Live Green: 52 Steps for a More Sustainable Life


Jen Chillingsworth - 2019
    We recycle, try to reduce our waste and plastics, choose organic food when shopping, eat less meat, and opt for environmentally friendly cleaning products. Yet we often wish we were doing more and it can be overwhelming to know where to start. Live Green is a practical guide of 52 tips and changes you can make to your home and lifestyle over the course of a year. Tackling all areas of your life from home and garden, your cleaning routine, food, fashion, natural beauty, and Christmas, this book has all the ingredients to help you achieve a more sustainable existence. Learn how to modify your daily habits to rid yourself of environmental guilt and rediscover the pleasures of living a slower and simpler life. From creating your own eco-friendly cleaning products and improving your natural beauty regime to creating a capsule wardrobe and composting – discover how to get the most out of life by living more intentionally. Live simply. Live Green.

Sidetracked Home Executives: From Pigpen to Paradise


Pam Young - 1979
    Two sisters share the system of organising household chores that they created to make managing a home less time consuming and more efficient, in an updated handbook that explains how to reduce chaos and clutter and achieve organisation in the home.

What's Gotten into Us?: Staying Healthy in a Toxic World


McKay Jenkins - 2011
    But you also probably figured that most of these products were safe, and that someone—the manufacturers, the government—was looking out for you. The truth might surprise you.After experiencing a health scare of his own, journalist McKay Jenkins set out to discover the truth about toxic chemicals, our alarming levels of exposure, and our government’s utter failure to regulate them effectively. What’s Gotten into Us? reveals how dangerous, and how common, toxins are in the most ordinary things, and in the most familiar of places: • Our water: Thanks to suburban sprawl and agricultural runoff, 97 percent of our nation’s rivers and streams are now contaminated with everything from herbicides to pharmaceutical drugs. • Our bodies: High levels of hormone-disrupting chemicals from cosmetics, flame-retardants from clothing and furniture, even long-banned substances like DDT and lead, are consistently showing up in human blood samples.• Our homes: Many toxins lurk beneath our sinks and in our basements, of course, but did you know that they’re also found in wall-to-wall carpeting, plywood, and fabric softeners? • Our yards: Pesticides, fungicides, even common fertilizers—there are enormous, unseen costs to our national obsession with green, weed-free lawns.  What’s Gotten Into Us? is much more than a wake-up call. It offers numerous practical ways for us to regain some control over our lives, to make our own personal worlds a little less toxic. Inside, you’ll find ideas to help you make informed decisions about the products you buy, and to disentangle yourself from unhealthy products you don’t need—so that you and your family can start living healthier lives now, and in the years to come. Because, as this book shows, what you don’t know can hurt you.

My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag . . . and Other Things You Can't Ask Martha


Jolie Kerr - 2014
    And let’s be honest: no one is going to ask Martha Stewart what to do when your boyfriend barfs in your handbag.   Thankfully, Jolie Kerr has both staggering cleaning knowledge and a sense of humor. With signature sass and straight talk, Jolie takes on questions ranging from the basic—how do I use a mop? —to the esoteric—what should I do when bottles of homebrewed ginger beer explode in my kitchen? My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag proves that even the most nightmarish cleaning conundrums can be solved with a smile, the right supplies, and a little music.

The Cats' House


Bob Walker - 1996
    They've turned their California home into a feline fun house. It's the perfect mix of cat-friendly and cat-fantasy. And now cat fans can get an inside look with the first-ever paperback edition of The Cats' House.The house is all cat, and nine of them call it home. Bob Walker shows us the cats' living space, giving us a peek into 140 feet of brightly colored aerial walkways, spiral staircases, giant scratching posts, and playful peepholes.It's cat care combined with interior design.

