One Person's Garbage Is Another Person's Treasure

Do you find yourself getting stuck in the rut of scarcity thinking? Do you ever think to yourself, "If I only had _______________________, I could do what I need/want/feel called to do?" Do you have feel like you just don't have enough time in the day, people to help, money to invest, energy to give? This post is for you.

One of our team members posted the following status on her Facebook page last week: What the world needs now is...

As she hoped it would, this sparked all kinds of comments from people who couldn't resist filling in the blank to this familiar love & peace song. Here is how a few of the things her FB friends completed the sentence:

• sun sweet sun!
• ...to take a chill pill. 
• coffee and more meetings -- is that that you were looking for? 
• patience 
• briefings, more briefings 
• people, people who need people...(song switch) 
• open minds and focused hearts 

The FB friend with the final word, though, said: We have been given everything we need...maybe just a little too busy to notice. 

We would add...maybe just too little imagination.

That is not the case with the creative folks at the Lawrence Group, an architectural firm who is working with SG Blocks and ConGlobal Industries to design and build homes - fantastically awesome homes! - out of old shipping containers. These houses debuted at the West Coast Green conference. According to Mike Chino, writing for www.inhabitat.com:

Built to withstand the test of time while traversing the globe, shipping containers are an intrepid green builder’s dream. The durable ready-made shells are a readily available and offer exciting possibilities for prefabricated architecture. By working with ConGlobal Industries, SG Blocks is able to source containers from depots nearest to the destination site and then fabricate them on the spot. The same local skilled workers who repair the containers are hired to repurpose them into house modules, which can then be easily shipped on trains. This process translates into a miniscule transportation footprint and blazingly fast build times: “when you deliver the finished components to site, you can install up to 12 containers using one crane in one day - that’s the equivalent of a 5,000 square foot house that is set in place in one day”.

Click here to visit Inhabitat's website for more info and great photos of these amazing homes.

What's the point of moaning and groaning about what you don't have? The bottom line question is: What do you have? And what can you do with it that matters.

When you start feeling down in the dumps about not having enough to do what you feel called to do, just remember the folks at Lawrence. They actually WENT to the dump to design and build homes that are knocking the socks off the architectural world this month.

Yeah, that's right. They built award winning homes out of garbage.

What's stopping you?