We are moving out of our home soon. My plants are currently being sold away on craigslist. Without them, this space would not be home. I have wanted to record details of this home on the blog but haven’t, since my husband feels differently about privacy and internet journals. This home will become a home to another lovely family soon. It has already changed to prepare for the transition. This may be the last chance.

Does zero waste have an aesthetic ?

A strong NO. My home has a lot of gray and white because that is how it looked when we moved in.

Do I have an aesthetic ?

Maybe. Mine is that of an Indian expat in American SouthWest. I like the chunky solid brown furniture, red, brass, clay, linen, humble things and open spaces. With this home, I wanted to keep some of the original charm and introduce some of my own taste into the space. I tried to optimize for waste.

What about your partner ?

He likes a full and lived in home. Remember Monica’s apartment in the tv show FRIENDS ? He likes that sort of space. I don’t. Bringing in the plants to fill up the corners and having piles of books clutter the surfaces made for a happy compromise.

What were your priorities with this home ?

A place to stay. Our previous home was 320 sft and we wanted to move into a more open space. We picked it out in a hurry because of family visiting from India. Living in a single family home by ourselves has been a new experience for us. I was looking forward to growing some plants outdoors. Our previous landlord was a gardener. We saw how happy it made him to grow and work with nature. We wanted that experience for ourselves.

{ What do I want from a home ? A house of silence. There is so much stimulation and distraction in the world that I want some quiet and peace. I do not want to see the walls and get moved. I do not want objects that speak too much. My mind is always raging that I sometimes find it hard to sleep coz I cant stop thinking about a problem. Meditation has been helping. Minimalism has been helping. Yoga has been helping. I need my home to be a sanctuary. I want as much silence and quiet as I can get. }

On Perfection ?

We take our time before making the decision to buy something, check out our options, evaluate pros + cons, etc. But once we buy, we try to buy for life. In the case of us immigrants, it’s “as long as we stay in this country”. As things age, they don’t look pretty, but that is fine by me. The farther it gets from Sunday, my cleaning day, the home slips into a state of disarray. My mantra is a borrowed one : Don’t be ashamed of shabby things. Be ashamed of shabby ideas. Said by this great human. I try to remember that. I haven’t re-decorated or upgraded anything that works. For instance, I got some white cotton fabric from the nearby craft shop to use as curtains on the first day I moved in. We realized that you could see inside from the street and didn’t know what sort of window treatments we wanted. But once these came in, we put off shopping for curtains to when this fabric wear out. I don’t want to waste this textile. So be it. We have an outdoor cat who brings in the dirt. I clean often but can’t seem to catch up with his pace. He is a hunter who brings live and dead animals into the home. We have had live birds flying along the ceilings. We have had mice running along the floors and lizards along the walls that we have had to catch. We have had to deal with dead animals he drags inside. We deal with his puke from ingesting too much fiber. I use vinegar and baking soda to sanitize the place after his victories. His fur is cute but has a zillion things stuck to it at all times from his adventures. Living with an animal forced me to accept chaos as a way of life.

Lately, I have become immune to the idea of picture perfect. I have taken my fair share of staged photographs to impress people on social media. I look at too many images on Instagram. It went from aspirational to inspirational to “we still do this ?”. Today, I don’t have the energy or appreciation for that sort of beauty anymore. Looking back, the photographs don’t represent a moment to remember. They represent a certain vanity that isn’t enriching my life by it’s remembrance. In this post, I tried not to photograph a staged home. This is my home on a Tuesday morning. Nothing has been tucked away. I din’t buy cut fresh flowers. I didn’t clear my counter tops. I didn’t color co-ordinate my books. I own studio lights but they were not used in these photographs. I own a very professional camera that can achieve wonders when coupled with a tripod. These photos were taken with my phone in under 10 minutes. This is us without the make up and the mirrors. Home tours should be true to the environment. Some homes have more order, beauty and perfection. Our home looks like this :

THE LIVING ROOM

“We will finally have bookshelves”, we thought when we moved into this home. It somehow never happened. At first, we didn’t know where to put the shelves. Then, we didnt know what kind of book shelves to buy. Then, our cat Cinco figured out that every time he wanted attention, all he had to do was go into the fire place and come out covered in soot. We built a blockade with books to keep him out. They have stayed there since. No bookshelf for us.

