I’ve always wanted to find a way to decorate our home sustainably, and in the past year, we finally did. I’ll share with you how you can do it too in this article.
I’m pretty darn chuffed with how our home has turned out!
The point of this post is to show you that you can decorate your home beautifully whilst keeping sustainability and ethics top of mind! We strived to shop antique/vintage first where possible, and whenever we couldn’t find anything we wanted (and we did wait months in case the right thing popped up), we sourced an ethical/sustainable vendor to buy new from.
Living Room
We moved into our home with only a bedroom suite and my desk. That meant we pretty much started from a clean slate which was fun and terrifying all the same!
One of the few ‘new’ pieces we introduced into our home were these couches and chairs. They were sourced (after lots of research) from Joybird, which is an ethical and sustainable brand that gives you an inside look into the factories, allows you to track your order and, all around, gives you a wonderful experience. We had to change an order somewhat late into placing it, and they amended it with no questions asked!
One thing I was adamant about was not purchasing any new animal-based materials for the home. The rugs were the most significant struggle as most soft ones are made of wool. Jute was the best plant-based option that fit our needs. This one is more comfortable than it looks and compared to most others I’ve been on. Very happy with this find!
Our living room space is a bit of an odd shape. We played with multiple layouts until we decided on this one for both warmth and functionality.
The coffee table was something we fixated on for months. However, there just wasn’t anything quite perfect in size or shape or cost or colour. So after plenty of scouring through shops in town and online stores, I finally found an antique shop on Etsy that had exactly what we both envisioned. We believe it fits the space and our style perfectly!
Our lamp is probably one of my favourite finds for the house. Our first visit to Tresor on 6th (our now favourite antique shop in town) set my heart on this lamp. We pretty much decorated our living room around this lamp as it was our first purchase for the home!
Dining Room
The dining room table was something we envisioned for a couple of months and couldn’t quite find the exact piece until late one day scouring Facebook Marketplace. Finally, I found our dream table at a beautiful deal! Whilst I can’t link to this same table or shop (as it’s a one-off product), this is the alternative we had considered if we couldn’t find a table within the next few months.
To not have jute rugs throughout the house, we compromised on getting a vintage wool rug for the living room. Etsy has a plethora of different shops with different styles, and so it was a bit of a daunting task, but then we finally found the one we liked.
Bedroom
Our bedroom suite is old, so nothing new here. However, we needed ‘new’ bedding as our current one got ruined during the move (boo). I’d had my eyes on Parachute for years now and just needed an excuse to purchase all the linen from their site, and this was the moment!
Our bedside lamps also got ruined during the move, so searching for these puppies took a few months to find, but I’m super pleased with the result. They feel like a reverse of the Ethan Allen lamp (in the living room), which I found so coincidental as these are also vintage.
Bathroom
With VERY little storage space in the whole house (particularly in the bathroom), my beauty addiction needed a little help. However, I was determined to find reclaimed wood shelves to do the trick, and Etsy was another easy place to find a shop I trusted.
Reclaimed Wood Shelves
Instead of throwing away that rubbish plastic liner after it gets mildew on it, I wanted a more sustainable alternative. After tonnes of research, I found that hemp is a great liner alternative to plastic.
I wash it in cold water every two weeks or so and then let it air dry. So far (four months in), and no problems whatsoever! Linen is one of the most sustainable materials (after hemp), so I knew I wanted that for my shower curtain.
To stop using plastic soap bottle dispensers, I wanted to find a soap dish that could hold all the beautiful soaps that I picked up from France two years ago! (Yes, I did a binge shop here!).
Unfortunately, no store (online or offline) was quite the style I was looking for. Yes, I searched for days (weeks) to find the perfect ceramic dish for my soaps, and again, Kate Brigden was my go-to girl.
Kitchen
Similar to the shower curtain liner, I hated the plastic dish drying racks that you inevitably end up throwing away between moves because they’re just too disgusting to cope with. So I found a bamboo set and fell in love.
Office
The office only had my desk and a filing cabinet. We didn’t have any storage for books nor bits and bobs. However, we knew this would be easy to source from antique shops. It was just a matter of finding the right one for our home. The shop (where we got both of these from) had rows of incredible vintage pieces, so it was fun to find the ones that spoke to us!
The desk and chair combo was not something we had planned (style-wise) for our office, but we just fell in love with its uniqueness, and so it came home with us (at an incredible price). The chair was reupholstered by the antique shop owner (Tresor on 6th – same shop we got the Ethan Allen lamp from) where we got this from, and she used linen that we sourced along with a houndstooth trim she had spare of.
Decorating your home sustainably can take more work than simply clicking a button on Pottery Barn or Target. But, I can promise you, your appreciation is so much more significant, and you will fall in love with your home tenfold!
