#solarpunk tag

[squareofshape]

living in a place with a city compost bin for the first time in my life... hell yeah...

[godesssiri]

10 Thrifting Tips – Part ? I lost count just check my thrifting tag

1) Make friends with the staff. If you go into a particular thrift store frequently it’s well worth it to get friendly with the staff. Ask them about their day, chat with them about what you’re buying, infodump if you’ve found something exciting and unusual. When the staff get to know you and know what you buy they’ll start pointing out things in the store that have come in since the last time you were there, that fit your interests. They may even start putting things aside for you. Recently I walked into my favorite thrift store and had 2 separate staff members say ‘Oh I’ve got something for you’. Plus having the staff greet you by name and having little inside jokes with them just makes the whole experience more fun.

2) Brita jugs turn up at the thrift store frequently. If tap water in your area is safe but has A Taste, keep an eye out at the thrift store.

3) Coffee making equipment. Capsule coffee makers, the wire racks that hold the capsules, French presses, these all get donated frequently. The occasional espresso machine comes in – and goes out very quickly. Now and then you’ll find pour-over coffee equipment. If you like your bean juice you can get the equipment you need to make fancy bean juice at the thrift store.

4) Handmade pottery mugs. Story time: About 6 or 7 years ago I went into a thrift store and someone had obviously just cleaned out their mug cupboard and donated a pile of handmade pottery. I bought 4 because I thought they were cool, very tactile, nice to hold. This AWOKE something in me. Humans have used handmade pottery for thousands of years and there’s something about holding a handmade mug that sparks a genetic memory of warmth and comfort. Pottery also has much better thermal properties than mass produced ceramic, hot stays hot longer and vice versa with cold. Build up a little collection of handmade pottery mugs from the thrift store, each one has its own personality and it brings joy using them.

5) In the same vein: teaspoons. Build up a collection of fun teaspoons and take joy from using different ones depending on your mood. I have one with an owl on the end and another with a rose, a brass one with a wiggly handle in the shape of a snake, one that has the branding of an airline that now only uses wooden stirrers - probably because people kept pocketing the stainless-steel teaspoons (I always wanted to steal one as a child but never had the nerve). Whenever I need a teaspoon it’s always a little endorphin boost to open the drawer and select the perfect one for today.

6) If you need something to do a specific job, be patient, you will find the perfect thing eventually. I switched to solid shampoo and my old soap dish wasn’t big enough to hold my shampoo bar and my regular soap, so I waited and watched and found the perfect little glass tray that was exactly the right size and fits perfectly on the shelf in my shower. I could have bought a brand new made-for-that-purpose multi soap holder, but it wouldn’t have been as cool looking and when I’m done with it, it wouldn’t necessarily get another life.

7) Gift supplies. Thrift stores often have a selection of unused gift wrap, bags, bows, cards. It’s worth it to sift through what they’ve got and buy any you think you might use – even if you don’t have an immediate use for it. That stuff can get expensive so if you can create a small stash then, when you need it, you won’t have to shell out $$.

8) Look for things that can be made over – or thrift flipped as the DIY content creators like to say. There’s so much satisfaction from looking at something that was plain ugly when you bought it and you’ve turned it into something pretty. It doesn’t need to be a major transformation that requires 5 different power-tools and 100 bucks worth of supplies. It can be as simple as a lick of paint, but every time you look at you will feel good about it.

9) Sometimes it’s worth buying something that’s just really cool and figuring out a use for it later. I bought the coolest little silver plated mustard pot; it has 3 legs and at the top of each leg is a lion head. Do I eat mustard much? No. Did I know what the heck I would use it for? No. I get bad indigestion and keep antacids on hand, I hate how once you tear open the roll, they tend to spill everywhere so I like to put them in something. Guess what holds exactly one roll of antacids? If something is just freaking awesome but you don’t know what you’d use it for, you will find a use (and it will be so much cooler than anything else you might have bought for that purpose).

