Saturday 28 March millions of people around the world will unite and switch off their lights for one hour, Earth Hour.

I am challenging all bloggers to take part in an Earth Hour food blogging event.

Cook a recipe that
- you can enjoy by candle light and
- has a low carbon footprint (ie made from locally sourced ingredients and minimal packaging).

Field trip: SEEDS in Durham!

Last Saturday we went with the community garden meetup group to tour SEEDS, a non-profit community garden in Durham that aims to teach people about caring for the planet and themselves through garden based programs.

DIG it

One program they have is DIG – Durham Inner-city Gardeners. It’s a youth driven urban farming leadership development program. & if Tasha, our tour guide is an example, they’re doing a fantastic job at it! She spouted a wealth of information about different kinds of composting, seasonal crops, preserving seed varieties, and their cool Seedling program. Before joining SEEDS, Tasha was all about Mickey D’s and littering and processed foods. Now she can’t wait for the figs & peaches to come out, and takes pride in litter-free surroundings no matter where she is.

Seedlings! The little ones.

Teens show younger kids - affectionately referred to as “Seedlings” – how to weed & plant & maintain the garden, and help get everything ready to take to the market. After school, 1st thru 5th graders come to SEEDS and learn not just about plants but social skills:

• An educational environment with a focus on gardening, nature, exercise, and nutrition.
• Fun, engaging projects and activities both indoors and in the garden.
• A small program that can provide kids with individual attention.
• An opportunity for kids to learn about their community and what they can do to make a difference.
• Time set aside each day for homework help and tutoring.

Getting started with Community Gardens

After the tour we sat down with the director of SEEDS, Lucy Harris, for some guidance and experience tales about getting a community garden going and keeping it running. Much more for another post, but suffice it to say there’s something to be hopeful about amongst the doom & gloom.

Wouldn’t it be cool to worry about not eating all the sugar snaps before they go to the market for a change? Switch over to thinking about farmer’s markets instead of financial ones. It’s a nice break.

R-LINE free hybrid bus loop begins downtown Raleigh runs on 2/14

Water, water – isn’t everywhere

Raising awareness about access to clean water worldwide – or the lack thereof – and raising money to enable access is the main purpose of Twestival. It’s a global event and just your luck, there’s one in Raleigh tomorrow evening from 7 – 9pm at the Edge Office location. http://raleigh.twestival.com

The organizers are raffling off knowledge and fun products, 100% of which will also go to the cause. We’re donating our design services for a single kitchen project, come see us!

Tickets are available online, but if you want to go, better hurry – they’re running out.

It’s important. What would YOU do without water?

A few water facts from the charity:water site:

• In sub-Saharan Africa, women spend 15-17 hrs/week collecting water
• Each American uses enough water to fill 1600 glasses a day
• 50% of all schools in the world don’t have freshwater or adequate sanitation
• A five minute shower uses 10-25 gallons of water
• On average, women in Africa and Asia walk 3.7 miles a day to collect water.

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twitter: @ecomod

Even if you don’t have a chef

What you eat. At least, if you want to be green, it *should* be. Looks like the Obamas will keep their chef they had back in Chicago, Sam Kass, who has a keen interest in healthy and local food consumption. And in keeping with his skills of bringing people together, they also will use the services of the former administration’s chef, Cristeta Comerford.

Alice Waters

We’ve written about the slow food movement before, championed by Alice Waters. She’s been an advocate of healthy and local with the Slow Food movement for decades. She also wrote a letter to Obama the day after the election, pointing out the opportunity to be an example of healthy and local meals:

At this moment you have a unique opportunity to set the tone for the changes we need to make in the way our country feeds itself. The purity and wholesomeness of your campaign can find a parallel in the purity and wholesomeness of the food at America’s most visible and symbolic address: the White House.

Others have urged the planting of a garden at the White House, & maybe it’s the next step?

How about a Kitchen Cabinet?

There may or may not be a Kitchen Cabinet established in the White House, but I’d sure like a stab at redesigning it with a certain affordable Swedish brand, & donate what’s in there now to Habitat for Humanity.