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Clutter Control

Learn how to make the most of available space, set up practical anti-clutter systems, organize hot spot storage and find storage space in places you never dreamed of.NOTE: This edition does not include illustrations.

Spring Cleaning

The people who taught readers how to clean their homes in 42 minutes flat spell out how to go about tackling those heavy-duty, spring cleaning chores in the most efficient, and painless, way.NOTE: This edition does not include illustrations.

Back To The Land

For many, "going back to the land" brings to mind the 1960s and 1970s--hippie communes and the Summer of Love,The Whole Earth CatalogandMother Earth News. More recently, the movement has reemerged in a new enthusiasm for locally produced food and more sustainable energy paths. But these latest back-to-the-landers are part of a much larger story. Americans have been dreaming of returning to the land ever since they started to leave it. InBack to the Land, Dona Brown explores the history of this recurring impulse. Back-to-the-landers have often been viewed as nostalgic escapists or romantic nature-lovers. But their own words reveal a more complex story. In such projects as Gustav Stickley's Craftsman Farms, Frank Lloyd Wright's "Broadacre City," and Helen and Scott Nearing's quest for "the good life," Brown finds that the return to the farm has meant less a going-backwards than a going-forwards, a way to meet the challenges of the modern era. Progressive reformers pushed for homesteading to help impoverished workers get out of unhealthy urban slums. Depression-era back-to-the-landers, wary of the centralizing power of the New Deal, embraced a new "third way" politics of decentralism and regionalism. Later still, the movement merged with environmentalism. To understand Americans' response to these back-to-the-land ideas, Brown turns to the fan letters of ordinary readers--retired teachers and overworked clerks, recent immigrants and single women. In seeking their rural roots, Brown argues, Americans have striven above all for the independence and self-sufficiency they associate with the agrarian ideal.

Condos in the Woods

Scenic rural communities across the nation and around the world have been transformed as they have shifted away from extractive industries such as agriculture, mining, and forestry and toward recreation-based development relying on tourism, vacation homes, and retirees. These communities have built new economies and identities based on local natural resources and are highly dependent on the natural environment. With these changes have come new questions: Do retirees and seasonal residents fit into their new surroundings? Do longtime and new residents share the same values and visions for the future? Do diverse community members disagree about how to manage their forest and water resources? Condos in the Woodsexplores how these issues are reshaping community structure, employment, and inhabitants’ attitudes toward their environment in the Northwoods. Looking at trends from the 1970s to the present, this work moves from the national scale to the Pine Barrens region in northwestern Wisconsin and examines the approaches of residents to the management of their natural resources. At the heart of this story, the authors find that despite the diverse makeup of such communities, residents share many common goals and values and display more successful integration than previously expected.

Pioneer of Ecological Restoration

Internationally renowned for its pioneering role in the ecological restoration of tallgrass prairies, savannas, forests, and wetlands, the University of Wisconsin Arboretum contains the world's oldest and most diverse restored ecological communities. A site for land restoration research, public environmental education, and enjoyment by nature lovers, the Arboretum remains a vibrant treasure in the heart of Madison's urban environment.

Made from Scratch

In this stunning celebration and reappraisal of the importance of "women's work," acclaimed journalist Jean Zimmerman poignantly addresses the tug that many Americans of the twenty-first century feel between our professional and private lives. With sharp wit and intelligence, she offers evidence that in the current domestic vacuum, we still long for a richer home life -- a paradox visible in the Martha Stewart phenomenon, in the continuing popularity of women's service magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, and Ladies' Home Journal -- whose combined circulation of over 17 million is nearly twice the combined circulation of Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report -- and the booming business of restorations, where onlookers get a hands-on view of domestic life as it flourished in past centuries. This book is about the ways home traditions passed from one generation to the next -- baking a birthday cake from scratch, cherishing family heirlooms, or discovering the satisfaction of piecing a quilt -- sustain our souls, especially in our ever more processed, synthetic world, where we buy "homemade" goods and fail to see the irony in that.Made from Scratch tells the story of the unsung heroines of the hearth, investigating the history of female domesticity and charting its cultural changes over centuries. Zimmerman traces the lives of her own family's homemakers -- from her tiny but indomitable grandmother, who managed a farm, strangled chickens with her bare hands, and sewed all the family clothing, to her mother, who rejected her country upbringing yet kept a fastidious suburban home where the gender divide stayed firmly in place, to her own experiences as a wife and mother weaned on the Women's Movement of the 1970s, with its emphatic view that housework was a dirty word and that the domestic sphere was to be fled rather than cherished. In this book Zimmerman questions the unexamined trade-off we have made in a shockingly brief time span, as we've "progressed" from home-raised chickens to frozen TV dinners to McNuggets from the food court at the mall. What is lost when we no longer engage, as individuals and as a community, in the ancient rituals of food, craft, and shelter?

The Formation of Papal Authority in Late Antique Italy

This book is the first cultural history of papal authority in late antiquity. While most traditional histories posit a 'rise of the papacy' and examine popes as politicians, theologians and civic leaders, Kristina Sessa focuses on the late Roman household and its critical role in the development of the Roman church from c.350-600. She argues that Rome's bishops adopted the ancient elite household as a model of good government for leading the church. Central to this phenomenon was the classical and biblical figure of the steward, the householder's appointed agent who oversaw his property and people. As stewards of God, Roman bishops endeavored to exercise moral and material influence within both the pope's own administration and the households of Italy's clergy and lay elites. This original and nuanced study charts their manifold interactions with late Roman households and shows how bishops used domestic knowledge as the basis for establishing their authority as Italy's singular religious leaders.

Doomsday Preppers Complete Survival Manual

This custom companion to the blockbuster National Geographic Channel series Doomsday Preppersis filled with how-to illustrations, "Prepper Profiles" of people in the show, and survival tips from preppers themselves. Handy and comprehensive, the manual offers valuable life-saving information to help prepare for the most devastating calamities. Episodes of this highly original show, which debuted in February 2012, explore the lives of otherwise ordinary Americans who are preparing for the end of the world as we know it. Preppers go to extraordinary lengths to plan for any of life's uncertainties, from constructing a home out of shipping containers and stockpiling 50,000 lbs. of food to practicing evacuation drills and hand-to-hand combat. This book is an essential component.

Introductory Horticulture (8th Edition)

INTRODUCTORY HORTICULTURE, EIGHTH EDITION, is the definitive text for horticulture science. Written in a concise, easy -to -read and logically organized manner, this text covers trend changes in the agricultural industry, principles in landscaping, business operations, and GIS uses in the landscape green industry. INTRODUCTORY HORTICULTURE, EIGHTH EDITION allows teachers to measure their students' progress with competencies, and the highlighted key terms and self evaluations keep the student focused on what they should learn and retain.

The Modern-Day Pioneer

Rediscover the simple pleasures in life When was the last time you let the aroma of freshly baked bread fill your kitchen or felt the warmth of a heavy quilt on a cold winter night? In today's day and age, it's easy to get swept up in the whirlwind of convenience and forget what it's like to truly appreciate the simple things in life. The Modern-Day Pioneer celebrates these forgotten joys by showing you how to incorporate basic skills and living into your everyday life. Whether you're interested in growing your own fruits and vegetables, raising chickens for meat or eggs, crafting delicious meals from scratch, or creating and mending your own clothes and quilts, this book makes it easy to live a healthier and more sustainable life in the twenty-first century. Filled with step-by-step instructions and homegrown inspiration, you'll wonder how you ever lived without the sweet taste of locally harvested honey or the refreshing scent of homemade lavender soap.

Seeds

From the wooded road made of golden hemlock running past L. Frank Baum's childhood home to the lonely stump of Scout's oak in Harper Lee's Alabama, author Richard Horan gathers tree seeds-and stories-from the homes of America's most treasured authors. At once a heartfelt paean to literature and a wise, funny, and uplifting account of one man's reconnection with nature, Seeds celebrates Horan's triumphs and calamities on his quest to link trees with great writers-a delightfully original meditation on the nature of inspiration and a one-of-a-kind adventure into literature.

Art Deco Tiles

Art Deco is arguably the twentieth century's most popular and memorable design movements. The style defined the interwar period with its clean sleek lines, streamlined shapes, bold abstract forms, and luscious colours.This book charts the impact of this daring new style on the production of tiles and architectural faience in Britain. It shows how they were made and decorated, examines the output of firms like Carter, Pilkington's and Doulton and describes the innovations introduced by creative designers like Edward Bawden and Dora Batty.With photographs of the tiles and architectural faience, individually and in situ of buildings and homes, the author examines the diverse range of animal, floral, human and abstract Art Deco designs.

A Little Piece of Earth: How to Grow Your Own Food in Small Spaces

A hip, eco-friendly guide with fun and easy projects for all levels. Eating locally has so many benefits--for the planet, for your health, and for your taste buds--and you can't get much more local than your very own backyard. But is planting a garden too big a commitment? Then this book is for you. A Little Piece of Earth is all about starting small, with more than fifty self-contained, doable projects. Whether you have a yard, a terrace, a rooftop, or just a windowsill, there are plenty of ideas and inspirations to choose from. Harvest your own precious vanilla pods from a pot indoors. Grow savory shiitakes on a small log in your kitchen. Build a miniature vineyard trellis on your deck or build a raised bed on your patio. Recipes for using your homegrown bounty are sprinkled throughout. Charming illustrations guide you through step-by-step, and there's a complete resources section. This is about making dirt work for you, taking some control over your food supply, and, most important, enriching your life with the quiet, simple pleasures of produce raised organically with your own hands.

Energy

100 energy saving tips for everything in your home or business. Did you know . . . bull; Heating and cooling account for about 56% of the energy use in a typical home bull; Energy-efficient light bulbs last about 12 times longer than ordinary bulbs, and consume about 1/5 of the energy bull; If we all turned off our TVs and other gadgets that are kept on stand-by, we could shut down a couple of power stations in the United States, with huge reductions in CO2 emissions bull; Our energy use is projected to increase 17% from 1995-2015 bull; Our homes produce even more CO2 emissions than our cars This book gives you 100 energy-saving tips for the home-from simple things like switching off unnecessary lights and having a shower instead of a bath, to more drastic measures such as installing a condensing boiler. If each one of us acts on just a few of these suggestions, we can save money-and help slow down climate change.

The Transition Companion

In this illustrated resource for general readers, Hopkins, founder of the UK'S Transition Movement, advocates a grassroots, community-led response to climate change and oil dependence. The first part of the book explains the rationale behind the need for a new paradigm for communities, reviewing the current and future consequences of oil dependence, climate change, and economic problems, and describes the transition movement's vision for revived communities. The book then describes real initiatives that work for lower energy use, ecological sustainability, and reliance on local economies. Hopkins gives advice on how to start and maintain a transition initiative, covering ingredients for success such as respectful communication, running effective meetings, forming a legal entity, starting local food initiatives, encouraging entrepreneurship, and using less energy. The book's color layout includes color photos and color-coded sections. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)

Radical Homemakers

Mother Nature has shown her hand. Faced with climate change, dwindling resources, and species extinctions, most Americans understand the fundamental steps necessary to solve our global crises-drive less, consume less, increase self-reliance, buy locally, eat locally, rebuild our local communities. In essence, the great work we face requires rekindling the home fires. Radical Homemakersis about men and women across the U. S. who focus on home and hearth as a political and ecological act, and who have centered their lives around family and community for personal fulfillment and cultural change. It explores what domesticity looks like in an era that has benefited from feminism, where domination and oppression are cast aside and where the choice to stay home is no longer equated with mind-numbing drudgery, economic insecurity, or relentless servitude. Radical Homemakersnationwide speak about empowerment, transformation, happiness, and casting aside the pressures of a consumer culture to live in a world where money loses its power to relationships, independent thought, and creativity. If you ever considered quitting a job to plant tomatoes, read to a child, pursue creative work, can green beans and heal the planet, this is your book.

The Transition Timeline: For a Local, Resilient Future

The Transition Timeline lightens the fear of our uncertain future, providing a map of what we are facing and the different pathways available to us. It describes four possible scenarios for the UK and world over the next twenty years, ranging from Denial, in which we reap the consequences of failing to acknowledge and respond to our environmental challenges, to the Transition Vision, in which we shift our cultural assumptions to fit our circumstances and move into a more fulfilling, lowerenergy world. The practical, realistic details of this Transition Vision are examined in depth, covering key areas such as food, energy, demographics, transport and healthcare, and they provide a sense of context for communities working towards a thriving future. The book also provides a detailed and accessible update on climate change and peak oil and the interactions between them, including their impacts in the UK, present and future. Use it. Choose your path, and then make that future real with your actions, individually and with your community. As Rob Hopkins outlines in his foreword, there is a rapidlyspreading movement addressing these challenges, and it needs you.

Landscaping Earth Ponds

The guru of earth ponds explains how to site, design, shape, and plant these beloved fixtures of rural landscapes-and make them fit your property and your life. In the decades since he wrote his acclaimed "Earth Ponds," Tim Matson has designed scores of ponds, each unique to its site and its owners. In "Landscaping Earth Ponds," he shares what he has learned to make these captivating ponds truly fit into their landscapes and into the lives and lifestyles of their owners. Ponds have long been valued for their charm and utility: how else can you simultaneously enliven your landscape, create recreational opportunities, help the environment, and increase your property value? Earth ponds are increasingly recognized for the full range of gardening, landscaping, and ecological promise they hold. As pond-building methods have been perfected, more homeowners are restoring existing ponds or digging new ones. With dozens of color photographs, Matson shows you how to site a pond in right relation to your house, offering surprisingly simple ways to visually link the two. His proven methods and designs reflect the many moods water evokes. Screen your pond for privacy, create a sandy beach and natural diving platform, encourage wetland gardens, line the shores with moisture-loving perennials, or design your gardens and paths to create a sense of mystery and adventure.