Plant-Powered Beauty: The Essential Guide to Using Natural Ingredients for Health, Wellness, and Personal Skincare (with 50-plus Recipes)


Amy Galper - 2018
    So shouldn’t the products you apply to your skin, which are absorbed into your body, also be filled with plants? If you’ve ever looked at the back of your so-called “natural” facial moisturizer or body cream and seen a list of complicated additives you couldn’t recognize or pronounce, then you know firsthand that mass-produced synthetic beauty products can be something of a mystery. With Plant-Powered Beauty: The Essential Guide to Using Natural Ingredients for Health, Wellness, and Personal Skincare (with 50-plus Recipes), harness the power of plant-based energy to maintain your natural beauty and let your skin glow like never before. Natural beauty experts Amy Galper and Christina Daigneault show readers how to deconstruct beauty labels, parse ingredients lists, make informed choices about the products they use—and, most important, better understand how their skin works. At the heart of Plant-Powered Beauty, you will find more than 50 easy-to-follow recipes to make your own plant-based skincare and beauty products, such as:  Almond Milk Facial Cleanser Anti-aging Facial Scrub Blemish Gel Choc-o-Mint Lip Balm Coconut Whip Makeup Remover Vitamin-Rich Hair Health Serum Quick and Fresh Cucumber-Thyme Body Scrub Moisturizing Body Oil for Super-Dry Skin Natural Mouthwash Plant-Powered Beauty unlocks sought-after wisdom for all aspects of plant-based personal skincare and celebrates the shift in beauty trends, bringing us back to natural beauty and reconnecting us with plants and healthy choices.

Little House Living: The Make-Your-Own Guide to a Frugal, Simple, and Self-Sufficient Life


Merissa A. Alink - 2015
    Their life had hit rock bottom, and it was only after a touching act of charity that they were able to get on their feet again.Inspired by this gesture of kindness as well as the beloved Little House on the Prairie books, Merissa found that a life of self-sufficiency and simplicity could be charming and blissful. She set out to live an entirely made-from-scratch life, the “Little House” way, and as a result, she slashed her household budget by nearly half—saving thousands of dollars a year. She started to write about homesteading, homemaking, and cooking from scratch, and over the next few years developed the recipes and DIY projects that would one day become part of her now beloved website, LittleHouseLiving.com.As whole foods became staples of the family diet, Merissa realized the dangers of putting overly processed ingredients not only into our bodies, but on or near them as well. In addition to countless delicious, home-cooked meals, she developed natural, easy-to-make recipes for everything from sunscreen to taco seasoning mix, lemon poppy hand scrub to furniture polish. With their simple ingredients, these recipes are allergen friendly and many are gluten-free.With over 130 practical, simple DIY recipes, gorgeous full-color photographs, and Merissa's trademark charm in personal stories and tips, Little House Living is the epitome of heartland warmth and prairie inspiration.

Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book


Dan Harris - 2017
    After he had a panic attack on live television, he went on a strange and circuitous journey that ultimately led him to become one of meditation’s most vocal public proponents.Here’s what he’s fixated on now: Science suggests that meditation can lower blood pressure, mitigate depression and anxiety, and literally rewire key parts of the brain, among numerous other benefits. And yet there are millions of people who want to meditate but aren’t actually practicing. What’s holding them back?In this guide to mindfulness and meditation for beginners and experienced meditators alike, Harris and his friend Jeff Warren, a masterful teacher and “Meditation MacGyver,” embark on a cross-country quest to tackle the myths, misconceptions, and self-deceptions that stop people from meditating. They rent a rock-star tour bus (whose previous occupants were Parliament Funkadelic) and travel across eighteen states, talking to scores of would-be meditators—including parents, military cadets, police officers, and even a few celebrities. They create a taxonomy of the most common issues (“I suck at this,” “I don’t have the time,” etc.) and offer up science-based life hacks to help people overcome them.The book is filled with game-changing and deeply practical meditation instructions. Amid it all unspools the strange and hilarious story of what happens when a congenitally sarcastic, type-A journalist and a groovy Canadian mystic embark on an epic road trip into America’s neurotic underbelly, as well as their own.

