Eco-friendly Eco-Chic Home Decor Tips and Resources

1. Shop locally. Not only do you support your local merchants, you save gas by shopping closer to home. Or shop on-line for some great bargains on decorating essentials and fabulous finds.

2. Re-purpose (aka "upcycle") items. A plain hollow-core door propped up by a couple of old cabinets, a pair of short bookcases, or two workshop horses makes a great desk or table. Stack a set of old luggage to use as an end table (and for extra storage!). Think outside the box.

3. Often simply sanding and re-painting an old plain piece of furniture can transform it into just what you need in that new guest room or for the porch you just enclosed (with windows from your local salvage yard, of course!). Polish the old hardware or add some new knobs and be proud of yourself. You not only kept that old dresser out of the garbage dump, you've saved a tree or two in the process also.

4. Recycle glass jars as vases or fill with small collectibles, such as shells, buttons, small stones, or marbles and display as small grouping.

5. Wrap leftover yarn around defunct tennis balls and place in an old wooden bowl or basket for a colorful decorating accent.

6. Old ties make great quilts. So do a lot of other fabric items. (But you knew that!) Just have a few? Make a throw pillow instead.

7. Window shutters not only help with window energy efficiency. They make wonderful cabinet doors (easy to attach to the front of that yard sale bookcase for hidden storage) and three or four larger ones hinged together can be used for a screen or room divider or even a headboard.

8. Broken cups and dishes can be broken into even smaller pieces and used for drainage in a flower pot or, if you're crafty, in lieu of mosaic tiles to decorate a table top to an entire piece of furniture or even a wall, birdbath, or garden bench.

9. Stand old wooden fruit crates on their sides and stack for a modular bookcase or storage unit. Or hang an old wooden ladder horizontally on a wall to hold books, media, or other items.

10. Use leftover wallpaper to wrap gifts, cover empty cereal boxes to use as periodical holders on a shelf, line drawers or closet shelves or (one of my favorites) ask a local ice cream store for an empty cardboard ice cream "tub" and turn it into a custom wastebasket by covering it with wallpaper or decoupage it with leftovers from your scrapbooking projects.

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