Composting

A full-color guide for both beginners and experienced composters, with an A-Z reference section. Composting is fun, easy and very satisfying! You can make compost even if you live in an apartment or don't have access to a garden. There are lots of good reasons to make compost: bull; A third to two-thirds of the average garbage can contents can be composted, so you can lighten your bin-and stop it smelling. bull; Less organic material is sent to landfill, so less noxious liquids and greenhouse gases-especially methane-are produced. bull; Composting saves you money-you won't need to buy any more peat-based compost! This book will give you all the information you need for successful composting.

The New Ecological Home

Today, a new generation of architects and builders is emerging, intent on creating homes that meet human needs for shelter while causing only a fraction of the environmental impact of conventional housing. "The New Ecological Home" provides an overview of green building techniques, materials, products, and technologies that are either currently available or will be in the near future. Author Daniel Chiras provides a wealth of up-to-date, practical information for home buyers, owner-builders, and anyone interested in building for a sustainable future. Included are chapters on: - The Healthy House - Green Building Materials - Wood-Wise Construction - Energy Efficiency - Earth-Sheltered Architecture - Passive Solar Heating and Passive Cooling - Green Power: Electricity from the Sun and Wind - Water and Waste: Sustainable Approaches - Environmental Landscaping

The Carbon-Free Home

You've read the stories and watched the documentaries. So you're convinced--burning fossil fuels leads to global climate change; supplies of fossil fuels are diminishing in quantity and increasing in price. You've fretted and worried, but still go through your day consuming some quantity of non-renewable fossil fuels to accomplish nearly every task (and you may not even realize it). You want to do something besides worry but you are unsure where to begin. Read this book--then grab your handsaw, tape measure, and drill, and get started! A life powered by the sun is waiting for you. Meant as a guide for renovating existing homes, this book gives you the hands-on knowledge necessary to kick the fossil fuel habit, with projects small and large listed by skill, time, cost, and energy saved. For every aspect of your life currently powered by fossil fuels, we offer alternatives you can accomplish yourself to get started using renewable and sustainable sources of power. Inspired by their own determination to wean themselves completely from fossil fuels, Rebekah and Stephen Hren provide a map for others interested in the path to producing all their own energy and living a fossil fuel-free life. It shows first how to reduce energy consumption as much as possible, then how to retrofit an existing home in order to obtain all heating and cooling, all cooking and refrigeration, and all hot water and electricity from renewable sources. The Hrens also provide advice on renewable methods of transportation and home gardening, as poor choices about food and mobility often negate hard-won gains in the home. Like many today, the Hrens felt they had a moral obligation to mitigate humankind's contribution to the ravages of pollution, including global warming as a result of fossil fuel addiction. In this book, the Hrens offer practical approaches that fit into anyone's budget, and can be done over time as a way to wean oneself from fossil fuel dependency.

Forest Gardening

"Forest Gardening" is a way of working alongside nature--an approach that results in great productivity with minimal maintenance, and a method for transforming even a small cottage garden into a diverse and inviting habitat for songbirds, butterflies, and other wildlife. Based on the model of a natural woodland, a forest garden incorporates a wide variety of useful plants, including fruit and nut trees, perennial herbs, and vegetables. Hart's book beautifully describes his decades of experience gardening in the Shropshire countryside, yet the principles of "backyard permaculture" he explores can be applied equally well in other locales across the planet, from tropical to temperate zones. Practical features of the book include: bull; Design guidelines for creating your own perennial, food-producing garden bull; Lists of recommended plants and varieties, keyed to different climates bull; An explanation of how plants in different levels or "stories"--from ground covers to full-sized trees--coexist and interact in a healthy and productive landscape. Robert Hart blends history, philosophy, anthropology, and seasonal gardening wisdom in a lucid sequence of essays, which together comprise a remarkable testament to the pleasures of "hands-off" as well as hands-on gardening. "Forest Gardening" is truly a book for our times, offering a fresh sensibility that will encourage and inspire ecological gardeners throughout the world.

The Everything® Fix-It Book

Specially written for the mechanically challenged, "The Everything Fix-It Book is the ideal resource to help homeowners prepare for the unexpected.

Kitchen Basics: A Primer for Kitchen and Bath Specialists

Deep in the Green

As gardening columnist for The New York Times, Anne Raver is one of our foremost authorities on making things grow. Even non-gardeners will find this book of essays a source of profound pleasure, for Raver is a writer who transcends her subject even as she illuminates it, writing with such passion, wisdom and stylishmess that her book will enchant anyone who reads it.