Ecological furniture: recycling, imagination and creativity

The first three rules for eco-friendly furnishings, and also low-cost, are recycling, imagination and creativity. Let's take a few examples: are you sure that the old chair you have in the garage cannot be repainted and maybe even coated to fit your bedroom or that of your children? When we see an old piece of furniture, let's try to imagine how we could transform it to adapt it to our furniture: old sideboards and old wooden tables can be restored and repainted, just find a good carpenter and work with imagination, maybe even playing with colors. Old sofas can be covered with fun fabrics, perhaps with eco-fabrics ; old objects can be refurbished and become, for example, vases in which to grow their own plants, centerpieces, containers and everything that the imagination will suggest.

Often we have at home, or in those of our parents, objects of furniture that we consider now unusable; let's try to look at them with a critical eye and imagine how we could transform them to adapt them to what we need or like most.

The next step, to furnish in an ecological way, is to go and look around for flea markets and second- hand dealers . First, however, let's look around : we are often surrounded by objects that we throw away only because we can't see the potential. The first rule of ecological furnishing is therefore not to throw away what can be reused .

Many objects, then, can be used in a different way than the one for which they were originally designed. An example: are you pregnant and are you thinking that you need a changing table? Are you really sure you have to buy it and that that old table, hidden in the basement under a thousand boxes, can't do for you? Just put an old quilt over it to make it softer and a waterproof cloth to make it pee proof.

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Ecological furniture: the materials to choose

If, after searching for used items, you have not yet found everything you need for your home, you can consider purchasing items of furniture made with alternative materials, first of all cardboard.

Cardboard furniture is ecological, light and above all much more resistant than you can imagine; it is not difficult now to find chairs, tables and containers made of this material that easily adapt to any type of furniture. And, if we get tired and we feel like getting rid of it, we won't have created too much damage to the environment.

The alternative, always in the context of an ecological furniture, is to buy resistant and easily adaptable furniture, so that you never have to send them to waste.

The rules of ecological furnishing

Summarizing, therefore, here are the rules of ecological furnishing :

• Look with critical eyes at furniture and objects already in your possession to be able to adapt and reuse them
• Search in the cellars and garages of relatives and friends (maybe even offering a barter )
• Go periodically to look around for flea markets and second-hand dealers
• When buying new items of furniture, favor environmentally friendly materials, such as cardboard, and particularly resistant and versatile furniture, which will never be thrown away.

They are all choices that, in addition to doing good for the environment, will also be good for the family's economy.