10) Use the fancy stuff. Don’t ever look at something in a thrift store and think: that’s too fancy, I’ll never use it. If it’s not bought and used it ends up in landfill. Save it from the landfill and use it. Today I bought the most OTT fancy silver pepper shaker to sit next to my stove and hold ground pepper for cooking with, one of my housemates never puts the damn pepper back in the cupboard when he’s finished with it, so now we have this ostentatious silver shaker next to the stove top. One of my dogs can be relied upon to get half of his food on the floor before he hoovers it up, I could have got a plastic mat to feed him on but I had a spare thrifted marble cutting/serving board (I have a problem, I own 3, I have so much trouble resisting them), and another plus - he can’t destroy it like he would a plastic mat. I keep my toothbrush in a crystal bud vase. I decant my micellar water into a bottle shaped like a seahorse. I eat off pretty vintage pink glass plates. Using the fancy stuff from thrift stores both helps you romanticize your own life and it gives these items another life. Do be sensible though, some items made before the early 1970s including glassware and dinnerware contain lead in the decoration so do your due diligence and be safe.

[godesssiri]

Thrifting for the ⋆⭒˚.⋆Experience ⋆⭒˚.⋆

Today I saw a reel on Instagram of things that the OP likes to thrift for the experience. I’ve done lists of Décor items I am constantly looking for in thrift stores and Thrift First things I will always try to thrift before I buy new, but that reel got me thinking about the things I buy from thrift stores because the experience of looking for and finding them is so much better than just buying new.

Décor. Yeah, you can go to any number of stores and buy brand new décor items at just about any price point. And I used to do that, but the décor items I bought new in the past have gradually been donated to make space for thrifted treasures. Because the things I bought new had no meaning to me. The vast majority were just pretty things that sat on a shelf and had no emotion attached to them, so it meant nothing to me when I got sick of them and got rid of them. But almost all of my thrifted décor (and as a Maximalist I have A LOT) has memories attached. I could tell you what thrift store I got almost every piece at, if I had a friend or family member with me I could tell you who was with me and their reaction to the thing I picked up. Some of those shopping trips have become family legend which gets told over and over and every time I look at the item involved I experience a fond memory of either finding the item or my loved one telling the story of me finding the item.  I remember the thrill of discovery, the triumph if it was a piece I’ve been looking out for, the excitement if it was something I’d never even imagined and now can’t imagine not owning. I’m constantly discovering things that I had no idea I needed in my life until the exact moment I laid eyes on them in a thrift store. I discover manufacturers and artists and art styles I would never have been exposed to otherwise and I have so much fun researching them and discovering more about them. When you buy new décor you rarely feel the need to research and discover who made it and when and why, but when you thrift something amazing it’s part of the fun to do a deep dive and discover something new.

The perfect piece to fit in a particular place or do a particular job. I looked for the right side table for next to my couch for over a year, I could have found one the exact size and shape I needed brand new, but I know I wouldn’t love it a fraction as much. I have so many pieces like that in my home and I just enjoy being able to use these perfect pieces. When you wait and watch and finally find something that just serves your purposes so so well, the whole hunt from beginning (deciding I need a thing to go here and do this) to end (positioning the thing and standing back to admire it) is an experience. You can get that experience buying new, but to me it always feels a bit like cheating – not to mention going the new route will cost a lot more, my solid oak side table was a whole 35 bucks and the fact I got such a high quality piece for so cheap is a part of the experience that still gives me a buzz every time I think of it.

Original art. I love thrift store art so much. Galleries feel inaccessible unless you’re above a certain income bracket. But anyone can have amazing original art if they’re willing to scour thrift stores and build up a collection of things that speak to them. The number of times I’ve stood in the art aisle in a thrift store and tried to talk myself out of buying a piece because I have so much art and I’m running out of walls. But I’ve never regretted a single piece of original art I’ve thrifted and I’ve never re-donated one. Because if I like it in the thrift store I looooove it my home. I can’t help but browse the art even though I know I’m running out of space because I never know when I’m going to come across something amazing that will be with me for the rest of my life.

