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  • Homemade exfoliating coffee and cinnamon soap

    Homemade exfoliating coffee and cinnamon soap

    craft, natural home, natural skincare, sustainable living

Homemade exfoliating coffee and cinnamon soap

Recycle used coffee grounds into a luxuriously exfoliating and all-natural homemade coffee and cinnamon soap.

Koren Helbig2021-04-26T17:27:21+09:30March 20th, 2015|craft, natural home, natural skincare, sustainable living|16 Comments
  • Homemade soap, the traditional Castile way

    Homemade soap, the traditional Castile way

    craft, natural home, natural skincare, sustainable living

Homemade soap, the traditional Castile way

A Spanish grandmother shares her traditional recipe for homemade soap from Spain's Castilla-La Mancha region, the original home of the popular Castile soap.

Koren Helbig2021-05-06T15:03:28+09:30December 16th, 2014|craft, natural home, natural skincare, sustainable living|31 Comments
  • Natural homemade laundry detergent powder

    Natural homemade laundry detergent powder

    natural home

Natural homemade laundry detergent powder

Learn how to make your own all-natural homemade laundry detergent powder and ditch the nasty chemicals of store-bought laundry soaps for good.

Koren Helbig2020-06-09T18:51:54+09:30July 16th, 2014|natural home|2 Comments

+ A freebie for you

My Top 25 Permaculture Books list to get you going with organic gardening & sustainable living.

I read a lot. These are the books I’ve found best for practical inspiration and actionable skills. I’ll also send you my occasional newsletter, full of even more good things to try at yours :)

Wanna grow food in your rental but can't dig up th Wanna grow food in your rental but can't dig up the lawn? Anna aka @theurbannanna has a solution for that...

*unnecessary drumroll*

Pots! Grow everything in pots. That way, you can pack 'em up and take them with you if you need to move.

And they don't even need to be big ones — in her urban Naarm / Melbourne rental, Anna has fruit trees thriving in pots that are only 50cm across.

I love this 'just make it work with what you've got' approach to gardening. Simple, uncomplicated, effective. With lots of permaculture design thinking woven in.

You might enjoy the chat I had with Anna for my @abc_everyday column? (The link's in my bio.) 

In the article, Anna runs through:
〰️ What types of pots to get and how to source them cheaply or free.
〰️ Which food plants are best to start with.
〰️ And possibly my fave hack ever — how to avoid buying plastic-wrapped potting mix, by using the no-dig philosophy in your pots. Genius. 🙌

Uh, I actually first wrote this piece almost a full year ago ... but realised I never chucked it here on the grid. Too good not to share, I reckon.

So, belatedly, enjoy. 😊

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Sustainable renos :: almost as soon as I bought my Sustainable renos :: almost as soon as I bought my little rundown bungalow in Tarntanya / Adelaide last year, the questions started.

"You'll be putting in a new kitchen, yeah?"
"When will you rip out and replace the bathroom?"
"You have so much space out the back here; will you build an extension?"

Uuuuugh.

My little 87-square-metre house, with its giant cracks and stained carpets, was certainly no palace.

But, in this age of climate crisis, I simply couldn't stomach a "flip it" style renovation.

So, I chose to be largely content with what already is within my house — and invested in smaller and more sustainable changes instead.

👉 You can swipe to see a couple before and after shots.

For my latest @abc_everyday column, I've outlined some of the changes made over the past year, which might just give you some ideas too. (Link to the full story is in my bio.)

That's included things such as:
〰️ Removing synthetic carpets and vinyl, which slowly flake off microplastics, which we then inhale.
〰️ Polishing the floorboards — but using a modified plant-based oil, again to protect indoor air quality.
〰️ Repainting with low-VOC paint. Yep, you guessed it, again for healthy indoor air quality.
〰️ Adding ceiling fans instead of air conditioning.
〰️ Retrofitting an existing chimney with a combustion fireplace that I can also cook on (hello, function stacking, as we call this in permaculture design).
〰️ Decking out almost my entire home in thrifted or found furniture.

Of course, there's still more work to be done. I'd like to improve the home's insulation, add a pergola to provide summer shade and better connect my rainwater tanks to the house and garden.

But little by little, and despite my modest renovation budget, my home is becoming more comfortable and energy efficient.

I truly hope this becomes the renovating way of the future – where people choose to install rainwater tanks over a new kitchen or excellent insulation instead of a new bathroom.

It saves money, and helps our planet too. 🌏🏡

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Making biodynamic preparations :: today I was invi Making biodynamic preparations :: today I was invited to join a beautiful ritual that marks the turning of the season, the heading into the darkness and cold of winter.

It's a time when the land draws within. Trees drop their leaves (well, the non-native ones do anyway) and plants slow their growth. Above ground, things feel quiet and dormant.

But beneath the soil, all is a hive of activity.

