Permacultrure is Common Sense ... for a world ... where sense is no longer common

Simple Day-to-Day Permaculture: Keeping My Bathroom Clean

Location: Home flat
Year: 2011
Methodology: CEAP
Scale: Household / room
Focus: Daily routines, natural cleaning, resource efficiency

Overview

Not every permaculture design needs to be a grand project. This design applies the full permaculture methodology to one of life's most mundane challenges: keeping a bathroom clean. Its purpose is to demonstrate that permaculture thinking is a universal toolkit — applicable to any situation where needs must be met and resources managed, at any scale.

If you can design your bathroom routine using permaculture principles, you can design anything.

💡 Why Small Designs Matter
Students often assume permaculture is only for large gardens or communities. Designs like this one prove otherwise. The methodology, the ethics, and the principles all apply here — and practicing them at this scale builds the thinking habits that make larger designs more natural.

Methodology

CEAP — Collect, Evaluate, Apply, Plan

The most minimal methodology for the simplest of designs. CEAP's brevity matches the scope of the challenge perfectly.

Working Through the Design

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    The Full Design — One Mind Map

    This design is simple enough that the entire methodology — collect, evaluate, apply, plan — fits within a single mind map. The map traces inputs and outputs of each bathroom element and connects them to design solutions, with the permaculture ethics considered throughout.

    Full bathroom design mind map
    The complete design — all stages in one mind map
    🌿 Ethics in Practice
    Throughout this design, the permaculture ethics were kept in mind at every decision point: Are there potential pollutants? How does this affect others? Are resources being used efficiently? Is there a better alternative? This ethical framing is what distinguishes a permaculture design from a simple practical solution.

Reflections & Outcomes

This simple design was highly effective. Many of the solutions may seem obvious — but the input/output analysis accelerated the process of arriving at them and, importantly, made clear which connections between elements were practical and which were not.

One area not shown in the mind map: sourcing soap. A ceanothus growing just outside the flat provided leaves and flowers for natural soap on the way home each day. The spent material went into the compost. Later, horse chestnuts were used to make soap, shampoo and laundry detergent. This kind of cascade — where one element's output feeds another — is what permaculture seeks to create at every scale.

Having succeeded here, the approach was extended to other rooms in the flat.

✅ Key Outcome
A clean bathroom maintained with natural, low-waste products, using the input/output approach to identify connections between elements. The design also proved to be a useful teaching example for showing students that permaculture applies everywhere.

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