Antiques. I love antiques so much. I love old things. They have a weight and gravitas. They feel like survivors, because so much of what humans create, we then destroy. Things that survive to become antique were treasured or lucky and I feel like if they survived because they were treasured by someone you can feel that, and if they survived because they were lucky then bring that luck into your home. Finding true antiques (things that are 100+ years old) in thrift stores requires patience and an eye and it’s always such a wonderful experience to stumble across something and know that it is old and precious, and it can be yours for thrift store prices.

Collections. I’m a collector, have been my whole life, I have so many different collections of things. I have a theory that if you have one of a thing then it’s just a thing you like, 2 is a coincidence, 3 or more is a collection. I often find myself going: Whoops I guess I collect that now. It’s such a thrill to spot something in a thrift store that fits one of my collections and to swoop on it. I even love to stand in a thrift store and hem and haw over a piece before ultimately deciding I don’t need to add it to my collection because it’s not the best example, or doesn’t quite fit, or I’ve got something too similar. That’s part of the experience. I have many vestigial collections, things I used to collect but I no longer get a thrill from so I’ve re-donated all but the pieces I couldn’t bear to part with. I love to imagine, when I send an old collection off to the thrift store, someone else discovering my treasures and adding them to their collection of that thing.

Really high-quality stuff that is very expensive new. Sometimes people buy something expensive as a gift and the recipient doesn’t want it and donates. Sometimes someone will drop a lot of money on something, then never actually use it and donate it. Sometimes someone will buy something expensive and they will use it for years, but because they’ve taken good care of it and it was such good quality to begin with, it will still have years and years of use in it when it gets donated. When you come across something in a thrift store that you know cost $$$ and you could never justify buying it new, then that my friends is an experience. Years later, every time I pull it out of the drawer, I still ride high on the thrill of my stupid expensive potato masher that was in its original packaging with its original $80 price tag. Who spends $80 on a damn potato masher? Sure as hell not me, but I own a $80 potato masher that I paid 3 bucks for.

[godesssiri]

Death Dying and Solarpunk

 I posted this a couple of years back but it never got many notes and I don’t think many people read it. But Solarpunk is a lot more popular now and I know that a lot of people have found my blog through Solarpunk so I decided to repost this because it is my opus.

I have a lot of opinions on the subject of death and dying so this will be a long post and I will need to break this subject into multiple parts - you have been warned.

First a little of my back-ground. I come from a tight-knit extended family and grew up spending a lot of time with grandparents, aunts and cousins. When I was 13 my Nana started ‘acting a bit funny’ - she had the first in a series of small strokes that left her in a home with dementia where she eventually died.  My Grandad and Aunty (my much loved great-aunt) also ended up in rest-homes dying slowly for years. My father died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage when I was 16. 4 years ago my Mum, step-dad and I bought a small 26 bed rest-home and we have averaged about 9 deaths a year.  I’ve been around death a bit. It blows my mind that I know people who are grown adults and have never experienced death.

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about dying a death and modern society and most of it boils down to: for the most part, we’re doing it wrong. Doctors treat the ends of our lives as something to be fought off with fire and pitchforks. They prescribe a pill for this and a treatment for that, and how can we prolong this person’s life? Not should we prolong this person’s life? Lives have been massively improved and extended with science but we are decaying organisms and there is only so much that can be done. There comes a point when quantity of life is irrelevant because that life has no quality.

The current generation that are in rest-homes are scared of death, for them it is a specter of their childhood. When they were young people died of infectious disease all the time, they died of what are now treatable diseases, they died in poor work conditions. People died in their homes and at their work - all of these people would have seen a dead body. These people grew up burying loved ones. They’ve spent their whole lives seeing death being fought and conquered. New medicines, vaccines, treatments, improved health and safety.  Death has been pushed back and fought off but now it’s coming for them in a way science can’t fight - natural death. Because it’s a specter, they’ve never talked about it with their families and the families don’t know what to do so they stick them in a rest-home and come to visit when they can then get outa there as soon as they can.  

