Avoiding "Fast Furniture" and Taking Time to Source

Upon moving into our new cottage, we needed very few furnishings, despite having moved from our previous home with so few large items. One thing we did need, however, was a comfortable armchair for the living room office.

We took our time sourcing the perfect-for-us reading chair. With our planet in crisis, a temporary piece of “fast furniture” was out of the question. Did you know that 12.2 million tons of furnishings and home accents end up in landfills annually? This results in horrible amounts of of solid waste that have increased 450 percent since 1960 per the Environmental Protection Agency.

Instead, we borrowed a chair from family (which itself was a handmedown from neighbors) for a few months, covering it with a linen sheet so it better suited our decor (as pictured below).

Pictured above: A borrowed chair, covered with a linen sheet to better match our decor.

We wanted to find seating that would fit snugly yet welcomingly in the corner without jutting into either the bedroom entry or the thoroughfare to the living room’s French doors. We finally found what we were looking for— this timeless looking chair with casually draping cushions, an overstuffed vibe, and yet a space-savvy curved seat and rounded back.

We added a vintage stool, a handmade rattan wall sconce, a handmade ceramic airplant cradle, and a propagation station (designed by our friend Hilton Carter).

The end result is a very comfortable reading nook that all of us — pups included — enjoy daily.

Loula Chair by Sixpenny
Color: Oat Flour
Fabric: Light Weight Linen
Fill: Vegan Fiber

Bringing the Garden Inside through Earthy Linens

I love being inside our home— I do. But I’ve found that, in this time of far-reaching, heightened stress, being outside works wonders on my attitude. 

I’ve been testing out ways of bringing the feeling of being outdoors into our bedroom to help counter the spike in anxiety I feel overnight. 

We have windows in our headboard, so I trained the grapevine to run along the wall behind the bed, where its bright, wide leaves brush against the glass beneath the trailing plants on our built-in bookshelf. 

The greenery continues on the other side of the room, where trumpet vines spill from an overhead living canopy just beyond the French doors. 

To visually connect all of these elements throughout the bedroom, we added 100% linen sheets in this Earthy green hue. So far I’m enjoying how it unites this small space without visually cluttering it.

I always prefer linen sheets. First of all, they’re breathable (which helps, as we have no AC here in our tiny, coastal home)

Additionally, they don’t cling to dog hair as much as other fabrics seem to.

They get softer with every wash, and they line-dry quickly, helping us cut back on energy usage and costs.

Lastly, I find them simply beautiful.

West keeps saying, “Mom— I love our new bed!” (So do I, West.)

Note: This blog post was not sponsored, but the sheets were gifted as part of a paid partnership with Brooklinen on Instagram. As always, a portion of the income my small company earned from the collaboration will be donated to The RightWay Foundation.