The only way our homes will ever really remain meaningful to us over time, is if they satisfy in us a deeper sense of what it means to be securely housed in our bodies, hearts, and minds.
This is why we have been doing our best to point ourselves, our clients and our communities back to the Self. Whether it is embodied movement classes, community meditation groups, house therapy sessions, or first time home buyer classes, we have tended to a holistic approach to real estate, design and good neighbor-ing for almost twenty years. To keep it communal, most of what we offer is spread word of mouth. We have a print menu in our COLLECTIVE homebase that folks can pick up anytime with a current schedule as well as an ever evolving list of services. Stop by and grab one, have a cup of tea or coffee and say hello. Free hugs for the touchers. Warm smiles for everyone. Or check the newsletter at the beginning of each month for a snapshot of what is hot off the press. Spoiler alert. It’s us. And we are at your service. Happy February friends. What a beautiful month to be alive in this city, we call ‘home’.
The only way our homes will ever really remain meaningful to us over time, is if they satisfy in us a deeper sense of what it means to be securely housed in our bodies, hearts, and minds.
This is why we have been doing our best to point ourselves, our clients and our communities back to the Self. Whether it is embodied movement classes, community meditation groups, house therapy sessions, or first time home buyer classes, we have tended to a holistic approach to real estate, design and good neighbor-ing for almost twenty years. To keep it communal, most of what we offer is spread word of mouth. We have a print menu in our COLLECTIVE homebase that folks can pick up anytime with a current schedule as well as an ever evolving list of services. Stop by and grab one, have a cup of tea or coffee and say hello. Free hugs for the touchers. Warm smiles for everyone. Or check the newsletter at the beginning of each month for a snapshot of what is hot off the press. Spoiler alert. It’s us. And we are at your service. Happy January friends. What a beautiful month to be alive in this city, we call ‘home’.
The only way our homes will ever really remain meaningful to us over time, is if they satisfy in us a deeper sense of what it means to be securely housed in our bodies, hearts, and minds.
This is why we have been doing our best to point ourselves, our clients and our communities back to the Self. Whether it is embodied movement classes, community meditation groups, house therapy sessions, or first time home buyer classes, we have tended to a holistic approach to real estate, design and good neighbor-ing for almost twenty years. To keep it communal, most of what we offer is spread word of mouth. We have a print menu in our COLLECTIVE homebase that folks can pick up anytime with a current schedule as well as an ever evolving list of services. Stop by and grab one, have a cup of tea or coffee and say hello. Free hugs for the touchers. Warm smiles for everyone. Or check the newsletter at the beginning of each month for a snapshot of what is hot off the press. Spoiler alert. It’s us. And we are at your service. Happy December friends. What a beautiful month to be alive in this city, we call ‘home’.
The only way our homes will ever really remain meaningful to us over time, is if they satisfy in us a deeper sense of what it means to be securely housed in our bodies, hearts, and minds.
This is why we have been doing our best to point ourselves, our clients and our communities back to the Self. Whether it is embodied movement classes, community meditation groups, house therapy sessions, or first time home buyer classes, we have tended to a holistic approach to real estate, design and good neighbor-ing for almost twenty years. To keep it communal, most of what we offer is spread word of mouth. We have a print menu in our COLLECTIVE homebase that folks can pick up anytime with a current schedule as well as an ever evolving list of services. Stop by and grab one, have a cup of tea or coffee and say hello. Free hugs for the touchers. Warm smiles for everyone. Or check the newsletter at the beginning of each month for a snapshot of what is hot off the press. Spoiler alert. It’s us. And we are at your service. Happy November friends. What a beautiful month to be alive in this city, we call ‘home’.
So, here’s the thing about houses: they don’t just take a village, they are the village.
Who was the carpenter that cut the wood for the floors? Who was the artist that painted the art? Who framed it? The counter, what material is it? From what quarry did it come? Are the windows still the ones from 1907? Maybe more importantly, who is welcomed here now?
It doesn’t seem to make any sense to preserve the character of a home, to care for it and update it and renovate it, if we don’t ensure its hearth– that beating heart of a home– continues to serve as a gathering place for the people in our lives. Because it’s through the people in our lives that the light gets in.
Same is true for our neighborhoods. Gardens can be beautiful. Local shops can be charming and stock full of all the things we want and need, but if the folks who work and live there aren’t flowing with life, what are we doing? It’s a wonderful thing when neighborhoods are walkable, when the strangers at the bookstore become named and the corner market feeds us with friendly faces and kind hearts.