For the generations after this one, death is a failure of the science they have lived with their whole lives. They haven’t had the childhood experience of death. Burying a loved one is an uncommon occurrence and it has become taboo. Nobody talks to children about death, nobody talks to each other about death. Unless you are diagnosed with a terminal illness nobody prepares for death.  Sick people are kept in hospitals and hospices, elderly people are kept in rest-homes and dementia units. We have put death in boxes. We need to get it out of the box.

So how do we do that? How do we start doing death right?

I personally plan to make sure everyone around me knows what I want for when I am dying and when I am dead.  I plan to sit down with a lawyer in a few years’ time and make a living will with instructions for what to do if I become incapable of making decisions. I will also sit down with a doctor and make a long term care plan so that as I age and things a breaking down I don’t get any treatments that I don’t want. If I am diagnosed with any form of dementia I want to be taken off all life prolonging medications and treatments. Let me have painkillers and medications to prevent anxiety and/or depression but nothing to prevent organ failure. I’ve had this discussion with my mother and that’s what she wants as well - I intend to make sure it happens. We really really need to have these conversations with our loved ones and in an ideal society it would be completely normal to sit down with your family and say ‘When I’m dying.......’.  Talking about dying needs to be normalized.

We also need to make death part of the community again. Let me tell you a couple of stories from my family’s rest-home. One of our staff members got married at the home, we have a lovely garden and she really wanted to get married in our gazebo so we hosted the wedding. We decorated beautifully; we had about a million flowers, my step-dad made butterfly cakes. One of the residents had been declining for a while and we didn’t really expect her to be able to participate but she bucked up for the day. She got dressed up in her best clothes (so did all the other residents), she watched the ceremony with her daughter, she scoffed a butterfly cake. I took a lovely picture of her daughter and her and their nice clothes. She died the next day. I was able to give her daughter that beautiful picture of the 2 of them.  We often have the local school choir come in to sing, good practice for the kids performing and lovely entertainment for the residents. One year in December they came to sing carols and we had a woman in her room dying. The family asked if maybe some of the kids could come into her room and sing for her? After talking to the teacher and explaining to the kids that this lady was not well and probably wouldn’t live until Christmas but that was nothing to be afraid of, it was completely natural; the kids went into her room and sang Silent Night. It was so incredibly moving and she was so happy. The kids felt incredibly proud that they could make her that happy. 

We try very hard to bring life into our rest home. Our nurse lives in a house at the back of the home with her family. She has a 14 year old and 10 year old and 7 year old. The kids are in and out of the rest home with their friends all the time. They run errands, stop and chat with the old folks, play with the rest-home pets, sit on the floor in the lounge and watch Disney movies with the residents. We have 2 cats and my mother brings her tiny dog, Lucy, into work every day. All of the animals have been left behind by elderly owners who passed away in our care.

In my ideal Solarpunk world hospitals, hospices and care-homes would be part of a larger complex that would also include crèches, classrooms (both for young children and also for continuing education for adults), community spaces and animal rescue facilities. The wider community, especially children, would be encouraged to come into the spaces inhabited by the sick and dying. It would not only help the people who were dying, giving them distraction and entertainment; but it would also help the young and healthy to accept mortality and see that death is a natural part of life and not a scary bogey man. It would give the dying a chance to pass on skills and stories, it’s amazing what you learn when you sit down and spend time with someone who is at the end of their life. Also in my ideal Solarpunk world being a hospice nurse would be as admired and aspirational as being a midwife. Whenever someone tells you they’re a midwife, or they want to be one, your immediate reactions is usually ‘Wow it would be awesome to see new lives come into the world every day’. It’s actually just as much of a privilege to help someone depart this life as it is to help someone enter it. I have been in the room, several times, with someone who is dying. It’s an indescribable feeling – I have actually felt their departed loved ones come to get them. Being able to help ease someone out of life and help their family through losing them is a huge honor and it is a job that no one starts out wanting (because we are taught death is scary) but once you’ve done it once or twice you recognize it for the miracle it is. Everyone talks about the miracle of birth but death is its own renewal and potential and celebration.

