Eco-Chick · The modern girl's guide to living green & fabulous.

Repurpose or Reuse Common Household Items in Your Home Decor

The following is a guest post by the contributor of DIY-Guides.com, where you can find other useful decoration tips. Photo by suzette.

If you have an old household item that you just don’t use or maybe even don’t like any longer… why not give it new life and use in your home? It will be more eco-friendly – by not filling up our landfills, and help on the pocketbook at the same time. It’s a win-win situation.

So don’t think of a piece of furniture or household item as “old” or “useless” – repurpose it into something useful that will fit and even enhance your home decor.

While searching for some ideas, I found some great ways to repurpose some old items I have hanging around the house. One of them is on how to make new pillows. I happen to need new pillows for my guest bedroom – without having to trash the old ones and spending more money.

I fell in love with this first idea. In fact, I’m working on the pillows right now. And plan on giving these other ideas a try, too. Maybe you’ll find them useful as well:

Turn a Shirt into a New Pillow

As I said, I was looking for a way to make new pillows, so this idea was up my alley. My husband had several button-down shirts in his closet that don’t fit anymore or have had small stains on the sleeves. Perfect. And my guest bedroom is blue and white so blue, white and white/blue striped dress shirts are just what I’m looking for.

Here’s the easy to follow instructions to make your own button-down pillows at MarthaStewart.com. I also ran across another idea using old blankets. So I’ve decided to use one of my son’s baby blankets to make a special pillow as a keepsake. Here’s an easy how-to at DIY Guides.
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Two Beautifully Useful Whole Foods Cookbooks

See, I’m putting in serious effort at learning to cook!

My love of food comes from three main sources; one primal, one inculcated, the third learned as an adult. First, my natural appetite for delicious, healthy meals and snacks is fairly well-known (I think I can count on one hand the times in my life when I wasn’t hungry!), and I can eat absolutely anything, with no known food allergies or sensitivities.

Second, my grandma raised me on garden-fresh produce and a combo of Lebanese (hummous, tabouli and pilaf being staples), Armenian that she learned from her mother-in-law as a young wife (green bean and local beef stews, lentil dishes, chee kufta), Jewish (picked up through osmosis as she grew up in NYC- she made a killer matzoh ball soup for an Episcopalian!) and American food from the Joy of Cooking and the Settlement Cookbook (written in 1901 and hilariously subtitled “The Way to a Man’s Heart”). Grams was a legendary cook, and I was lucky to grow up in a home where 90% of what I ate was made from scratch (we even had our own apiary for the freshest of honey, and eggs from the chickens that roamed the woods between our house and our neighbors’. And homemade bread!).

Third, for three years, I wrote about food for The Fairfield County Weekly, a job that gave me a culinary education in my twenties I couldn’t have paid for. (Actually, I paid for it as I gained about 15 pounds during my tenure at that job! But honestly, it was kinda worth it.) I got to eat at pretty much every restaurant in Fairfield County, which is in Connecticut just north of New York City, and has a very rich combination of predominantly Italian and Greek cuisines, which has been supplemented more recently by excellent Indian and Asian, and in the last 5-7 years wonderful raw, vegetarian and health foods.

But truth be told, I’m not the world’s most accomplished cook, though I can put together a beautifully-sourced, complementary tableaux of appetizers. But when it comes to cooking a ‘real’ meal, my only saving grace is those great ingredients and some talent with baking pies and cookies (so at least I end on a good note!). The last few years, however, I’ve made a slow and determined march forward in teaching myself to cook, and recently have been enjoying the books below. While I’ve been vegetarian for 17 years, both these books are great for veg and non-veg alike (I use them regularly without problem, but there are plenty of meaty dishes in each too). What unites the two tomes is that they focus on local, healthy, seasonal, whole foods cooking, which I am naturally drawn to as it’s what I was raised on.