Thank god for them, because what they do they do so well.
But mostly, thanks to the people in our lives who hold us too.
Those we know well and those who we walk by on our way from place to place. Life is moving and swirling, and sometimes it stands still. Time enough for us to all take each other in. Right before we take in the gelato.
click here to view the full listing
Hello friends! It has been quite a few years since we have had our last community yard sale. Well, let me take the opportunity to welcome you to the next one. Be our guest tomorrow, Saturday May 11th, 9:00 – noon.
Coffee on us. A curating eye, on you!
Bring your home needs and let’s see if we have something to fill it! Every few years we sell many of our lovingly chosen furniture and decor pieces so that our cityhome listing photos can stay fresh for our clients! Most of the items in our inventory I have picked myself. And for those of you that know me, I do not believe objects are dead. Art and other made goods have lifeforce and soul. I pick the good ones, and from good folks! When we sell items from our lawn sale, we invest it back into local finds that will live in our projects again for a time. Doing our best to continue to circulate the creativity of our local community one piece and one place at a time.
We hope to see you here, at cityhome tomorrow! And feel free to bring pics of your space if you’d like to share with us or ask us our opinion. If it is one thing we always wanna share, it’s our take on how we all might thrive more vibrantly in our homes. If nothing else, come for the conversation with other like minded folks, mañana at cityhome.
cityhomeCOLLECTIVE | 645 E. South Temple | 9:00 – Nooner
I think maybe what is happening more and more often in our communities is this: we are finding and connecting with other folks who have figured out how to serve the whole, from uniquely personal places. Belief in humanity comes from seeing the good actions of others. And of ourselves. I have been inspired by my friend Dana for years. We sat on the board together for Preservation Utah’s mid-century architecture. We have sat in each other’s homes and dreamt about the world together. The genuine place that Dana has come from with her desire to keep all folks from being hungry, comes from her soul. That all people may be nourished. What a gift that in our very own town, we have a woman committed to transforming food waste into healthy and healing food for all those who need it. Thank you, Dana.
The following is a chat about the heart of her efforts to feed folks.
What do we need to know about the topic, food waste? Food waste is more harmful for our planet than the carbon dioxide from our cars. When food rots in the landfill it releases methane gas which is upwards of 20 times more harmful than carbon dioxide. If food waste were a country it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter, behind China and the US. Not to mention, when we waste food we are wasting the nutrients that went into that food, transportation, water, labor and packaging. It is estimated that food wasted accounts for 25% of all our fresh water usage. And at the same time, here in Utah, we have 400,000 people who identify as food insecure, which means they don’t know where their next meal is coming from. If we could save the 600,000 tons of food wasted in Utah every year we could feed those 400,000 people 3 meals a day for 9 months.
How did this start for you? I had been working in Corporate America for 20 years. I stayed there as long as I did as for many of those years I was a single mother and it provided me a good paycheck and flexibility to be the type of parent I wanted to be. When my daughter was 16 I found her needing me less and my career not satisfying me as much. So I said what next? I started looking into my passions which were food, the environment and education. As I was searching the internet I learned about how bad food waste was and then learned about food rescue and I thought, that is it, this is what I am going to do.
I am a natural problem solver and I said this is something I want to solve.
Say more about the specifics of your ‘ahha’ moment in 2017. I have always had this desire to give back. I didn’t come from a family that gave back but I feel like I came to this world with this desire. Or maybe it came from feeling unseen in my family that I had this desire to take care of others. Not sure. But I found myself being involved in nonprofits throughout my life so I understood the space. I remember the weekend I had the ‘ahha’ moment. I was on the internet and my pile of food-related articles was piling up and I was seeing this pattern about food waste and that it was such a big problem but was mostly going unsolved across the world. So I literally said this is it, this is what I am supposed to do. I was married at the time and my husband was out of town. When he came home I told him what I wanted to do and he said, “you should do it”. And he continued to be my greatest cheerleader, he believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself. And even after a divorce, he is still there supporting me and this nonprofit. For me, this is the value of surrounding yourself with good people and people who gently push you to strive for what you want and believe you can do it.
