#reusable-decor

#reusable-decor

The convenience of sourcing online is fraught with more pitfalls than most of us want to admit. Try finding adequate photos of a vintage piece's condition-close-ups of the fabric, video of damaged areas, any images of a piece's rear or underside!

The Matranga family built a 560-square-foot tiny house for their family of four in 2022, experiencing both love and regret about its design after four years of living there.

When you design your home with intentionality, you are essentially 'hard-coding' healthy behaviors into your daily rhythm. Health outcomes are the result of thousands of micro-decisions—so in his own home, he prioritized spaces like the kitchen, whose open layout makes cooking a pleasure, and the gym, centrally located.

The results? They picked out 26 cleaning solutions, calling them their favorites. From tried-and-true staples to brand-new discoveries, see below for our top picks.

Each piece begins with used coffee pods collected from my community, materials that were never meant to last beyond a single use. Before any design work begins, the pods must be cleaned, sanitized, flattened, cut, folded, and shaped entirely by hand. They arrive dented, stained, and inconsistent, carrying the marks of their previous life. Learning how to work with those imperfections, rather than erasing them, was one of my first challenges.

Even long after the tell-tale odor of new paint has vanished, traditional paint can off-gas for months, releasing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that have been linked to organ and nervous system damage, cancer, and infertility.

Just like that coffee cup, eyewear is a complex fusion of materials. Metal hinges are screwed into polymer frames, which hold chemically-coated lenses. This mix of metals, plastics, and coatings means standard sorting machines cannot process them. As a result, they are rejected as contamination and sent directly to landfills, where they contribute to non-biodegradable waste. Unlike a disposable paper cup, however, a pair of sunglasses is built for durability. Its high-quality components make it a perfect candidate for repair, reuse, or reinvention.

Above: This dinner-party-friendly kitchen went wild over on Instagram for a full tour, see Kitchen of the Week: Off-Cut Cabinets Create a Rainbow of Wood in Edinburgh. Photograph by Richard Gaston. Shoppe Object is going on this weekend in NYC; head here for all the details. This Canadian cabin is the surprise star of the month, thanks to Heated Rivalry. Kudos. "Your kitchen objects are filled with feelings": Eager to read this book on "love, loss, and kitchen objects." Ooh, time to paint your stair risers? Our friends at Dosa are part of "The Host, the Guest," an exhibit at Atla in LA; head here for info.