In Japan, one goes there to cleanse the soul. Bathing in Japan is about much more than cleanliness: it is about family and community. It is about being alone and contemplative, time to watch the moon rise above the garden.Along with sixty full-color illustrations of the light and airy baths themselves, The Japanese Bath, delves into the aesthetic of bathing Japanese style and the innate beauty of the steps surrounding the process. The authors explain how to create a Japanese bath in your own home. A Zen meditation, the Japanese bath, indeed, cleanses the soul, and one emerges refreshed, renewed, and serene.

    In their latest book, they’ve set out to prove that just because you have kids or pets doesn’t mean you’re sentenced to floors overrun with toys or furniture covered in plastic. Through never-before-seen makeovers in the Petersiks’ own house, doable DIY projects, and a gallery of other inspiring spaces, Lovable Livable Home shows how beautiful homes can be functional too.

    R4 reflects the new realities of planning carefully, spending wisely, maximizing space and building durably. Its 614 pages contain extensively revised chapters on planning; doors, windows and skylights; electrical wiring; and energy conservation. Its illustrations are crisp and informative. And its 1000+ photos were selected from more than 40,000 that the author has taken over the years. This classic work covers renovation from start to finish surfaces. Best of all, R4 is written in a down-to-earth conversational style that is clear and easy to understand. Litchfield has a sharp wit and a dry sense of humor that makes this book not only useful, but great fun to read.

    Here, she offers her best guidance, methods, and DIY projects for organizing in and around your home. Topics include room-by-room strategies (how to sort office paperwork, when to purge the garage or attic), seasonal advice (when to swap out bedding and clothing, how to put away holiday decorations), and day-by-day or week-by-week plans for projects such as de-cluttering, house cleaning, creating a filing system, overhauling the closet, and more. Martha’s indispensable expertise walks you through goal-setting, principles of organizing, useful supplies, and creating systems for ongoing success. A look into Martha’s own personal calendars offers a template for scheduling essential tasks. Last, plenty of strategies, how-tos, timelines, and checklists will help you stay organized all year long.

    Described by National Geographic as “one of the best traveled and fastest hikers on the planet,” and named “Adventurer of the Year” by Outside and “Person of the Year” by Backpacker, Skurka recounts what he’s learned from more than 30,000 miles of long-distance adventures, most recently a 4,700-mile 6-month loop around Alaska and Canada’s Yukon.Whether you’re a first-time backpacker, an occasional weekend warrior or a seasoned long-distance trekker, you’ll love this guide. Learn exactly what you need to carry – both on your back and between your ears – for all seasons and circumstances through a show-and-tell of clothing, footwear, backpacks, shelter and sleep systems, and more, as well as through detailed articles on foot care, campsite selection and hiking efficiency. Skurka’s practical and priceless recommendations give you all the tools and techniques you’ll need to hit the trail.

    Created to both inspire and instruct, it returns readers to an era before power saws and fast food restaurants so they can rediscover the pleasures and challenges of a more self-sufficient, economical, and healthy lifestyle. Packed with hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, charts, tables, diagrams, and illustrations, it explains how to dye your own wool with plant pigments, graft trees for propagation, raise chickens, create a hutch table with hand tools, and make treats such as blueberry peach jam and cheddar cheese. The truly ambitious will learn how to build a log cabin or an adobe brick homestead.

    It is a call to action to transform one of the most polluting industries on earth--fashion--into a force for good. Readers will learn where our clothes are made and how they're made, before connecting to a global and impassioned community of stylish fashion revolutionaries. In The Conscious Closet, Elizabeth shows us how we can start to truly love and understand our clothes again--without sacrificing the environment, our morals, or our style in the process.

    We dive down to see coral reefs, not realizing that an ingredient in our sunscreen feeds a virus that kills the reef. We wear organic cotton t-shirts, but don’t know that its dyes may put factory workers at risk for leukemia. In Ecological Intelligence, Daniel Goleman reveals why so many of the products that are labeled green are a “mirage,” and illuminates our wild inconsistencies in response to the ecological crisis.Drawing on cutting-edge research, Goleman explains why we as shoppers are in the dark over the hidden impacts of the goods and services we make and consume, victims of a blackout of information about the detrimental effects of producing, shipping, packaging, distributing, and discarding the goods we buy.But the balance of power is about to shift from seller to buyer, as a new generation of technologies informs us of the ecological facts about products at the point of purchase. This “radical transparency” will enable consumers to make smarter purchasing decisions, and will drive companies to rethink and reform their businesses, ushering in, Goleman claims, a new age of competitive advantage.

     The Swedish concept of Lagom (pronounced "lah-gom") roughly translates to "not too little, not too much, just right." This charming book introduces readers to a new way of balanced living that promises happiness and sustainability in work and in life. Lagom provides simple solutions to juggle everyday priorities, reduce stress, eat well, and save money, with lessons on the importance of downtime, being outdoors, and Sweden's coffee break culture. Tips on removing clutter and creating a capsule wardrobe help readers achieve Sweden's famously clean and functional design aesthetic, while advice on going green and growing food gets their hands dirty. With seemingly endless financial, emotional, and environmental benefits, Lagom presents an accessible and all-encompassing lifestyle that is sure to inspire mindfulness, wellbeing, and contentment.

