Manolo for the Home

One of the places those of us who are seriously eco-minded fail is in the home. We drive environmentally friendly automobiles, recycle like crazy, buy fair trade coffee and sustainably grown veggies, and organic cotton t-shirts. Go us, right? Then we buy any old rug, furniture made of any old wood, and any old paint. It’s not surprising — after all, the really nice ecologically sensible stuff is reeeaaaaally expensive, right?

You’re only partly right. A lot of it is outlandishly expensive. On the other end of the spectrum, Freecycled furniture is about as low-impact as you can get. And somewhere in the middle you find stores like VivaTerra that have stuff for your home that pairs elegance with eco-friendliness at prices that won’t bankrupt the average buyer.

I absolutely luuuurve this chair. Oddly enough, however, I had my very own slice of trunk table when I was an apartment dweller. The cross section was a lot bigger and the whole thing was a lot lower, so we gave it away on Craigslist to someone who had the space for it.

Repurposed oak wine barrels make fabulous outdoorsy tables. Or bring the outdoors in with a table made of deftly woven roots. Cool, huh?

And, as always, there must be a little something nice for the table. Civility, after all, demands it! Here we have a natural hemp table runner and placemats made of hand-gathered river stones.

I won’t lie to you — sustainability in my house usually means refinishing or finding new uses for the furniture and other stuff that my grandparents passed on to my mother who passed it on to me. But we’re saving up

This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 8:39 am by Never teh Bride and is filed under Accent decor, Furniture, The kitchen, The living room. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.