The designs for the kitchen garden series collection and my personal journey to reduce waste and give up the plastic habit, developed together. My products grew from my curiosity about both the past before plastic was used everywhere and the possibility of a future beyond plastic. The business began with a mission of reducing textile waste by upcycling textiles and designing durable goods to replace plastics and single-use disposables. I mined my early family memories of my grandmother’s kitchen to dig into a time before plastics became ubiquitous. I asked myself, what were the most common materials before plastic existed? I considered the needs of contemporary life and adapted some of those remembered goods to fit into today's kitchens and living spaces. I realized that if I find great joy in placing my hands on things made from linen, glass jars, and paper bags that feel beautiful to touch, other people might feel the same.

The challenges along the road of growing this business made me curious about reducing waste in my entire supply chain. Again, I looked to the past to see how it was done before carbon and petroleum fueled every aspect of production. That's how I landed on growing small flax plots to revitalize linen production at a more local level. Emma and I are digging deeply into the old ways of fiber production with our knee-high flax field this year as we wait patiently for the flax to be ready to be made into cloth. And we are also looking to the future towards a time beyond a carbon economy that includes exploring the possibilities of large scale regenerative fiber farming and a regional scutch mill. We are dreaming of regional and national flax-to-linen networks and we’ve found fellow travelers at rustbelt_fibershed, PNW_fibershed, All Together Now PA  and others, who are thinking similarly. I’m excited to see how this endeavor can help my business reduce waste and I look forward to seeing what beauty we can make as we work towards sustainable economic models. My personal journey towards eliminating plastic in my own kitchen turned out to be about surrounding myself with an abundance of simple, but elegant objects. Now, I am starting to see how the whole of my business can support other people's joy in a renewable and better supply chain that brings people objects made from materials that are better for the environment than plastic.