The kitchen is the heart of the home, and one of the rooms that most people like to change in a new home to help make it feel more like their own. Even if you have lived in your home for many years, you may well be feeling that your kitchen is due a change, and if you do, you may find the look and feel of your whole home changes with it.
Many people are looking to designs that are eco-friendly, especially in the kitchen. Having an earthy and rustic looking kitchen has always been a popular design choice, and more and more people are tuning to healthier diets to feed themselves and their family. With eco-friendly kitchen designs, you can accomplish the look while having a kitchen that reflects your family’s healthy and environmentally conscious values.
Here we are going to look at three tips that can help you redesign your kitchen in an eco-friendly way, and show the world some love from the heart of your home.
Re-Use and Re-Claim Materials
If you have an existing kitchen to remodel, you can save money and the planet by re-using or re-purposing as much of it as possible.
The chances are that though your kitchen cabinet doors seem dated, the internal cupboards are just as good as new. By just replacing doors and drawer fronts you can completely change the look of a kitchen for a lot less money and using less materials.
The wood from old railway tracks called ‘sleepers’ can be reclaimed and reused as great looking drawers and doors. Why not save a little there, and spend it on a carpenter to come in and make new doors and drawer fronts from some beautiful reclaimed wood?
Think about Water Use and Food Waste
It is important to consider the impact your kitchen has on the environment once you finish your redesign and start using it.
Water is one of our planet’s most precious resources, and any way you can reduce your water use is a great way to support the planet. You can recycle ‘gray’ water from the kitchen sink that has been used to wash vegetables, hands and plates to water plants and herbs that you can use in your food.
Food waste also makes great compost to help you get the most out of a vegetable patch or herb garden, and composting reduces the amount of waste we send to landfills.
Use Complementary Accessories
When you are redesigning your kitchen with the environment in mind, you should also take the time to source high-quality accessories for your kitchen that suit its style. Plastics can often look out of place in a kitchen made from natural materials, so look around for items made from things like wood, slate or stone.
Wooden plates, bowls and servers are very eye-catching and great for potlucks. They complement a natural kitchen well, and go great with slate place mats and coasters.
Redesigning a kitchen can be a wonderful process. The kitchen is probably our home’s most important room, and is often used for so much more than food preparation. The kitchen is often at the center of any house party, and a place where family members often have their most important conversations and family meetings.
Having an eco-friendly kitchen is easier than you think if you can reuse or repurpose as much as possible from an existing kitchen, and reclaim materials and even whole kitchen sets from salvage yards or online marketplaces. If you take some time to plan out your food waste demands and ways to use less water, you can make sure you have a kitchen that helps the environment as you use it.
