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 >>>>>>

We made the site switch last night. Still a few tweaks but like a favorite pair of jeans we’re back at it with WordPress.

Looking for something?

If you’ve bookmarked a topic of interest on our site during the past year & need the info again, just let us know. We blew the archives away & started with a  clean slate. Sometimes it’s the best thing to do.

Post backlog!

And boy do we have a backlog of posts to catch up on! Not the least of which is Earth Hour…

At the top of our blog page is an info bar about Earth Hour, which includes a countdown (2 days!). Shut it all off for 1 hour (minimum!) to save energy, rediscover community & enjoy the unpluggitude.

What to do during earth hour?

Check out our blog post from last year here for a list!

Better to store you with, my dear

Remodelista has a great writeup of the options out there for storing kitchen utensils on open rail systems. Rail systems are a good alternative to storing utensils and cookware either on the counter or taking up cabinet and drawer space.

If there is a blank wall available that is away from the actual cooking surfaces, it keeps everything visibly organized and out of splatter range. For our kitchen, we plan to tile a whole wall and mount the rail system on it so we can hang things up to drip dry without damaging the wall finish.

And the winner is…

For the modern look, good design and price, Ikea’s rail systems are very hard to beat. A lot of opinion is out there on Ikea, both good and bad. We’ve been doing our own research on their products and will be reporting shortly on our findings.

Cheaper, more efficient storage than cabinets

A rail system takes up less space than cabinets, and doesn’t take floor space at all. They can also be cheaper than the equal amount of cabinet storage volume.

Plus, it makes wannabe cooks look like the real deal. Heh.

On the less glamourous side of green kitchen & bath design, there are the behind-the-scenes considerations of how it all works. Like the magic of hot water.

There has been plenty of debate about going with a tankless hot water heater – that is, one that heats the water as it’s used, not sitting in a big tank being heated even when it’s not being used.

Rinnai has a line of tankless water heaters that can be mounted on the interior or exterior of the home, and take up far less space than a conventional hot water heater tank.

From the Rinnai site: 25% of every household energy dollar is spent producing domestic hot water. Other very useful info on their site under the Tankless 101 link

One caveat: Rinnai only makes LP and natural gas water heaters. Why no electric? Their answer:

Does Rinnai make electric tankless units?

No. There are electric tankless units available, but they have two distinct problems:

First, the cost of electricity is, on average, significantly higher than LP or natural gas. The operating cost of electric tankless units tend to be much higher.

Second, electric tankless water heaters can only produce a relatively small amount of hot water. This is because they require a large amount of electrical current to produce a significant amount of hot water. For example, in order to have the same capacity as our smallest unit you would need to provide about 120 amps of power to an electric tankless unit. This represents well over half the amperage capacity of a typical home and 5 times the amperage of a typical central air conditioning system.