A lot of us are currently staying in our homes to do our part to lessen the effects of the ongoing pandemic. So I thought I would put together a post on a sustainable home decor project that I recently completed.
This project was completed back in February before our daily life here in the US was impacted by the virus. But I am proud of the result and I thought you might enjoy a little distraction.
Sustainable home decor – Something New…
When something needs to be updated in our home, I try to do it as sustainably as possible.
Most of the time, that means that I find the things that I need secondhand, which is the most sustainable option. Check out this post and this post for examples.
But sometimes, I have a hard time finding what I’m looking for in the secondhand market. This is especially difficult when I have to consider somebody else’s opinion, which I recently had to do.
It was recently brought to my attention that my daughter really “needed” a new comforter for her bed.
About a year ago, our kitties, as adorable as they are, had made quite a few holes in the top of her comforter. To get more wear out of it before replacing it, we turned it over (to a solid grey side).
And for about a year, this worked, until one of them shredded an entire section of it and caused a huge rip!
At that point, it was beyond repair (at least as a visual comforter…more on this later) so I started doing some research.
I searched all of my usual secondhand places first…local secondhand shops and eBay, but I couldn’t find anything that she liked.
So I took to online home decor sites. I ended up finding a duvet cover that was made in a fair trade facility and from a sustainable fabric, tencel.
I found the duvet at West Elm. Here is the link if you are interested (not an affiliate link and this post is not sponsored).
Something Old
I ordered it, thinking that she had a full size duvet in storage. Well, when the duvet cover came, I went searching for the old duvet. When I found it, I discovered that it was actually twin sized from when she had a twin bed a few years ago.
Knowing that it wasn’t going to work with the full/queen duvet cover that had just come in the mail, I started looking online for a larger duvet.
After a few minutes of searching, I looked over on the floor where the old comforter was laying and I had a lightbulb moment.
The following collage shows the top of the duvet and the types of holes that the cats had made.
There were quite a few of these all over the comforter but for illustration purposes, I have included a closeup of one of them. It also shows the bottom of the duvet, which became the top of the duvet for about a year.
You can see the significant rip…I’m pretty sure that one of the cats ripped a smallish hole and them squeezed themselves into it :).
I decided that I would repair all of the holes in the comforter and use that as the duvet. This was a great sustainable home decor solution for me for a few reasons:
It was a free solution to what could have been a very expensive solution if I had to purchase a new duvet.
Secondly, it was a zero waste solution. Before I had thought of this solution, I figured that I was going to have to send the comforter to the landfill as it wasn’t in very good shape.
Using it as a duvet meant that I wouldn’t be sending anything to the landfill!
Once the holes were all repaired, which took about an hour, I washed the comforter and when everything was cleaned, I added it to the duvet. And it was perfect!
And my daughter loves it! Now, I’m just hoping the cats don’t shred this duvet! Wish me luck!
What’s a project that you’ve done where you’ve salvaged something that you were going to toss out? Do you have any projects that you want to tackle in the near future?
Until next time,
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