Home » Posts tagged 'small spaces'

Tag Archives: small spaces

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

Small Space Prepping: 25 Ideas for Stashing Your Stockpile

March 6, 2017

Small Space Prepping: 25 Ideas for Stashing Your Stockpile

The biggest challenge in small space prepping is finding storage areas for your supplies. While I don’t recommend stacking food buckets to the ceiling in the living room where you receive visitors, there are all sorts of charming ways to hide preps in plain sight as part of your everyday decor. As well, just a few small tweaks to rooms all around your house can add considerable amounts of storage space.

Here are 25 ideas to get your wheels turning.

Hide Preps in Plain Sight

  • Store some of your food “country kitchen” style. Consider adding a rustic shelving unit full of various mason jars containing dried foods, beans, pasta, flour, jams, herbs, and other shelf-stable goods. If all of the jars are clear and labeled the same way, it looks very organized and appealing. (Maybe use those cute little chalkboard labels – but be sure to get the ones marked “reusable.”)
  • Put candles or oil lamps in every room. Use your emergency lighting as an old-fashioned statement. Add a decorative little box with matches or lighters. (You can pick the boxes for a song up at the dollar store or a yard sale.) Boom – let there be light the moment a power outage occurs.
  • Decorate with cozy throws and blankets. Soft, fuzzy blankets not only look inviting, but they can also help keep your heat bill down when nobody is able to resist curling up under them. Pile them in wicker hampers, put them on the foot of beds, and toss them over the arm of the couch. Bonus: When the power is out, you have a way to stay warmer within arm’s reach.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Abundance From Small Spaces

March 9, 2016

Abundance from Small Spaces 03 - feat

ABUNDANCE FROM SMALL SPACES

This article derives from three sources. The blog I wrote for FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations based in Rome) to advertise the IPC (International Permaculture Conference) during UN Year of the Soil which can be read at: http://www.fao.org/soils-2015/blog/the-answer-lies-in-the-soil/en/ ; my presentation at IPC which you can see/hear and see the powerpoint that accompanied it at http://grahambell.org/the-answer-lies-in-the-soil-2/ and thirty years of my life spent creating forest gardens and fertile soils and helping others do the same on four continents. I should say ‘we’ rather than I because many people have contributed to this garden, not least my wife and children Nancy, Ruby and Sandy.

I called my presentations ‘The Answer Lies in the Soil.’ And it does.

First of all, though, we need air and water. Without these two things, we can’t live today. So clean air, and clean water in sufficient quantities are pre-cursors of sustainable human life. However, for long-term survival, we need soil. Not just any old soil: we need enduring well – nourished and nourishing soils which just keep getting more and more fertile. In fact, soil is demonstrably the true foundation of civilisation. That is ¬ fertile, accessible, living soil.

For soils to feed us well they need themselves to be fed well.

THE ANSWER LIES IN THE SOIL

Abundance from Small Spaces 01

SOIL AND LIFE – NEGLECT IT AT OUR PERIL

We neglect soil at our peril. Within historical memory (i.e. written records) Syria was a forest kingdom, Iraq the birthplace of agriculture and Libya the bread¬basket of the Roman Empire.

I expect anyone reading this will be familiar with the essential components of soil:

● Mineral fraction (sand, silt, clay)
● Humus
● Air and water
● Adequate soil structure to admit and retain these

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress