Sustainable Refurbishing— The Key To Saving Money (And The Planet) Relies On Retraining Our ‘Disposal-Prone’ Lifestyles

BY NOELLE VEILLETTE

It can seem intimidating to assess spending habits about furniture with the environmental health of our community and planet in mind when investing in a small reusable water bottle seems like a comparatively simple switch. But consumer demand for home goods and furniture has generated a massive industry that leans heavily on the generation of harmful plastics and sourcing natural materials with devastating climatic effects.

While things have been changing in the past few years and as the industry takes baby-steps toward sustainability, navigating home furnishing and updates still requires mindfulness and intentional change.

Luckily, much of the theory behind sustainable furnishing comes from the basics — reduce, reuse, recycle. By implementing sustainability, your home or business can better reflect your personal style and be better for your wallet.

Revamp

To Reuse

Updating furniture that simply isn’t functioning the way it used to is better for the environment, and comes at a much lower cost than buying new. It may be tempting to toss out old furniture with the malfunctioning door or drawer, but investing in a new knob, hinge, foot, or roller slide may be the key to keeping a great piece in your life.

When something becomes unusable, a habitual thought of “I have to replace this” can be retrained into “How can I improve this?”

Oftentimes, an item’s dysfunction is purely aesthetic. Most wood surfaces can stain or wear over time, and of course they can be sanded, refinished and painted, too. For newcomers to these projects, it is an option to talk to a professional, such as Elizabeth Reda, design and decor sales manager at Ring’s End with locations in Newtown and Norwalk.

Reda told Home & Garden the company advises customers how to refinish furniture among the many consultations they handle. This includes antique pieces and factors such as stain design and color, which owners may be hesitant to update or refresh.

“If it has good bones and is made well, it’s always worth it to recover something,” Reda said. “We make color recommendations for those old pieces. Then, they’re completely new pieces.”

You don’t necessarily have to paint the entire piece if you opt for that route. Painted segments on wooden furniture that reveal part of the wood is becoming a popular solution to update furniture. Plus, it makes the piece unique, and of course, these reimaginings can also be reupdated at will of the owner or resold to a neighbor for a higher value.

Taking control of the furniture in your life can feel empowering, and allows a person to feel responsible for what they possess so items are less likely to be abandoned. There is education on websites such as YouTube and step-by-step written instruction online about how to repair and update furniture. If necessary for the project, tools can be rented and returned.

Some may be hesitant to update furniture with concerns about the integrity of the piece, stopping them from making necessary functional or aesthetic changes. By seeking advice from professionals, integrity can be maintained. Without action, a resented piece of furniture, as close as it is to the original, is closer to becoming landfill.

Purchase For Longevity

If you’re looking for a new piece of furniture you don’t already own, consider choosing quality furniture that will last for more than one season of your life. Become mindful of whether or not you may be buying something for the sake of a trend, lest it gets tiring and is suddenly in the running to be replaced (perhaps being tossed in the process).

When buying a new, mass-produced object for your home, consider its functionality, its unique appeal or style longevity, and avoid plastic items when possible, as they are harmful to the environment.

Thrift stores are full of furniture that could use an update of some kind, and run under thirty dollars for what could be hundreds when new. Turning to estate sales and tag sales listed in The Newtown Bee and Bee Extra as a chance to explore is also an excellent way to find yourself making sound and sustainable furnishing choices.

Other websites and social networks also provide good resources to find great deals.

Often there are sustainable versions of new home goods. Try adding the term “ecofriendly” to whatever it is you’re in the market for, because more and more products are being created with eco-friendly options — some you wouldn’t expect.

Looking locally is preferred, as the environmental toll for something to be transported as well as packaging used should be considered when trying to live more sustainably. While Ring’s End of Newtown carries primarily paints and stains, Reda said other locations source Dash & Albert rugs made out of recyclable plastic bottles.

To expand and individualize furnishings and accessories in your home, and to have more control of what your possessions are made of, you can design your own using tried and tested secondhand materials or by smartly sourcing raw ecofriendly materials.

Thrift stores often carry reams of unique fabrics, and some antique stores do as well. There is information online about how to thoroughly clean thrifted textiles.

If you’re looking for something bought new, Reda says Ring’s End locations carry a sustainable line of eco-friendly Greenhouse Fabrics. According to Reda, these can be purposed for “any sort of soft good” like curtains, pillows, bed skirts, and comforters.

Add Identity

Investing in something beautiful by a local artist, featuring a unique family heirloom, or framing a child’s art piece will add personalized depth to your home. This is contrary to the aesthetic effect of massproduced objects, which hold little meaning. These ready-made objects are designed with trends in mind — so they may be more compulsively replaced — whereas sentimental objects are less likely to be (or never) readily replaced.