    The editors take readers room by room, tapping the best ideas from domino magazine and culling insights from their own experiences. With an eye to making design accessible and exciting, this book demystifies the decorating process and provides the tools for making spaces that are personal, functional and fabulous.

    As energy costs continue to rise, the almost-off-the-grid house proves its worth. Prefabulous + Almost Off the Grid profiles more than 30 of the most energy-efficient homes in the United States, and this hardworking guide reveals how homeowners can achieve similar results with floor plans, the latest, most efficient technologies, and multiple images of the exterior and interior of each home. Praise for Prefabulous + Almost Off the Grid: Recipient of the 2013 Robert Bruss Gold Book Award from the National Association of Real Estate Editors (NAREE) “You can build a high quality, environmentally friendly and efficient home at a reasonable price with a look and feel of a traditional home. Advancements like those used in our house and the other houses in this book will transform the homebuilding industry.” —Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey and administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency “The time has come to throw out the old stereotypes and to embrace prefab building techniques as the way of the future—and the best approach for today. For anyone wanting to create a house that’s sustainable in every sense of the word, this book is an excellent place to start.” —Sarah Susanka, architect and author of The Not So Big House series “I'm passionate about prefab because I know that it can spark an incredibly positive change in the building industry and dramatically reduce costs and construction duration. Prefabulous + Almost Off the Grid is an enlightening guide on using prefab to create your own affordable, energy-efficient home.” —Bruce Ratner, chairman and chief executive of the Forest City Ratner Companies “Sheri Koones highlights the many ways of using prefabrication to create almost-off-the-grid homes that are not only environmentally friendly but often operate at nearly zero annual energy cost. . . . This is an easy-on-the-eyes guide that includes floor plans and multiple images of the exterior and interior of each home. It is not a manual for green construction, but a general overview of aspects of prefab and green construction. And it does that well.” —Natural Life magazine “If you’re ready to do something about your energy dependence, or if you enjoy stories of people who’ve bucked the trends, you owe it to yourself to give Prefabulous + Almost Off the Grid a look. Beautifully illustrated, it ends with a great resources list for the homes showcased.” —Examiner.com “Indispensable guide to creating the ideal, almost-off-the-grid home. . . . This text is both timely and tempting to anyone interested in inhabiting a more comfortable and cost-efficient abode.” —Bask “This attractive coffee-table-style book, the third in Koones’s Prefabulous series, features 32 prefabricated houses that, to a greater or lesser extent, boast environmentally friendly, efficient, and renewable-energy elements.” —Publishers Weekly

    In the countryside, we want to preserve nature and the landscape. In impoverished parts of the world, the necessity for sustainable and economical shelter is stronger than ever. Lifestyles and daily routines are also changing. We live in an interconnected world in which digital communication, information, and entertainment are pervasive. Yet basic human needs remain constant: a roof over our heads and somewhere to cook, eat, and sleep. Increasingly, we look for ways to occupy our habitats more ecologically, flexibly, and efficiently.Digital design tools, sustainable materials, and new prefabrication technologies have led to an explosion in innovative ideas for designing domestic spaces, particularly those in tight surroundings. All the homes in Nano House are drawn from a broad array of climatic and environmental contexts, building methods, and spatial innovations.This lively book is the perfect resource and inspiration for designers, architects, builders—for anyone looking to maximize living space with minimal environmental impact.

    Written and compiled by Holly Becker, founder of the hugely popular design blog Decor8, and Joanna Copestick, acclaimed lifestyle writer, this intensive home dcor program combines beautiful inspiration with nuts-and-bolts how-to for stunning results. More than 500 gorgeous color photographs provide motivation while line illustrations, checklists, shortcuts, and floor plans make it easy to get started. For those looking to make the most of their home and create stylish interiors, Decorate is the start-to-finish resource to keep on the bookshelf for years to come.

    If you need to fit homesteading into a few hours each weekend and would like to have fun while doing it, these projects will be right up your alley, whether you live on a forty-acre farm, a postage-stamp lawn in suburbia, or a high rise. Permaculture techniques will turn your homestead into a vibrant ecosystem and attract native pollinators while converting our society's waste into high-quality compost and mulch. Meanwhile, enjoy the fruits of your labor right away as you learn the basics of cooking and eating seasonally, then preserve homegrown produce for later by drying, canning, freezing, or simply filling your kitchen cabinets with storage vegetables.As you become more self-sufficient, you'll save seeds, prepare for power outages, and tear yourself away from a full-time job, while building a supportive and like-minded community. You won't be completely eliminating your reliance on the grocery store, but you will be plucking low-hanging (and delicious!) fruits out of your own garden by the time all forty-eight projects are complete.

    And with the help of author Anne-Marie Faiola, it's easy to make luscious, all-natural soaps right in your own kitchen. This collection of 32 recipes ranges from simple castile bars to intricate swirls, embeds, and marbled and layered looks. Begin with a combination of skin-nourishing oils and then add blueberry puree, dandelion-infused water, almond milk, coffee grounds, mango and avocado butters, black tea, or other delicious ingredients -- and then scent your soap with pure essential oils. Step-by-step photography guides you through every stage of cold-process soapmaking.