The empty space in this room is my spot to do asana practice for my yoga. I have an Indian broom that I use to sweep every morning before I roll out my mat. Else, I was loosing my concentration in-between practice and observing the dirt on the floor. This spot is the most cleaned part of our home. 5 days a week ! It looks well for that reason.

The couch is a second hand find from when I lived in Tempe, Arizona. It was a sectional. With time, I had to let go of one of the pieces to downsize for a move. Only this piece of the L-shape survived. I wash the fabric when Cinco gets it dirty enough. The windows have the original 1950s shades when the house was originally built. When I moved in, we wanted to replace them or paint them white. But the house won. It managed to not let us do upgrades for no real reason. The vintage feel of the windows reminds me of my great-grand-mother’s home and our village.

The leather ottoman was a Craigslist find from the Redwood City. The owner bought it second hand from a estate sale and was told that it was custom made. I like sinking into it and reading a book.

When we have guests over, I bring out the cot from our bedroom and re-distribute the chairs from our dining room. We have also brought out our mattress into the living room and had folks lay down to watch games / tv shows / movies / etc. It works. I call this modular design. Everything is multipurpose and gets used a lot. The rural Japanese homes were designed that way with fluid paper walls and furniture that folds away. The rural Indian homes were once designed this way with cots and floor mats that moved about / unrolled where it was necessary. This enabled our ancestors to own fewer things and get maximum usage out of them. The average number of guests we have seems be hover around 4 new bodies. This space comfortably houses us all. I never felt a need for a bigger couch or any other upgrades. But then, I think I have great friends and the need to impress them with ambiance is low. My partner sometimes feels embarrassed when the guests cram into the couch or when we have folks sleeping on the floor. But to me, its all a part of a good life. Travel teaches you to embrace the inconveniences. In what world is huddling together or cramming into cozy spaces with your loved ones a problem to be solved ? Especially, in a house this big ?

After he got his first job, the first major purchase he made was this tv. This corner houses it. The first piece of furniture I bought was this treasure chest. After we moved in, these two got together. Inside the chest, I store my out of season clothing. Under the chest, my current set of shoes in rotation live their seasonal lives before going back into hibernation. We have a coat closet right opposite the entrance to the front door. My handbag hangs around there. This corner was supposed to be where a floor to ceiling bookshelf could have been. But the house had other plans for us.

The stack of things along the wall is all the “home decor” we own. The mirror sits there because it helps me correct my posture in asana practice. The map, was once loved but now has been reduced to a prop. The Buddha statue is a project that I never completed. I wanted to make it a moss statue that sits inside the home. But I never lived long enough in any place to complete the project. Cinco, the cat, eats by the mirror. He owns all but one toy mouse that sits by his bowl. He likes hunting and playing outdoors for the most part. His wilderness spirit is very inspiring to me. The fiddle fig leaf plant is the result of my learning about plants from Instagram. These plants are expensive. I had friends who wanted the plant but didn’t want to invest this sort of money in a trendy plant. I have propagated 3 small plants from this guy’s leaves and give them to these friends. I quite like how a bunch of us are now connected by this guy’s children. When i visit their homes, they always show me their baby fig plant and call me ‘plant aunt’. Gardening is so much more fun this way.

THE DINING ROOM

This space is the heart of our home. When folks visit, we usually end up here instead of on the couch or any place else. It goes to say how much we enjoy cooking and eating. It serves as a work space, board game hosting space, Cinco’s spot to birdwatch by the window, …. I bought the table 6 years ago. It was my first big purchase and I had vowed to have it in our home till we leave this country. Here it is. It’s my fav piece of furniture. I found the chairs last year. The bench came in this year. It took me 6 years to put this set up together.