The earth is at its most alive. 

And so, certain biodynamic preps are made and buried, to rest in the soil until springtime.

Up at Nirvana Organic Farm today, we buried horns filled with cow manure for the 500 prep. As well as yarrow (502), stinging nettle (504) and dandelion (506).

It was nice to say hello to the yarrow again, after helping start the first part of that prep in mid-summer. The slow turning of a cycle.

Love learning all this alongside Deb, who's been practising biodynamics on her Adelaide Hills farm for almost 40 years.

Love how delightfully witchy it all feels. 🌔

#NirvanaOrganicFarm
Urban farming in the backyards of city rentals :: Urban farming in the backyards of city rentals :: so stoked to chat with @britpfeiffer and Jackson aka @urbangrow_boi for this latest edition of @frankiemagazine.

The pair are doing something rather extraordinary, something our cities arguably need more of.

Brit rents a house in Tarntanya / Adelaide and recently offered up her backyard, completely free, for Jackson to turn into a market garden. He now uses the space to grow organic veggies for city-dwellers.

“It just makes perfect logical sense to me," Brit told me." If you have land and you're not going to use it, someone else may as well access it to grow stuff for the local community. Everyone wins. It’s a no-brainer, really.”

Jackson currently grows from three urban backyards — all of them rentals — and the produce from each goes into weekly veggie boxes, sold via a Community-Supported Agriculture scheme.

“You're almost like an investor in a farmer's business,” Jackson explains.

“You basically commit to being involved for a certain amount of time at a certain price, and then you get a percentage of whatever is grown. If the crops fail, you're taking that risk on with the farmer. And if there's abundance, you're going to share in that as well.”

Happily, similar urban land-share models have been firing up interstate, too, including @farmitforward in the Blue Mountains and @growing_farmers_au in Melbourne.

I love everything about this — reclaiming our city spaces and transforming them from barren food deserts into spaces that nourish the community and landscape at the same time. 🤎

The full story's in Frankie mag issue 107, if you'd like to have a read.

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Repair cafes :: today I learned the art of turning Repair cafes :: today I learned the art of turning raggedy clothing into a work of wearable art via visible mending *and* got my broken vintage beach umbrella repaired.

All for free — during my first visit to the @unleyrepaircafe. 🙌

These awesome centres are aimed at diverting stuff from landfill while sharing local fix-it knowledge. You waltz in with your broken thingo and a kindly volunteer will do their very best to repair it for you.

While I waited, I watched as the crew fixed everything from a wonky bike and wobbly foot stall legs to a fried hair dryer and a moth-eaten woollen jumper.

You don't even have to pay for this assistance, although donations are gratefully received, to help keep it all going.

They often host workshops too, which is where I jumped on the visible mending bandwagon, learning from the incredibly talented Mary Heath of @localandbespoke. (Her blog is a treasure trove of instructions and examples, if you wanna start teaching yourself.)

I also love that the whole repair cafe idea was started by a woman — Dutch environmentalist Martine Postma, in Amsterdam back in 2009.

Here in Tarntanya / Adelaide, we now have 10 repair cafes dotted around the city:
🛠️ At @makerspaceadelaide, in the CBD
🛠️ Within the @gawlerenvironmentcentre
🛠️ Unley
🛠️ Modbury
🛠️ Marino
🛠️ Payneham
🛠️ Two at Campbeltown
🛠️ Angle Park
🛠️ Aldgate

So there might well be one near you?

Check out the @adelaidesustainability centre website for full deets of locations and opening times.

And might I just add — this kind of thing is permaculture in action. 'Produce no waste' and 'use small and slow solutions' are two of the movement's principles, after all. See, I told ya it wasn't all just about gardening. 😉

#RepairCafe #VisibleMending #PermacultureLiving

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If you're into growing food and keen to learn some If you're into growing food and keen to learn some Australian Sign Language (Auslan) while you're at it, scoot over and give @kaz_codahobbyfarmer a follow.

Karin is a gardener, teacher and interpreter from Speewah, in Far North Queensland, who records and publishes all her gardening how-to videos twice — in English with captions and then separately in Auslan.

She's even recently started recording Auslan 'interpreter remixes' of segments from @gardeningaustralia, as well as useful Reels from top Aussie gardening Instagrammers. 🙌

All this is important to Karin because she is a CODA, a Child of Deaf Adults. She grew up in a bilingual world and deeply understands the power of information presented in accessible ways for all different types of folks.

I really enjoyed this chat with Karin for my @abc_everyday column (link to the full story in my bio) and learnt so much. Hope you enjoy, too.

Oh, and if you're of a certain age, you might just recognise Karin from the 1990s morning cartoon show, Cheez TV...

Thanks for all you do, Karin!

I acknowledge and pay my respect to the Kaurna people, the traditional custodians of the land on which I live, learn and work.

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