We’ve had some awesome funerals in my family. Does that sound odd? But it’s true. I have nothing but good memories of funerals. As much as I cried at the time, it’s the stories and the music and the coming together that I remember about them. It’s the tribute to a life well lived and the celebration of the love you feel for that person. I live in New Zealand and in native Maori culture it is traditional for the family to fill in the grave themselves. My family is white and I remember when we buried my Nana we were going to do the white thing and walk away after the service. My cousin Glen just stood by the grave-side and went: Nope. He has Maori cousins on his dad’s side and it felt wrong to him to walk away from an unfilled grave, luckily those cousins had come to support him and had done what they usually did for a funeral – turn up with a car trunk full of shovels. Our closest friends and family stayed when everyone else had left and we all took turns to help with the digging until we had filled the grave. It was like the service before had been the public expression of respect, open to anyone who knew Nana, but this was a private time for the people who really loved her and those who loved us and stayed in support of our grief.  We have followed this tradition for every person we have buried since.  We had Grandad’s funeral at a chapel that was just one street over from my mother’s house. All of our closest family gathered there about an hour beforehand; then we took a pleasant walk down a tree-lined side street to get to the chapel. There was something centering and sacred about walking with my family under those trees. After it was all over we went back to Mum’s house and had a barbeque in the back yard. We took millions of pictures and those are some of my favorite family photos – I think Grandad would have liked that the generations that had come from him and Nana gather together like that. Aunty’s funeral was all about the details. Mum picked out the bright blue coffin. My Aunty Judy found the purple suit Aunty was buried in. My cousin Becks made a powerpoint photo tribute. I chose the flowers. It was all organised by a funeral director but it really felt like we all had a part in making it special and exactly what Aunty would have wanted

Funerals are not for the dead, they are for the living. They are a way of letting go. Cry, laugh, tells stories, pay tribute; and move on. A funeral shouldn’t be a somber affair, oppressive for those who loved the person you are fare-welling and awkward for those who didn’t know them as well. A funeral should have laughter and stories and music that the person loved. A chance to remember the good, forgive the bad and celebrate the time you had. I think a Solarpunk funeral would be a lot more DIY than commoditized, picked-from-a-brochure, funerals we see now. One friend or family member would do the flowers, another would do the music, another the food. The community would come together to support the loved ones of the deceased and to give them special memories of the day. And currently, funerals are expensive, often leaving a family in debt – if everyone pitched in then it could be done cheaply and not leave the family with a financial burden.

So now what do we do with the body? Did you know our bodies are chock full of toxins? Cremation sends those toxins into the air. Burial leeches them into the earth. Not to mention the crap that’s in chip-board coffins with their plastic handles. Permapunk pointed me in the direction of these awesome Mushroom Burial Suits which use mushrooms to help with decomposition and to process the toxins in our bodies so they’re not so hazardous. I’ve also come across these awesome Organic Burial Pods that turn your body into nutrients for a tree that is planted directly above. I think it would be great if you could combine the two so that the mushrooms process the toxins in your body and make it’s nutrients safer for the tree. I can imagine wonderful memorial forests where you could take your grandkids to visit your parent’s trees and watch them climb all over them, or you could decorate your sister’s tree with ribbons on her birthday, or you could watch your child’s tree blossom in spring. Or you could choose to be buried in a plantation and your tree could be harvested to be made into a special piece of furniture for future generations of your family (“Nice rocking chair” “Oh yeah, that’s Great Uncle George”), you could will that your tree be used in the building of a hospital, or a school, or a community hall – or whatever institution you would want to be a permanent part of, your tree could be pulped and made into books.

Let’s do death differently. Let’s make it less scary, make it part of the community. Let’s make funerals less of a drag and a burden and make them something you would enjoy attending and carry away great memories from. Let’s memorialize people in ways that contribute positively to the future, improving the environment and giving future generations something to enjoy.

