as lockdown continues so does our special lockdown series while production
is temporarily paused for our regular never too small episodes we're excited
to offer you a different kind of inspiration for your time at home
once again we're collaborating with our talented friends youtubers and favorite
architects and designers to bring you episode two of small living thank you to
our community for the kind messages of support and appreciation for our launch
episode of small living in this episode minimalist Bonita Larson in Stockholm
shares her tips and ideas on how to organize our small spaces Jason from
Plant Society returns to show us how to take care of our plants at home our
London contributors Celeste Treach - award-winning designer Nicolas
gurney and answers some of our audience questions first up Sharon from the
cementery share some quick and easy fermentation
experiments suitable for even the smallest of kitchens hi I'm Sharon the
founder of the firm entry we're here at the rain house in musk and I'm going to
talk to you about wild fermentation
pickles now is something that you buy on the shelf in the store and that is a
vinegary what seems to be magical to me is that whenever you brine something
with just a salt water and let it sit you get the same beautiful sour flavor
it's a little more subtle and sometimes a little fizzy but it feels really good
in your gut as opposed to a very good preserved vegetable I think the most
popular ones that I found with not just children by the way everybody the dill
flavored beans and just carrot sticks so it's as easy as this popping your beans
into obviously a really clean jar we're trying to create an environment that's
inviting bacteria to be here we don't want to kill it off so hot water really
hot water is enough so I'm just going to pop my beans
here the next thing is flavor is important a lot of dill is beautiful in
your beans and in fact we call these jelly beans it's quite common
rather than garlic I've got these beautiful corns of garlic amazing I'm
gonna use those in here thank you grab another one oh you could put peppercorns
mustard seeds coriander seeds whatever you like but in this case I've just got
garlic and dill and then here's my water 1 liter of water I measured this out
earlier and this tablespoon measures to about 30 grams so I'm going to stir it
in the water first so for this particular ferment for the onions
cauliflower celery the percentage of salt water is 3% 3% of liter water is
about a big full tablespoon of salt well that's dissolving I'll do my
carrots there's one little challenge ii aspect is that you want to make sure
that the veggie stays beneath the brine nothing will go bad really but sometimes
you can attract calm yest ka hm and it's not dangerous it's not going to make you
sick but it can like a little white film that can grow on top and it can be
off-putting to beginners it can also make the veg a little bit softer and
slimy you see it happening you can actually tip that brine out and start
again and then what's really good about this is it's fast
so you could make these on a Monday for Saturday they'll be ready put this mr.
shanly in there give it a little bit of a radish a flavor maybe a garlic clove
it seemed to have a lot sitting here so I'm just going to keep it really simple
maybe a bit of dill
all right for my brine over exactly the right amount because there's gonna be a
lot of action happening now and gasses so you want a way that the gas can get
out but no air can get in I love an airlock lid and there are so many kinds
of a lot lives you can get this is just a simple airlock lead system and the
beauty of this one is that when it's finished and ready I can take that lid
off this contraption and put on a regular lid and pop it into the fridge
the way that you stop the fermentation is by refrigeration all right so I've
got this lid I'm gonna pop it on I'm gonna put my airlock in there actually
first and there's a little bit of water left so I'm gonna pour some more in here
don't let this this looks a little more sciency than it is okay it's just it's
just two tubes and when air comes out you know go bloop bloop bloop and this
water is stopping air from getting in
there we go
and there we go that's it that's a brined veg and the main thing to
remember is this is a faster ferment than say sauerkraut or other vegetables
so when you brine something after about five to six days take the lid off and
try one and if it's ready and sour and good put it in the fridge you're done
and it can stay in the fridge for months okay so if you're curious to learn more
you can find my book ferment for good the website is full of recipes stories
things you can buy to help you on your way there's a lot of stuff being added
all the time so check us out there the fermenter EECOM today you and I'll see
you next time my name is Benita Larsen I'm from Stockholm Sweden I create
videos for my namesake channel on minimalism organization and the
Scandinavian lifestyle I'm excited to be making a series of videos in
collaboration with never too small
I'm not much of a chef but I do enjoy having my kitchen drawers organized it
just makes every day so much easier before organizing your space I like to
get everything out in the open to assess what I have then I sort like items would
like and anything that doesn't belong in the drawer or that can be done away with
is removed I like using felt to line my kitchen drawers it prevents things from
rattling around when you pull and push the drawers I got mine online and
similar can be found on Amazon and that idea on top of the felt I use drawer
organizers I got these wooden ones locally put there tons of options on
Amazon you can also most likely shop your home and find things you already
have obvious bread pants shoe boxes candy containers and trays to keep my
kitchen doors organized in the past when things go in the drawer I consider the
