A Carbon Negative Kitchen Appliance with a Positive Impact on Soil Health

What if the world was waste-free? After all, there is no “waste” in nature — humans are the only species that create trash.

Food waste is one of the greatest contributors to climate change, and over 40% of that waste occurs at the household level.

But we have the ability to change this. Food waste is not really waste when it’s handled mindfully.

Instead, no matter where you live, food waste can become sustenance for nature, contributing precious natural resources back into the earth. Now, at the push of a button.

The Lomi Bloom is the only carbon negative appliance, and it can turn fruits, veggies, plant trimmings, yard waste, animal products, grains, and more into nutrient-rich plant food that supports healthy soil and its regeneration.

Lomi Earth — the result of Lomi’s “Grow” mode operating cycle— produces nutrient-rich, organic fertilizer that’s perfect to use on houseplants and gardens. When the Grow cycle is run with a LomiPod, the end result is packed with vital microbes to support plant health, and can also be sprinkled on lawns to improve soil health.

As we know, healthier soils store dramatically more carbon than degraded soils. When Lomi Earth is mixed with other soil and used to grow plants, the organic carbon in Lomi dirt is partially sequestered in soil and as plant matter. As such, not only are we able to avoid the harmful emissions of landfilling food waste, but we can also help sequester additional carbon.

Not only does Lomi Bloom reduce our carbon footprint and enhance our positive impact, it also rewards users in additional ways with every use. Via Lomi’s app, users can track their Bloom’s impact, and receive rewards like Lomi products and other useful, eco-minded items that can help us curb household waste.

Imagine what our world would look like if, at the end of its life cycle, everything nurtured this magnificent earth as nature intended…

Thank you to the wonderful folks at Lomi for supporting our small business by sponsoring this post. All opinions and photos are my own.

Extra Tall Kitchen Counters

Note: The kitchen is still a work in progress, as we await the arrival of our backsplash, shelves, and permanent island countertop. 

Our family is tall. I am nearly 6’, Adam is 6’2”, and my father is 6’4”. Since we designed this new cottage from scratch, higher-than-usual surfaces were an option, and became one of the top essentials on our wish list.

(We didn’t overlook the kiddos when deciding this— see one example of our space-savvy features for them here.) 

After years spent hunched over lower surfaces, this design feature has been beneficial for our bodies and our workflow. 

In the kitchen, we designed surfaces that sit at 40.5” high. This meant that we had some atypical space to play with in the lower cabinet area, and that we’d have to get a bit creative when designing around standard appliances. 

To start, we have a slightly heightened toe-kick area. I know that zero-recess toe-kicks with seamless plaster frames or flush, decorative trim are in style, but with taller folks come bigger slippers, and we find the carveouts to be practical for our home and bodies. 

But the real height is added through the addition of 4” high peek-a-boo storage nestled between the tops of the major appliances and beneath the countertop on the back wall. 

On the island, we heightened everything with the help of a pull-out drying surface above the customizable Café Appliances dishwasher, and utility drawer over the appliance-sized pull out rubbish + recycling + compost drawer.

In a compact kitchen (particularly one with kids!), the under-counter storage space has been immensely useful already. Plates, a child-size silverware organizer, bowls, and cutting boards easily slide in and out of the cubby.

And since the recessed space extends to all the way to the back of the kitchen wall, there are even more storage opportunities behind the often-used items, proving concealed homes for items like spare glass bottles, carbonator cartridges, serving platters and more. 

One of the key design elements that allowed us to make this unique storage option so spacious (the only interruption from wall to wall is the range,) was the inclusion of two sub-counter refrigerators, rather than one wide/tall model. A panel-ready fridge was an option we considered, but we preferred to maximize the upper cabinets, using them to hold dry goods, small appliances, and glassware. 

The two customizable Café Appliances , drawer-style refrigerators hold everything we need within reach of the kids, and allow us to retrieve food and drink with ease. Each fridge has 2 spacious drawers, and built-in adjustable organization accessories.

(We don’t have a freezer, as we almost never use one and didn’t want to waste the space. Plus we do have access to a freezer in the grandparents’ house next door if need be.) 

The beautiful, customizable Café Appliances range sits on a platform that blends with the toe-kick. We could’ve turned that lower support into a drawer, but for optimal safety and support we left it as-is. 

