Permaculture Design In Unexpected Places

We hear a lot about different ways to apply permaculture design methods to our land and sometimes home business. While I love that, I am always trying to remind myself that permaculture design can impact more than just the land and the natural world. It is something that can be applied to all aspects of our lives that most people never really consider related at all to permaculture. In that vein, I want to see how other people are applying permaculture design in unexpected aspects of their lives. Some places that come to mind might be in what you keep in your car, the route you take to work, how you organize your furniture, planning your meals, spending time with friends, or any number of other things that we don't often consider 'natural' persay.

Here are some examples for myself:

Saving stale bread to make my own bread crumbs or using them for french toast.

Keeping a small kit of supplies in my car so I am ready for unexpected events (not just emergencies). This always includes a quarter and reusable shopping bags for when I go to Aldi, even if I am not expecting to go there that day.

Altering the path I take to work based on observations and testing so that I don't waste fuel sitting at extra red lights or waiting on a train that sometimes comes through.

What about yourselves? What are some of the unexpected or surprising places you are applying permaculture design to make small but impactful changes in your life?

Stacking things to do on a pathway, like when I go downtown try to visit several places where I need to go all along the same trip

Zoning of things within the refrigerator, like putting up front those items that I need/eat more frequently and on the back those that need more cold and use/eat less frequently in order to
save on electricity as well (need less time to have the door open to find them)

reusing old t-shirts for gardening work or jogging

using my oven for cooking multiple foods according to temperature need (instead of just one type of food..it's a kind of staking), like first pizza, then bread, then carrot cake

Exploring fertile connections with other professionals (edges)

Waiting to do loads of laundry until a full load has accumulated and it's good drying weather to use the clothes line. Deciding whether to use the solar cooker, toaster oven, insta-pot, or oven depending upon how much I'm cooking and how quickly we need it. Mulching driest areas first, then shadier areas later. Making stakes or other small garden structures out of fallen tree branches as needed. I imagine there's a ton more that I'm not thinking about right now!

I travel around to different job sites throughout my day, I always carry a couple of 5 gallon buckets with me just in case. I've come home with the buckets full of various things such as mulch,  fresh horse/cow manure,  rocks, etc. My local dairy farm sells big bags of cow manure straight from the farm for 5 bucks, and when I travel that part of the county I always stop and pick one up.

In addition to using old T-shirts for gardening, they can easily be converted to shopping bags. See Pinterest for directions

I am looking for an affordable way to do earthworks on my farm. Bill Mollison suggests the use of Ammonium Nitrate /Fuek Oil ANFO. So I started doing research about blasting. There I came across a Video that states that left mining sites are given back to the indigenous people. I wonder whether they have an idea how to apply permaculture on those places and whether they have the means to apply Permaculture there. Here we also have mining sites. And seems a challenge there are chemicals they use to extract gold from the rock.
Currently I study Bill Mollisons Permaculture - A Desdigners' Manual. I'm going to apply it on a land under the social reforestation Program of which my wife is a steward. My idea is to, after that, offer the government or owner of a left mining site to apply Permaculture there. This is necessary as there are vast environmental destructions created through the mining operations. The destruction also affects the population in those areas.
Regarding the Blasting: I'm not sure whether I can safe money for the application on my farm because AN fertilizer is not anymore suitable for blasting as it has another treatment which makes it hard. For Blasting soft AN is needed. Then there are regulations for the use of Explosives and to fulfill all the requirments might be very expensive and includes the registration of a business else I will be not entertained I guess. (I experienced this already with the Bureau of Plant Industry.) It could be worth while if I help my neighbours to shape their farms too. However I'll continue my research and will make a comparison when I've found a walkable solution.

Great topic!

I too carry a few useful items in the car. I recently made a meal kit that has a few jars/containers, utensils, and a cloth napkin.

I keep a bungee net attached to my scooter for hauling home unexpected larger items when I'm bopping around town (70+ mpg!).

Keeping leftovers in glass containers in the fridge encourages me to eat them down since they're more visible.

My tiny home is parked on a gravel pad that went unused for a decade - cheap rent for me, easy money for the landowner, short walk to public transit.

Some things I think of:
- my clothing: only natural materials. I sew and knit myself, or I buy (or get gifted) seconds hand clothes. If I buy something new it's not only natural material, but also organic.
- my means of transport: bicycle (see the thread 'Show Us What You Are Hauling On Your Bike'). Or the train when I visit my mother who lives at the other side of the country.

Of course there's more. I try to apply permaculture principles in all possible ways.

Logan McClish wrote:I recently made a meal kit that has a few jars/containers, utensils, and a cloth napkin.

Due to the frequency of being stuck at my work site, I've begun to keep dried meals in my car so I can make something on site rather than having to order food at high cost (not to mention the fuel used transporting it to me and the extra cost that entails for both my wallet and the planet). I don't tend to eat out a lot, so keeping the meal kit wasn't one I had considered though.

I am designing a 50 acre food forest with walipini, pond, swales, and hügelkultured walls, foraging pastures for cows, chicken, ducks, wildlife.

If that isn't exciting and challenging enough, I just submitted a state-wide, no-till regeneration plan for the local EPA in order to avoid fires, floods, chemical absorption, and air pollution.