[godesssiri]

I’d like to talk about neighborhood social networks because, I think, they are a very Solarpunk thing. Here in New Zealand we have a social network called Neighborly. When you sign up they post you a confirmation code through the mail to verify your address. They then connect you up with your local community. I am an avid user, I check my neighborhood everyday. So far I have acquired a fridge for myself and a standard lamp for my BFF, and 2 cats who’s Mum was reluctantly re-homing them. I have given away a spare cycle helmet, some bricks I’d ripped out of my living room that someone wanted to use in their garden, and I’ve loaned out my ladder.

People use it for buy, sell, wanted and give away, borrowing items, lost pets, asking for recommendations on tradespeople, lost and found, notifying the community about fundraisers and local events, asking for advice on their gardens, organizing get togethers, finding people to teach them skills and all sorts of other things. 

Last school break a local dad wanted to do a small project with his son, so Mum got on Neighborly and asked if anyone had any timber off-cuts. Dad and son made a bird feeder and Mum posted pictures for the whole community to see. A family who had recently moved into the area, and left behind their giant plum tree, asked their neighbors if anyone had a plum tree in their garden and would be willing to let them take a bucket or 2 of plums so they could continue their family tradition of making plum sauce - they gave everyone who gave them plums a bottle of sauce in return. I’m constantly heartened by the number of lost pets I’ve seen re-united with their people through this network, and I cheer we get updates on those pets who’ve been returned home.

Being able to share resources and knowledge, connect with and help your neighbors through the convenience of an app on you smartphone, feels like and awesome step into the future.

[godesssiri]

Urban Rigger

I saw an article about these and thought ‘that’s so Solarpunk!’

They’re being touted as a solution to student housing but they could also be used to house refugees, low income singles or couples, retirees (if they incorporated a lift).

The Urban Rigger has just been launched onto Copenhagen's harbour, a unique carbon neutral structure comprising of nine shipping containers.

Created by Danish architectural firm Bjarke Ingles Group (BIG), the building has been designed as a low-cost floating hall of residents for the city's students. The containers have been stacked onto a floating platform to create 15 studio residences over two levels. Being assembled at angles means the structure has allowed for a triangular shared garden in the centre.

Windows and doors have been cut out at each end of the containers, and each upper level container roof provides a different function. One is covered with solar panels, another a grassy knoll and the third a terrace.

Other amenities in the floating dwelling include a kayak landing, a bathing platform and a barbecue area. Downstairs, below sea level, the pontoon basement features 12 storage zones, a technical room and a laundry. The design also includes a number of environmentally sustainable solutions, including hydro source heating, solar power and low energy pumps.

The concept was to developed to help ease the housing situation for students in Europe, as well as tapping into the thousands of kilometres of unused harbour, canal and river space across the world.

Urban Rigger Home Page

[missolivialouise]

Image 1: Cityscape by Luc Schuiten Image 2: art by rei_17 Image 3: Anna Sui spring 2014 Image 4: stained glass from Temples of Humankind  Image 5: from the Dream Chronicles game series Image 6: rooftop greenhouse [cannot find source] Image 7 : The Mushroom House, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA  Image 8: art by Francois Schuiten Image 9: [cannot find source] Image 10: streetcars in New Orleans

Solarpunk inspiration photoset 6  1 2 3 4 5  7 8 9

[missolivialouise]

Image 1: art by Jessica Perlstein

Image 2: Design by Sagar Tenali

Image 3: Marie Southard Ospina

Image 4: art by Owen Carson

Image 5: stained glass over pharmacy store, photo by  Ganymedes Costagravas

Image 6: Design by Afro Collection 2015

Image 7: Art by Luc Schuiten

Image 8: New Orleans street car

Image 9: bike vendor by Icicle Tricycles 

Image 10: The Cosmovitral botanical garden at night

Solarpunk inspiration photoset 5   1 2 3 4 6  7 8 9