We all love to design and furnish our homes as per our liking and requirements. While furnishing our homes, we look for beautiful and functional furniture that is comfortable and looks pleasing to the eyes. We even look for quirky pieces that add to the uniqueness and attraction of our abodes. We leave no leaf unturned to design and decorate a beautifully comfortable, warm, and welcoming house. This is great, but we must also consider the well-being of our planet while furnishing our homes. We must look for sustainable and eco-friendly options for our homes and ensure that the things we pick for our homes are not produced using unfair trade practices.
It is important to go green while furnishing our houses because much of the furnishing these days is manufactured using processes that are detrimental to the environment. Some furnishings off-gas VOCs and affect our health negatively. By choosing to go green while furnishing our homes we will make a good impact on the environment as well as on our health.
12 tips to help you go green when furnishing your homes
Think about your requirements and buy furniture accordingly. Buy pieces that have multiple uses. This will help you save space in the house and prevent you from hoarding pieces that have no functional value. This will also prevent wastage and clutter in your house.
Choose sustainable, recycled, or natural fabric for your curtains, carpets, and upholstery. Linen, wool, hemp, and organic cotton are the best natural fabrics that have the least chemical footprint. Corn leaves, jute, sea grass, and coir are natural fabrics that are useful especially for making carpets. Some companies make furnishings from recycled materials like plastics that are collected from landfills and melted and spun into yarn and incorporated into furniture fabric. This eases the loads in landfills and helps the planet.
Buy furniture made of reclaimed wood. Reclaimed wood comes from some old project that is no longer useful but can be dismantled and the wood can be made into new furniture. This gives old wood a new lease of life and prevents wastage. Also, the furniture with the aged wood looks vintage and classy and adds to the charm of your house.
Explore sustainable materials for your furniture. Bamboo grows much faster than wood and has a lesser carbon footprint. Steel and aluminum are also sustainable materials for furniture as they can be recycled an infinite number of times, take less energy to produce, and are non-toxic to people or the environment.
Use furniture made of recycled or upcycled material. You can buy furniture made of recycled metal or plastic. You can even buy unique show pieces that have been upcycled from metal scrap. This will add to some interesting quirks in your homes. These days designers are coming up with many innovative ideas and designing furniture using a variety of recycled materials. For instance, they are taking discarded plastic toys that would have gone to landfills and recycling them into cute children’s furniture. They are making tables from recycled ceramic waste, and chairs from recycled knotted fabric. some designers are even upcycling ocean plastic and converting it into interesting furniture pieces. They are also taking discarded fishing nets and textile waste and converting it into beautiful carpets.
Buy furniture that has low toxicity. Furniture is treated with many chemicals that off-gas into our indoor environments. These substances are very harmful to our health and cause a number of diseases. Flame retardants and Formaldehyde are common VOCs off-gassed by furniture. We must look for furniture that is untreated or treated with natural substances. Buying second-hand or vintage furniture is also a good idea because older furniture has already done most of the off-gassing and is relatively chemical-free.
Buy local. This will prevent the carbon footprint created by the transportation of furniture and also support local craftsmen and small businesses. It will be easy on your pockets too.
Buy second-hand furniture. Assess what you need and buy sturdy good quality second-hand furniture. This will reduce the carbon footprint of new products and also prevent wastage. In the bargain, you may get some interesting unique pieces that are no longer in production.
Buy durable furniture that you can pass on to the next generation. Avoid fast furniture pieces as they aren’t built to last and contribute to rampant deforestation and add to the heaps in landfills. Also, cheap trendy furniture is made using unfair trade practices that exploit the workers so it is best not to promote that.
Buy furniture that can be taken apart and recycled. When buying furniture, avoid big pieces made of inseparable parts. Such furniture is difficult to repair once broken thus reducing its useful life. Recycling is also difficult as the different components can’t be removed.
Buy furniture that is small and flexible. It is easy to maintain and carry across rooms and serves multiple functions. For instance, a set of light chairs and stools can be used as balcony furniture as well as shifted into the living room when the number of guests increases.
Decorate smart and green. Decorate your house with plants that purify the air, show pieces that are quirky and unique upcycled pieces, mementos from your travel, and photos of the people you love and the places you have visited in frames made of sustainable materials. Avoid bulky show pieces that hold no meaning or memories for you.
Here’s a quick ready checklist for you when you start furnishing your home.
In Conclusion
While it is important to go green and sustainable while furnishing your house, it is also important to take good care of your furniture so that it lasts longer. You must clean and polish it regularly, use coasters on the wooden surfaces, and handle the delicate furnishing gently. This will make your furniture last longer for you and make it easy to pass it on to the next generation or donate or sell it in the second-hand market. Always try and treat a piece of furniture as an heirloom and try to keep it circulating in the system longer to keep the planet happy.
About Studio Organo
We are a cross-functional and research-focused team of architects, engineers, and technical experts, who ideate, refine and detail eco habitat products, components, and solutions. Our core intent is to co-create and manifest apt rurban lifestyles across all eco-habitat components to celebrate the living for respective user groups. From earth-friendly neighborhoods to home interiors, we’ve got it all covered.
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