How I Taught My Kids About Environmental Responsibility by Redecorating My Living Room

[Lucy Clark]

Let’s get one thing straight here. I am by no means a “PETA Parent.” I eat meat. I wear leather. I drive a Ford Ranger because a Prius stinks at hauling antique vanities. However, I do believe that people should take some responsibility for their impact on the environment.  That’s why my family actively recycles, grows our own vegetables and composts our trash.  We only get one earth, after all.

This is value my husband and I have been actively trying to instill in our children. We just want them to be aware of the impact their choices make on the environment.  So when it came time to redecorate our living room, I thought it would be fun to have my daughters help me make the space a little more “eco-friendly,” so to speak.  We replaced some of the furniture, painted the walls, installed a green wall, and ended up creating a living area that’s both aesthetically pleasing and environmentally aware – all for under $500. Here’s a rundown of the “green-up” procedure in case you’re interested in doing it to your own home.

1)      Upcycle some new furniture. If you know me, you’d know that I’m a huge fan of upcycled furniture. If you’ve got a little technical know-how and some carpentry tools handy, you can create awesome sitting arrangements that are both eco-friendlier and cheaper than those benches you can buy from a furniture store.

To complement our beloved family couch, my daughters each constructed a chair out of shipping pallets off a blueprint we found online. My husband and I added our own contribution by making an upcycled coffee table out of a large hunk of Oak that we found on our property. The process was pretty intense – It took about ten cycles of sanding and clear-coating before we could get a level surface – but the finished product is beautiful (It looks a lot like this).

2)      Install a green wall. Green walls, or living walls, aren’t for everybody. These hanging slabs of living plants require a lot of work to build and maintain, but they also help insulate your home and purify the air inside the house. You can have green walls professionally constructed, but we built our own using these plans on Building Moxie.  It cost us about $75 in supplies and took two weekends to construct.

3)      Replace the lights. Rather than invest in new lamps and lights, we just decided to give our current set an upgrade by spray painting them matte brown and screwing on some new lampshades. We also replaced any incandescent bulbs with eco-friendly CFL bulbs. It was a great opportunity for the kids to learn about e-waste and why throwing away your electronics isn’t always a good idea.

4)      Use more responsible paint. I’m a total nut when it comes to repainting my house. I think I’ve changed wall colors at least 10 times in the 12 years that we’ve owned the place. This time around, though, I decided to invest in some eco-friendly paint by Yolo. Sticking with the earth tones, we decided to go with a green called “Leaf .05.” There wasn’t as much educational takeaway here, but the girls sure learned a lot about keeping their strokes smooth and covering up the carpet and molding before they start to paint.

That sums up pretty much all of the major changes we made to the room. It was a cheap overhaul – at least financially speaking – but it totally changed the look of our living room and I think my daughters learned a lot about self-sufficiency and environmental responsibility during the process. That said, I highly recommend a red-“eco”-ration project for any of you other parents out there. You’ll get some help renovating your home and your kids will get a lesson that should stick with them for life.

If you have any cool eco-friendly projects that your family loves, feel free to share them in the comments below!