By the window is the Indian curry leaf tree. My partner takes care of it like it’s our child. We got it as a baby and it’s grown into a plant that feeds us. These leaves go into the tempering added to Indian food. It’s a source of umami. This plant is the symbolic goddess of sustainability in our home. The more leaves I pluck == lesser the ability for the plant to photosynthesize == lesser its ability to stay alive == lesser it’s ability to sustain us. When we first got it, we plucked too many leaves in such a short period of time that the plant almost died. We now carefully calibrate our consumption of it’s leaves to the growth, seasons and state of the plant. It is a joy to take care of it as it takes care of us. Our relationship is symbolic of earth and humans in some sense. I can kill this plant today by plucking too many leaves. I can visualize it’s states as it dies because I have seen it suffer before. This is the analogy I use to edit my wants and needs. The more I consume, sooner we both die. We use the leaves every single day when we cook. And every single day, I get to exercise my sustainability muscle. How is the plant doing ? Should I take a leaf today ? What can I do to keep the plant healthy ? It’s a spiritual practice.

THE KITCHEN

This is where our clutter triumphs. Bills that need attention asap go on the fridge. The black board has meal plans scribbled on. If I am home, there is always a kettle of water boiling for tea. The appliances I own are a high speed blender and an electric cooker. The counter tops are never empty. Reusuable bottles, tea pots, V60 coffee dripper, cutting boards, compost collector, bar dish soap, coconut scrub, cleaning rags, gray water tub, plants, etc live on it. I do fantasize the idea of empty counter tops before I go to bed, as a rule. It’s a tidiness aspiration. It hasn’t happened for me yet.

We never achieved the zero in zero waste but we managed to reduce our landfill waste to filling out these bins once every two weeks. That is enough of a target for me. I can reduce more but I can’t do that while keeping my sanity and my relationships with humans around me. Our big ticket trash items are take out food containers. Someday, I will gather the courage to ask the restaurant to fill my glass containers. Till then, ….

This is our pantry. Cook books, dry goods in bulk and vintage wooden boards lay around. We get some of our packaged goods in large quantities from Costco. I find my plastic rice bin ridiculously ugly but find making “zero waste upgrades” counter productive to the cause. So be it. Plastic is an incredibly useful material if not abused. I plan to use mine for as long as possible. We have a waxed canvas apron and a denim apron hanging by a hook. Wearing an apron helps us launder our clothes less. This is the most prosperous closet in our home.

THE BATHROOM

The bar soap is the rockstar in this room. I have one for hands, body and hair. My partner wears contact lens and uses sanitizing solution. I do not feel guilty for generating trash as a by product of our medical needs. We have a small trash can in the bathroom. It fills up every month. I am a sexually active woman. I am not on birth control. I use condoms to prevent unwanted pregnancy. This is also the kind of trash I wont apologize for or use as a yard stick to let my critics prove that I am not zero waste. We use toilet paper made from recycled materials. Sunscreen is the only packaged product that I use that is designed for the landfill. I am looking into switching back to one that comes in an aluminum tin after this one is done.

I do not like the decor of the bathroom. I intensely dislike the counter tops and the color of the wood. We were not in a position to renovate this space and didn’t want to waste all these perfectly usable furniture. My solution ? Sleep on it till the time is right and I will know what to do. Some art work would have cheered up this place. But all of our effort went into the yard for the last one year.

THE BEDROOM

I got used to sleeping on the floor for the last decade and find bed frames unnecessary. This mattress is by Tuft and Needle, purchased first hand. ( I somehow did not look into sustainability factors for mattresses back then. ) We air out our mattress periodically to prevent moulding, by lifting it up and stacking it against the wall when not in use. All the additional seating in the room was found on craigslist. The Indian cot by Restoration Hardware is one of my fav finds ever. I used to sleep on a cot when I was a child in India. I don’t fit on this one but it serves as additional seating in the house. I found the full length mirror on the street, cleaned it up and stacked it against the window to take outfit photos for the blog. After I realized that it is a slimming mirror, I have been meaning to get rid of it. But seeing a taller and leaner version of myself got me hooked to it. Yikes !

THE YARD

Trees and people used to be the best of friends.
I saw that tree and decided to buy the house.

— HAYAO MIYAZAKI, My Neighbor Totoro

.