How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing


K.C. Davis
    Presented in 31 daily thoughts, this compassionate guide will help you begin to get free of the shame and anxiety you feel over home care.Inside you will learn:· How to shift your perspective of care tasks from moral to functional· How to stop negative self-talk and shame around care tasks· How to give yourself permission to rest, even when things aren’t finished· How to motivate yourself to care for your space

The Self-Sufficiency Handbook: A Complete Guide to Greener Living


Alan Bridgewater - 2007
    With easy-to-read layouts and simple text, it runs the full ecological gamut, from geothermal heating to crop rotation to soap making. The Bridgewaters, well-regarded garden writers, help readers answer questions such as how much land they really require, whether or not to depend entirely on natural forms of energy, and which farm animals will best meet their needs. There’s practical information on building an insulated flue-pipe chimney, identifying edible wild plants, and composting with worms. In addition to recipes for jams, rhubarb wine, and other delicious foods, three A-Z sections offer planting and harvesting instructions for vegetables and salad crops, fruits, and herbs.

The Art of Extreme Self-Care: Transform Your Life One Month at a Time


Cheryl Richardson - 2008
    Designed as a practical, action-oriented program, each chapter challenges you to alter one behavior that keeps getting you in trouble.The book is filled with personal stories of how Cheryl and others have learned to make the practice of Extreme Self-Care their new standard for living. With chapters such as “End the Legacy of Deprivation,” “Take Your Hands off the Wheel,” “The Absolute No List,” and “Does That Anger Taste Good?” you will stop the endless cycle of self-betrayal and neglect that stems from daily violations of self-care.Each chapter includes a relevant resource section that offers books, Websites, audio programs, podcasts, and more should you want to explore a particular topic further.The Art of Extreme Self-Care is a sane and sensible program that gives you the permission you need to dramatically upgrade your life!

When Organizing Isn't Enough: Shed Your Stuff, Change Your Life


Julie Morgenstern - 2008
    Expert organizer and New York Times-bestselling author Morgenstern offers her loyal readers an extreme organization intervention--a deeper approach to life management for people who crave a change in their lives.

Food, Inc.: Mendel to Monsanto--The Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest


Peter Pringle - 2003
    The battles are conducted in the mystifying language of genetics. A handful of corporate "life science" giants, such as Monsanto, are pitted against a worldwide network of anticorporate ecowarriors like Greenpeace. And yet the possible benefits of biotech agriculture to our food supply are too vital to be left to either partisan.The companies claim to be leading a new agricultural revolution that will save the world with crops modified to survive frost, drought, pests, and plague. The greens warn that "playing God" with plant genes is dangerous. It could create new allergies, upset ecosystems, destroy biodiversity, and produce uncontrollable mutations. Worst of all, the antibiotech forces say, a single food conglomerate could end up telling us what to eat.In "Food, Inc., " acclaimed journalist Peter Pringle shows how both sides in this overheated conflict have made false promises, engaged in propaganda science, and indulged in fear-mongering. In this urgent dispatch, he suggests that a fertile partnership between consumers, corporations, scientists, and farmers could still allow the biotech harvest to reach its full potential in helping to overcome the problem of world hunger, providing nutritious food and keeping the environment healthy.

Cannabis Pharmacy: The Practical Guide to Medical Marijuana


Michael Backes - 2013
    He provides information on how cannabis works with the body's own system, how best to prepare and administer it, and how to modify and control dosage. This newly revised edition is now completely up-to-date with the latest information on the body's encannabinoid system, which is now understood to control emotion, appetite, and memory, delivery and dosing of cannabis, including e-cigarette designs, additional varietals, and a new system for classification, as well as 21 additional ailments and conditions that can be treated with medical marijuana. There are currently more than 4.2 million medical cannabis patients in the United States, and there are 29 states plus the District of Columbia where medical cannabis is legal.

Backyard Foraging: 65 Familiar Plants You Didn't Know You Could Eat


Ellen Zachos - 2013
    Ideal for first-time foragers, this book features 70 edible weeds, flowers, mushrooms, and ornamental plants typically found in urban and suburban neighborhoods. Full-color photographs make identification easy, while tips on common plant locations, pesticides, pollution, and dangerous flora make foraging as safe and simple as stepping into your own backyard.