In the Green Kitchen, by Alice Waters

This is not a traditional cookbook, though it does contain plenty of recipes. But instead of simply a compendium of delicious food combinations, this book focuses on what kitchen pioneer Alice Waters (of Chez Panisse restaurant and Edible Schoolyard fame) has realized was missing from the aspiring conscious chef’s shelf: A technique-driven, full-of-instructions volume that includes how to’s from the prosaic to the intimidating.
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NaturevsFuture’s Autumn, 2010 Collection: Sustainable Modern Classics

NatureVsFuture from water&power on Vimeo.

Nina Valenti’s been designing eco fashion longer than most people have even known what the phrase meant. Her line, NaturevsFuture, debuted in Spring, 2002, and her iconic details have been staples of the eco fashon scene for years, landing her coverage in major fashion press. Her cutout dress is currently included in the FIT exhibit, “Eco Fashion: Going Green” through November, 2010.

What works about Nina’s pieces is that they are timeless and yet never look boring or old-fashioned. Her Autumn, 2010 line is filled with her characteristic angled plackets and hems and variable necklines, and utilizes hemp, organic cotton, flax, and surplus wool: Jackets and tunics, pictured here, are particularly strong standouts, but her skirts and blouses are always office-appropriate, and interesting to boot.

Natural hemp/organic cotton/ramie/flax textured coat w/ angled button front & High funnel collar

Nina hails from Brooklyn, and all her designs are made in NYC, reducing the carbon and energy footprints of her designs, and giving her step-by-step control over quality. I own three of her pieces; a pair of geometric-detailed long shorts, a hemp jacket in always au courant olive khaki and an organic linen dress that’s perfect for summer garden parties. All of these pieces have worn exceptionally well and seem to get better over time.

Charcoal hemp/organic cotton yarndyed angled zip up jacket

“The more we advance the more we need to consider nature before we deplete it. In this tension to find balance is the living energy of the collection and hence the name.” says Valenti, explaining how she came up with NaturevsFuture.

Chocolate surplus wool w/ silk lining double breasted swerve coat and 2 Tea hemp/organic cotton draped neck tunic top

Currently, NaturevsFuture’s online shop features summer’s designs, but Fall will be available very soon!

Charcoal organic cotton/organic wool button waist detail funnel collar tunic top

All photography by Yucel Eroogan.
Video by Rob Perri.

Video: Princeton’s Student Eco Fashion Competition

I had lots of fun judging the first-ever Princeton Eco Fashion Competition back in May; and now there’s a great video that gives the winner, and second- and third-place designers a chance to speak about their designs. Check it out!

For more on Princeton’s Eco Fashion Competition, check out my judges’ coverage here.
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Mi-Bra Organic Cotton Sports Bra: Running with A Great Idea

As a runner who definitely finds inspiration to go a little further (or a little faster; I love to sprint) through music, I thought the Mi-Bra was total genius as soon as I saw it. A sports bra with a pocket up front to hold your iPod or MP3 player in (and a wee space for your headphones cord to thread through), it’s ideal for those of us who run with iPod in hand (which is really annoying).

Like me, Mi-bra creator Carolina Baker found that the arm band music holders didn’t work for her, and instead of just complaining about it, she solved the problem herself:

I created the mi-bra while training for several marathons. I was having chafing issues with my other sports bras and running with my music was becoming a nuisance because my armband kept sliding down my arm. I started putting my iPod in between my sports bra and tank top and it stayed put quite well. I started searching the internet for sports bras with pockets and couldn’t find any! That’s when I knew I had an idea I could run with (no pun intended) and so I did.

We have a close family friend whose in manufacturing and he put us in touch with someone that could create the mi-bra. We went back and forth a couple of times with samples and received our first order January of this year. It was exciting and nerve wrecking to see so many boxes of sports bras arrive.

And the bra’s ecofriendly to boot, made from 90% organic cotton! The pocket is on the OUTside of the bra, for easy access so you can change up your songs mid-run if you like, and could obviously be used for cash, Metrocard, or credit card (I like to combine runs with trips to the post office for stamps or a one-way run, one-way walk store stop-over instead of taking the car).

Available for a very reasonable $20 plus shipping, a portion of the proceeds of the bra benefit Back on My Feet, a charity organization that uses running as a means to get homeless men and women back into jobs and school.

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