This tree is one of the reasons we live here. This tree is my teacher and friend. This tree is the spirit animal of this home. This tree is our great-great-grand-mother. The rest is walls and things that exist for physical comfort. Having a yard is a privilege and a joy. I understand that urban density is essential to reduce emissions from daily commute. We both take public transportation and use the car only when we need to. That still does not justify having a yard. To make up for the opulence, we started growing food and planting as many trees as the land would allow. We could replace the lawn with a more biodiverse landscape. The grand plan was to grow a food forest but it never got that far. We did however plant for the bees, the birds and the worms. I am especially proud of my cat Cinco whose predatory instinct was to hunt the birds, but he lets them be. The permaculture books that I have read changed the way I see life. The disconnect with nature that my urban life facilitated lead to my un-sustainable lifestyle practices. My garden and my outdoor cat helped me plug myself into the ecosystem to observe my role in it all. It changed me. If I was doing zero waste to meet the challenge/bloat my ego before, I now do it for love of life as I know it. We can go a step further and think in terms of regeneration, rather than sustainability. It starts at home.

{ I would like to add that nature isn’t all glory and beauty of landscape. There is toil, survival of the fittest, disease, pests, poop, predators, helplessness of being at the mercy of the weather, time invested, money invested, a knowledge bank that I am constantly updating by reading, … It is worth it for me. }

Size of the house :

Living in a large home is not in line with the principles of zero waste. I think this home is too big for us with lots of space going un-used. It’s 950 sft with 3 bedrooms and a garage for the car. The two extra rooms go un-used and I tried to keep them empty as to not get used to having the space to fill with stuff. For 2 humans, I think a 700 sft would be sufficiently spacious and very comfortable. I am not a fan of the American suburban home. I try to follow the decor / interior media from European cities so that I don’t get used to seeing the mansions decorated with opulence and eventually find them aspirational.

Cleaning :

An Indian broom, baking soda, rags, water, vinegar, bamboo scrub, coconut coir and olive oil soap have kept us afloat. Most of them come package free and some come in bulk plastic containers. But I genuinely believe that we are doing our best. I do the cleaning myself every Sunday and call it exercise for the day.

Air Conditioning :

We have deciduous trees around the home that help with seasonal temperature regulation. I wear a poncho inside during the day and a sweater to bed. We own a small room fan that comes out during the summer months. But come winter, I find myself feeling miserable without the central heating. I am finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning and to be active when it’s cold. I am yet to figure out a way to reduce it’s usage. With slow and gradual improvements, I hope to get there. Perhaps one way is to own some cozy lounge clothing ? More thermal leggings and beanies ?

Had we stayed longer :

We have been meaning to put up portraits of our family members on the walls. Black and white images that I shot, in brass frames is what I had in mind. Elders, babies and pets – all of them deserve to be up there. I am keen on finding the frames second hand and was waiting to find them. I have a Phython script that runs on my server that searches Craigslist every day and emails me when it finds what I am looking for. I haven’t found art work that I want to live with, every single day, as yet. I do tear out pages from books and magazines and plaster them to the walls from time to time. Another year would have given me time to adorn the walls. But if I do have a year, my backyard would become a food forest and my front yard would become a native plant garden with wild flowers. We planted a manzanita this weekend after we saw it on the trails of Mt. Diablo. Every time we go on a hike, we seem to fall in love with a new plant, come home to look it up, find it in the California Native Plant community and plant it. With time, we could have planted so much more. The thing we are most proud of is the transformation of the land. The soil was severely undernourished when we moved in. I lugged my compost bin from my previous home, adopted some red worms, started using horse manure from a stable in Oakland Hills, started making soil amendments, grew ground cover, mulched with dried leaves, planted clover, …… till the birds and the bees returned. The yard came into a life of its own. Seeing it all come together at the start of the Spring has given us more happiness than we could quantify. I would like to thank the poet M.S. Merwin for the inspiration. Not just for the pretty and powerful words, but for the way he lived his life and for the actions.

The End

We loved it here. We love it here. This is our first home together. We have always rented a room in a larger home or rented apartments with roommates around. This home is us. A place to grow up together. I am glad we could move in, with an animal. I am glad that the animal was Cinco. I am glad we could grow our food here. I am glad we got to host our friends and family here.

Thank you for visiting my home.