size obviously so they fit in each section but also how I use them most
often use items at the front of the drawer and less often use that towards
the back for more videos like this visit my channel pin at the lashon where i
share all things scandinavian for my part mentiras comm and beyond
hi I'm Jason Chang co-founder of the plant society and today I hope to
inspire you to bring more plants into your home in small spaces were always
concerned about how much space our plants and furniture take up so here we
have some plants that won't grow too big and are perfect for dining tables window
sills as well as benches we've got peperomia abscissa folia which is has a
spicy leaves and also really compact we've also got just red solace which is
a rainforest succulent so these can be pruned back as well they
get to be one of my favorites is the hoya so these have a binding nature but
they can stay in smaller plots as well we've also got another type of peperomia
you can see that they've got a very different foliage so within the families
you can really find that they've all got a range of different characteristics
which was - your different styles at home as well so these generally will
like brighter light if you do have lower light your best to try the hoya
but the peperomia and rhipsalis will prefer brighter
everyone is always nervous about maintaining their plants here today I'll
show you how simple it is I don't think that maintaining your plants should be
difficult and there's a few simple steps to make sure your plants stay healthy
throughout the year as well the main thing is to make sure your plants are
cleaned and that will prevent any pests and diseases so you can use a simple
cloth that has a bit of grit to it and that is lean when it's wet will help
clean off any excess dust on the foliage you'll find being indoors they collect a
lot of dust through circulating air through vents by cleaning the leaves it
will allow the leaves to breathe better as well this is easy if you've got large
leaf foliage however when you look at foliage like this or like this caudatum
here it might be easier to take it into the shower to wash it down or a miss
stuff so we're simply trying to simulate the rain and that will clean off any
dust on the foliage as well so when it comes to plant maintenance think about
how the natural environment cleans environment and that's generally rain
winds to get off any dust and you can see that all the dust is just washing
off there another thing to do is to make sure over
time that you flush out the soil as well so what that means is that toxins
gradually filter through and build up so it's good to flood the pots in the sink
and that will allow the toxins to wash out as well once you've done that it's a
good time as well to also prune off any dead foliage this can be done regularly
as well but always make sure that area above this soil is clean to avoid any
homes for pests and diseases so similarly we'll do the same thing here
and remove any dead foliage and this can be done on a weekly basis or if you
don't have as much time you might want to do it every month or so perfect and
we can miss this one down again and that will keep your plants healthy in you
know indoor environments that don't have good airflow and also when they do
collect dust you want to let them breathe once again and in turn they will
help purify the air as well thanks for tuning in to learn more about greenery
within your home if you are after more information head to our website it's www
Plant Society comm you
Nicholas Gurney's work needs little introduction. Never Too Small viewers
will remember the gold artist studio and kitchen from the Warren, and Nick's
signature minimalist approach to his 5s, Tara, and Yardstix projects. Nick thank
you so much for taking some time to speak with us today. Thank you very much for
having me. I'd like to go back to before you began your design practice what
initially drew you to pursue a career in design. I mean going back a little while
now to when you're much younger, and you sort of don't really know exactly
where you want to go where you're going to end up but I definitely knew that I
had some level of creativity about me. I was very interested in in how people
lived and in interior design. But I felt Industrial Design was a better fit for
me at the time. So I studied industrial design. How does your industrial design
background inform your design process. My work is very much informed by my
industrial design background I'm most interested in functionalism very
utilitarian interiors. I see small spaces as a series of products that come
together to make somebody's life better. A series of small industrial design
insertions in a greater whole, being an apartment space or a house. Yeah I view
the design of spaces as a series of industrial design pieces. You do do a lot
of small spaces in your practice is this something that you know you've actively
chosen to pursue? Certainly, certainly it comes back again to that idea that I
realized very early on I think it was about the time that I chose to go and
live in the middle of the city. And about the time that I became fascinated with
how people lived I realized that we would be living in a period of reduction
going forward. In every facet of our lives we would need to reduce our
footprint on the planet and and that starts at home I think. We need to stop
the constant urban sprawl, we need to make better use of things that we have
and all these things that are related for me to need rather than to want or to
vanity. These are things that we need. I want to work in a space
where we solve problems for need rather than purely for want. How do
you approach the challenge of maximizing living in a small space? You know we talk
about a lot more people sort of moving towards smaller spaces or living in
urban environments. How do you make the most of those kinds of living environments?