Then what? What happened? What did you do? So I consulted an attorney, we put together the paperwork and I reached out to organizations that were already doing food rescue (as it wasn’t as popular in 2017), I found one that said yes to letting me use their app. That was in Oct of 2017. I went back to my alma mater, Westminster College and talked to the dean of the business school and told her what I was doing. She immediately introduced me to people who could help, and we walked over to the cafeteria and talked to the manager. He said they would be closing for Winter Break and would have food that wouldn’t last. So in Dec 2017 I did our first food rescue. I took my car, went to the Westminster College cafeteria and packed it with all this beautiful produce and I took it to the YWCA (where I also had contacts, helps so people don’t think you are crazy). Both sides agreed it was much needed and loved the idea. So that is how it started. I just started talking about it, finding new food donors and talking to the media to get more volunteers and I haven’t looked back since. I did this for 4 and a half years on the side while still having my day job. Then in July 2022 we had raised enough money for me to come on full time. And since then I have been CEO.
And how’s it going now? I feel in the last 9 months or so the food waste movement I had been hoping for is here. People get it. As well as, I think it does take 4-5 years for people to really know your name and brand in a space like this. So we are growing! Not just in the amount of food we rescue (now up to over 2M pounds, the equivalent of over 1.7M meals) but also in the number of people reaching out asking to help, asking to get involved, asking us to speak at events. It is now so much bigger than just me, which was always my goal. I feel the community is really behind this and helping to push this forward. We are trying to launch an extensive education program that would start at schools, and work with homes and businesses to make a social movement around food waste so that we really make a difference. That we are all making conscious decisions differently to reduce food waste at school, in our homes, when we eat out when we go to events. We are currently in Salt Lake County, Box Elder County and Weber County. And our hope is to be in Summit County before the end of the year.
How can we help? To be honest the ask right now is financial funding. We have had over 700 people sign up to rescue food with us but we are at capacity. We are a team of 2 full-time and 2 part-time and we just can’t handle the growth on our own anymore. Managing 700 volunteers, managing a food rescue that is growing over 25% every year, expanding counties, and launching an education program just can’t keep going with just 3 full-time equivalent people. For this to continue we need funding. We need funding from individuals, corporations and foundations to keep this going.
Secondly, we could use the help of the community in asking their favorite food businesses what they do with their surplus food and if they say they throw it away, tell them about us. Put them in touch with us and we can get them signed up.
Lastly, make one small change in your habits around food you waste.
If we all make small changes, it will add up to a big difference for our planet. We need to value our food more, it has the potential of being a not-so-renewable resource if we keep wasting it like we do today.
At the end of the day, I love nothing more than seeing, feeling and applauding people’s genuine selves. Our truest desires stemming from our most honest places. When our inner home desires to offer its warmth and shelter to others, that’s the truest gift. Dana’s soul wants so very much to nourish others. It breaks her heart to think that people go hungry, that parents have to hear their kids say they are hungry and feel helpless if they aren’t able to feed them. Her genuine understanding that this is a basic need and that we all deserve healthy food, opens something in me. The doorway to the heart has many passages, thank you Dana, for kindly knocking on this one.
To get in touch with Dana and her team, visit Waste Less Solutions
Any genuine community keeps in its heart a common value. One that holds it together and helps it orient back to itself. Ours, is home. And it takes a village to make one. But it takes a community to Be one.
This COLLECTIVE of ours has been in the business of making homes for ourselves and our clients for twenty years now. A commitment that has taken hundreds of people when you consider all the moving parts. Between the person who brews the coffee and the person who makes the molding, a whole world of house-loving humans pitch in to make a home-life. Today is as good a time as any to consider the folks who make it their business to help us all shelter well. To the artists and the makers and the inspectors, electricians, and plumbers and gardeners, to the architects and designers and friends; in every place we love living, we have had support in making it so. What an ideal community to exist within, a particularly inspiring quality of people with big hearts, steady hands, and focused minds. What luck to be a part of such a beautiful home-worshiping community. Truly.
Life is grounded in this place. And you, are our shared value.
It is the ultimate gift to not just live surrounded by home lovers, but to have the opportunity over the years to meet and mingle and grow with so many folks who have taken the ultimate step toward home, becoming one. To find and reconcile our very selves as the safe house we seek. To embody all of the loftiest concepts we have for home is the ultimate act of sovereignty. And is ironically, not done alone. We are surrounded by people who are comfortable in their skin. We grow up as adults when we stop believing that all our comfort comes from the environment around us. Although we honor its influence. To be truly free as humans, is to have a mind that can stand alone, but also a body to come home to.
To be both embodied and mindful tends to create a harmony whose resting place is usually in the heart. What a joy to feel so encouraged by the village we make a home in. What a gift to be surrounded by clients, colleagues, coaches, teachers, educators, sages, and stewards of the home that we all are, individually and collectively.
