How to use recycled items as decor

Decor is an essential aspect of home design and adding a personal touch that will make your house feel like home. Sometimes buying new decor isn’t viable if you’re on a specific budget, or perhaps if you’re looking to be more environmentally conscious and purchase fewer items. Your solution is to use recycled items as decor. It may take some effort, but it’s a great way to channel your creative juices and start a passion DIY project.

Here are 5 economically and environmentally friendly ways you can use recycled items as decor:

1. Use old sweaters as flower pot covers

Do you have an old sweater that doesn’t quite fit you anymore? You can re-use it as a flower pot cover, and take your regular plastic flower pots from dull to fantastic. All you have to do is cut the sweater sleeves according to the size of the flower pot and then place it on the flower pot. This is a cheap way of making the flower pot look chic, making your space feel modern.

2. Use wooden crates as magazine holders

Wooden crates are great for recycled home decor. The next time you go grocery shopping at your local organic market, make sure that you don’t throw out any wooden crates that your produce may come in. Keep them and use them around your home as decor.

One way you can do this is by using wooden crates as magazine holders. You can also stack wooden crates together and create a DIY shelf for decorative purposes.

3. Turn used jars into candle holders

Used jars can be used as candle holders. To take it up a notch, decorate the lid of the jar so that it doesn’t still have the original branding on it. You can also add fairy lights in used jars and use that as decor to spruce up your home.

4. Make a quilt with old fabrics

If you have old clothes or fabric that you have no use for, you can make a unique quilt by cutting up the clothes or fabrics and stitching them together. Place your colourful quilt onto your couch as a throw blanket and you’re good to go.

5. Make a mat from plastic

The world has a huge plastic problem. One way to reduce personal plastic usage is to re-use plastic bags and create a recycled mat. To do this, you have to create a loom to weave plastic strips tightly together until you create a mat. You can also opt to go the traditional route of using a crochet needle to knit the plastic strips together as you would with wool, to create a plastic mat.

We can all play our part in creating a more sustainable world. One way to do this is to reuse as much of our waste and old items as possible, which can be done by following any one of the DIY hacks above.