When I enter a small space it's immediately obvious for me that the
the answer or the solutions, are already inherent within that space and what I
mean by that is that you know if you have a very tall space, then you don't
need to use the walls. You use the floor or you use the ceilings space and if you
have a space with a very small footprint and very small ceiling height then you
need to be very careful not to put too much stuff on the walls. You know
immediately the design of small spaces sort of unwraps itself, simply by being
in the space and listening to the space. And what are some considerations that
come with designing small spaces? Ceiling height being, one floor space being another.
I imagine lighting and material would play a big role here too? Absolutely I mean in the
case of Tara apartment for instance. There was a single window in the space, so in
that particular instance we decided to embrace the notion of the studio and not
employ any delineation in the space and instead insert a sort of an almost white
shroud around that singular window so that it would bounce all of the
light into the space. In the case for instance of the 5s apartment it
had a very small footprint but they needed really great storage requirement
so rather than employ a whole mass of storage units dotted around the
apartment. We instead employed very deep storage there, and so that it meant
that it put all of the storage in a cluster and it didn't detract from the
ceiling space. You know in the urban centers as they become busier we see an
increase in multi-generational housing as well. You know young people are
constantly or consistently being locked out of the market older people are at
risk of isolation your project Yardstix is a fabulous example of backyard architecture
you might call it. Can you tell us some more about this project?
Because this is quite different from sort of the apartment living that you've
previously worked on. For a long time we built big houses in the suburbs on on
big blocks and the backyards are underutilized and what we wanted to do
is we wanted to resist the sort of cheap and cheerful granny flats. But rather we
wanted to create a home that people could be proud of and could be beautiful
and could be functional and could be tailored to a specific block in an
underutilized backyard space. I particularly enjoyed the lime washed
apply interiors. You know what materials are you drawn to? Probably very obviously
I like humble materials hardwearing materials and primarily inexpensive
materials. Because these materials tend to be made of renewable resources and
they tend to be less manufactured in comparison to precious materials. I mean
it all comes back to having a sustainable grounding for each project.
In the Warren particularly I mean we've seen a quite unusual use of material
there's a central artists pod that is clad in mirrored gold sheeting and it
sort of creates this really interesting glow throughout the apartment and
similarly in Tara. You know the functional was clad in in metal. Do you look for
materials that have a different point or how did you specify these materials and
and what do you look for other than sort of I guess low intervention? We might
say in materials. For me finish is right there and that's the
face of the space right it's the presentation. So once once the the
amenity is realized and the spatial organization is realized you can dress
up the space. I think too often we think about aesthetics too early just purely
for the point of applying materials and but when you when when a spatial
organization and the utility is settled upon you then can make a
correlation between the owner and their personality and then and then apply
materials to that. And in the case of the Warren there was so much personality in
the space I wanted to reflect that and the seemed logical to use a mirror.
When I came across the gold mirror I knew that he would absolutely love it
and it does just that it reflects his personality. He loves it! And you are I mean
your flinders lane apartment as well is all another material use that I really love
twists these sort of corrugated was it like a corrugated glass in the bathroom?
It's actually a plastic so again it's very inexpensive but it looks quite
expensive. And I mean it's translucent so the idea is that we can borrow light
from a space and that has plenty of light because the bathroom in the
Flinders Lane apartment had no lights no access for light. So it had the dual
purpose of providing light and and privacy at the same time. Thank you so
much for taking the time to speak with us today it was fantastic to get your
insights. Thank you so much, thanks Celeste
next episode will speak to nina toll strip from studio mama in london and
share some more ideas for your time at home subscribe to the channel and click
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