When we decorated our London home we tried to buy everything second hand. We would spend weekends looking around thrift stores, junk shops and even street corners! We picked up our beautiful vintage oven, a massive sofa and even a palm tree (that was stuck in a wheelie bin!) from various corners of South London! In fact, since coming to New Zealand, these weekends trawling around looking for cool old shizzle have waned to nothing. For one, we have no space to put cool old stuff, but for two people don’t put their junk on the streets! What??! I know! Tidy kiwis they call themselves. Disappointing, I call it! Ha.
These days we have to make do with spending our weekends gardening and being wholesome, rather than ransacking dead people’s belongings.
Anyway, our house was a masterpiece! It was featured a few times in magazines.
One of the things we didn’t get second hand was the wool carpets we put through our upstairs. Below we restored the old floor boards (Tim may have forever damaged his knee sanding them, but it was worth it!) because down there is where we are eating and crafting and generally being messy. Upstairs, you know, less messy, right?
So we felt we could put carpet down. We agnosied for aaaaages over the decision! It was unbelievably hard! We really wanted to get the best, most sustainable thing. In the end we got pure wool, because of how it is a renewable resource, rather than based on fossil fuels. And to our delight, it cleaned wonderfully!
It was such a pleasure to wake up in the winter to a warm floor beneath our feet, and we spent many happy hours rolling around on the softness with our babies.
As you know, many of us did elimination communication. Where we raised our children with the knowledge of their elimination, rather than hiding it all away in a nappy. Whilst from three months on we were catching in a potty almost all of Ramona’s potty needs, simply by responding to her cues, we did have the occasional whoopsy!
And we were stoked with how the wool was so easy to deal with and didn’t retain any smell. I’ve heard since it is naturally a scent repeller. So that was an accidental win!
When we left our London home to come to New Zealand, instead of having a garage sale – we didn’t have a garage because, yknow, #london, instead I simply put on my blog that we were having an open home. And we sold everything! We opened the doors and people came in and asked the price and just walked off with our bookcases, Doc Martens, house plants, fridge magnets.
Everything except the carpet!