Home in body, and home in house, is a combination that births all the possibilities in the cosmos. What a joy to be here. In our bodies. In our houses. With this community. At this time. With these friends, and this breath. After all these years, we still love where we live.
Thank you, home—sweet, sweet home.
Homes paired well with people is our love language.
When it comes to talking shop around these parts, it typically consists of how folks feel in their spaces. Which always leads to the senses. When it comes to highlighting places and people, inhabited homes that bring our senses to life are considered a gift. We wanna share the gift of Rae and her gem with you, your taste buds, nose, touch, sight. Please enjoy with us the loving connection that our good friend, ally, and fellow interior lover has with her inspiring and thoughtful abode. And check out her shop for more daily inspo. Happy homing everybody.
How does your space taste like you? I imagine it would taste something rich and intricate, yet still comforting and approachable. I picture slow-simmered green chili stew but with a brightness of zesty lime and freshly chopped cilantro.
What do you sound like at home? (I answered this as what does it sound like at home) At home, it’s often quiet, it serves as my sanctuary for solace and rejuvenation. The murmur of the outdoor fountain is a constant companion, especially when it rains. The roof gutters cascade water into the fountain, generating a resonant echo that fills the courtyard, sometimes it’s incredibly loud and exhilarating like my own personal waterfall. My records are my go-to for curating my personal soundtrack, with Hermanos Gutierrez and Towns Van Zandt often in heavy rotation. Their music beautifully captures the very essence of the Southwest, which is where my heart truly resides.
How do the eyes of your home see you? She’s quite the silent observer of my life, witnessing me through countless experiences and emotions. The dining room has seen all that is social, a host to an abundance of gatherings, often filled with laughter, animated dinner conversations, and late-night discussions. There has always been a colorful cast of artists, friends, and guests that have gathered here. I’d say she has witnessed the majority of my social life unfold here. My bathtub has been the keeper of my tears and contemplation during those long winter nights, an observer of emotions concealed from the rest of the world. The bedroom shares a similar intimacy, though perhaps it’s best left unsaid what she truly knows about me.
What do you smell like together? Together we would smell like fresh-cut bell peppers and Unknown Pleasures.
What is your home with you in it? Without me, my home is a charming terra-cotta floored apartment with perfectly peach walls, adorned with weathered sash windows and an Artemis guarding the fireplace. With me in it, she transforms into an eclectic and whimsical space, representing who I believe both of us are meant to be here. I’ve enhanced her southwestern, bohemian flair and in return, she’s unveiled my inner romantic.
Who are you inside of your home? This is the first place where I’ve lived alone, truly settling in and granting myself the freedom to follow my heart’s desires – from shaping the decor to crafting experiences and connecting with people who have crossed my path here. Who I am within these walls encapsulates my journey through my late twenties and early thirties. The self-discovery that’s unfolded in this space has been pivotal. It’s here that I’ve truly come to know myself, where my personal interior style was unearthed, and the spark for Shadowplay first ignited. This home has been the backdrop for significant self-exploration, offering me the space to establish my identity here in Salt Lake City. It’s a space where I can tap into my higher self, navigate through moments of disarray, and indulge in daydreams about the future while reminiscing about the past. It serves as a canvas for my thoughts, aspirations, and memories, nurturing deep self-discovery and fueling my creativity. My home is, in essence, my greatest muse.
Here’s the thing about our houses, they hold us. They hold us up, they hold us accountable.
They hold us back from being who we are not and back from the world we might need space from. Moving out of one space and onto another, for me, is always joy-filled. I had been looking for a little mountain house for years when this unassuming old gent stopped me in the street and said ‘hello’. Homes will do that. They know who/what they want and they tend to get it.
This miners shack, with all its nuts and bolts tightened, foundation established, colors carefully chosen, mood made, and art hung, has done more than make space for me. It’s made space for my people. If we can imagine the love, the make outs, the meditations, the meals, and the dreaming, we would see a whole world in this small and sturdy structure. Built in the late 1800s and still standing proudly, I think old homes cared for well are training for what really matters in life. Caring for old and new relationships as if they too could use our care. They do. We do.
When it comes to homes and how we adorn and support them, it’s smart to remember that all the attention we give to our places is practice. We have heard the old adage, how we do one thing is how we do all things. I concur. So when it comes to caring for our people, holding them in adoration, encouraging them, seeing them, it’s these spaces we care for ourselves in that really shore us up to care for those we love. This home has beautifully witnessed so many of us grow over the last decade (and a dozen decades of life before that).
May we all be so lucky to have a few kind friends, a desire to live free, and a space to hold it all down. And up.