If lacking in heirlooms, unique objects to display can often be found at thrift stores. Many higher quality, vintage pieces can be foraged there for significantly less than comparable items at home furnishing stores, and are guaranteed to not be made with any new materials. Oftentimes, you can find a piece at a general thrift store that’s one of a kind.

Be careful that compulsive buying habits do not transpose to thrift store shopping trips. While purchasing secondhand has ethical upsides to buying new, bringing multiple objects into your home becomes your responsibility. Accumulating objects can garner anxiety when a less controlled environment is established, and objects will lessen the intentional element of applying personal style to a room when they cause added clutter.

Take Packaging Out

Minimizing packaging that you consume is not only handy and kind to the environment, it can also be beautiful. Refillable soap pumps can become an intentional design element in the home rather than overtly branded, disposable units. Buy liquid soap in bulk to minimize packaging consumed and help you save money in the long run.

Purchasing from local zero-waste grocery stores such as BD Provisions in Newtown further minimizes packaging from buying even a bulk case of soap, as customers can bring whatever container they’d like and have it filled to their specification.

“We offer the base container or they could bring in their own container and we can fill it with soap,” said John Boccuzzi Jr, co-owner of BD Provisions. Opting for glass storage and shopping at zero-waste grocery stores can streamline a pantry and make it aesthetically pleasing, allowing for design control over another area of the house.

Mason jars are having an aesthetic moment as interiors emulate a “Modern Farmhouse” rustic look. Those inspired are using the jars for creative candle light displays, drinking cups, artistic ventures, cooking, and of course, for what they have been traditionally used for — food storage.

This medium is in heavy use at BD Provisions. According to Boccuzzi, customers can submit them to be washed and exchanged for free to fill with products in the store that day.

“It’s not just about saving the planet, it’s about having a cleaner, minimalized look and feel of your home,” Boccuzzi said.

Customers at zero-bulk food stores also control how much food they purchase, which could eliminate food waste and is friendlier to the wallet.

“The concept of being able to get as much or as little as you need is incredibly valuable,” Boccuzzi said.

BD Provisions also offers reusable dish towels, which serves to take one more item off of the kitchen counter and mass of storage.

“You’re not buying a case of paper towels at Costco; you’re buying five reusable towels that last six months to a year,” Boccuzzi said.

Sustainability Is About Community

Objects and furniture made with local materials support the planet because little fuel was expended to transport them to market. Additionally, supporting local artists creates a more sustainable economic environment.

Need a new set of glassware? Explore your style by researching a local glassblower. Instead of buying a new armchair, perhaps someone local can reupholster your existing piece, transforming it with the perfect (perhaps sustain- able?) fabric you sourced.

Before throwing out less desired objects, consider asking friends whether or not they would enjoy them, or donating them. There is no guarantee that they wouldn’t still end up in a landfill, but taking one more interventional step is crucial to helping the planet.

Sometimes, donating furniture to a thrift store can be a hassle. With sites for local Buy Nothing groups, people can list their furniture or objects, disclosing any imperfections, and interested parties can pick them up right from a lister’s home or business.

This type of mutual aid allows sustainable furbishing to be accessible to others in your community, and allows you to save time.

Celebrating the change of seasons and holidays can be expressed in your home sustainably as well — and can add the necessary refresh in your home that buying new furniture might. For the sake of the planet, holiday decorations should not be compulsively bought new every year.

Celebrate the season with natural ele- ments such as wreaths, wildflowers, gourds, fruit displays — all which naturally cycle, can be sourced locally (sometimes for free), and can be guiltlessly swapped out when it is time.

Mental Refurbishing

For some, dedicating a house to sustainability may seem easy. For most, making mostly sustainable choices when it comes to a home or business environment could be a lifestyle change.

Changing a mindset is rarely easy. Reusing is about making the cognitive choice, over and over again, to stick with an item you have. Opting to mindfully pause and survey a space to look for how to improve it outside of purchasing brand new or trendy goods takes practice.

Depending on income and household culture, every family has different bandwidth when it comes to integrating sustainability in their home environment. The most important element to implementing sustainable practices is becoming mindful of where it is possible in your own life, and using that awareness to make deliberate decisions for the planet.

Part of intentional design in the home is to emulate that feeling of “hominess” and comfort, to ask yourself the question, “Do I enjoy being in this space? Does this space feel like mine?” Remembering that is paramount to achieving your design goals.

Feeling stuck about where to practice first? Reda (from Ring’s End) advises a fresh coat of paint to reframe it all.

“I always tell people, if you paint it, you’re getting a whole new canvas,” she said. “Your inspiration starts with paint.”

Ultimately, taking control of your home’s furnishing and decor outside of convenience comes with a great deal of empowerment. It can reveal to yourself and your guests your lasting personal style and aesthetic values, unable to be summarized by trends of the moment.

Reporter Noelle Veillette can be reached at noelle@thebee.com.