Once the backsplash, wall storage and kitchen island are installed we’ll do am updated post and full tour! 

Sources of note:
Nontoxic wood stain and sealer: Rove & Dwell
River-recovered pine floorboard back countertops: Goodwin Heartpine
Knobs & pulls, clean / dirty magnet: Connected Goods
Mugs + drying mats + animal magnets + custom sink: Etsy
Pots & pans: Caraway
Coffee maker: Ratio
Water filter: Walter Filter Ceramics

Note: Café Appliances generously gifted our range, refrigerators and dishwasher, which we appreciated hugely — particularly because we decided to leave the major appliances we’d secured for our Venice Canal Cottage there for the next stewards of that space. Product selection and opinions are entirely my own. 

Bright(er) Lil' Kitchen

This post was sponsored by The Home Depot. All opinions and images are my own. All photos including our son and/or the pups were taken as they happily interacted in their own, natural ways. 

Clearly I love our tiny home. Very rarely do I long for material items or major changes— I’m usually extremely content with what we have, and aim for our belongings to last us a lifetime. One glaring exception to this has, for YEARS, been our major kitchen appliances. 

Our refrigerator, range and dishwasher fit our space quite well, but they weren’t the right fit for our style and needs. The fridge had a massive back-coil that consumed several inches of its counter-depth design, rendering the interior smaller than one would expect by looking at it from the outside. And the exterior was black on both sides, which stood in stark contrast to the rest of our airy lil’ home. 

Immediately next to the fridge is the dishwasher, which sits about 6’ or so from my desk, and it was so loud that I never wanted to run it. Plus I disliked that the stainless steel cover and large front-panel of buttons were the first details I noticed every time I entered through our front doors. 

But the stove was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The electric panel kept dropping out of its frame, and the design wasn’t particularly safe for West. Of course young children should always be supervised in the kitchen, but the compact nature of our space means that our 22 month-old West is constantly passing by the stove. We added safety knob covers on the dials, but our son’s proximity to the flames was an issue— particularly with his unruly curls brushing up against everything. Plus we don’t have a vent in our kitchen. Our ample windows and doors move the air constantly, but our burners were always covered in spatter and stray dog hairs. 

So, in our 7th summer here, we finally swapped out all three appliances. (Hallelujah!) Usually it takes me a while to get used to notable changes in our home— at least a week or so. But I was instantaneously overjoyed with our newest residents: a white GE top control dishwasher, a GE slide-in electric range and self-cleaning convection oven, and a ever-so-slightly deeper but enormously more spacious white GE refrigerator, all from The Home Depot. 

The Home Depot delivered and installed the new appliances, and removed the old ones. The entire swap took about an hour, as they had to adjust a few external elements within the kitchen to accommodate the product changes. 

The GE refrigerator has the most impact on the space. To have an all-white front and sides changes the look and feel of our entire home, since you can basically see the fridge from almost every point in our miniature home. It’s technically not counter depth, so it sticks out about an inch further than our previous model. But It has far more usable space within it, thanks to the fact that there’s no coil in the back eating up precious inches.  

It’s still very compact, allowing us to store dishes in wire mesh baskets up top. (And, thankfully, the baskets no longer rattle, as they did with our old fridge. They sit tight thanks to the steady and quiet nature of this ENERGY STAR appliance.)

The GE top control dishwasher is by far superior to our old one. When I first turned it on, I thought it was broken because it was so quiet. I prefer everything about this machine— from it’s cleanly designed exterior to it’s three user-friendly racks inside. Plus it has wash zones, so we can now wash just a half-load when needed.   

Due to the positioning of the dishwasher, it’s visible immediately when you walk in the house, and the white really brightens up (and thus visually enlarges) our space— even at night.

Lastly, the range. We are thrilled with it. I know people get really intense about the gas vs electric debate, and I get it. But our new slide-in electric range and self-cleaning convection oven is designed in such a way that it is significantly safer for West to pass by it in our tiny cottage. (Sophee is another matter—she somehow manages to get onto e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.)

It is SO MUCH EASIER to clean, and there’s no clunky back panel. Folks can continue to grumble over the gas vs electric issue— meanwhile, we’ll be here making eggs on (and clinking glasses by) our cleaner, safer, lighter, and happier lil’ kitchen!