10 Simple Eco-Friendly DIY Projects for Your Home

Want to green your home decor and help out the planet? Instead of buying new, try these ten eco-friendly DIY projects. Simple, sustainable... and super fun!

Some people DIY because they love the process. Some people DIY to save money. Some people DIY because it’s eco-friendly. And some people, like me, DIY because of a three reasons! Here are ten simple eco-friendly DIY projects I’ve tackled over the last five years. I hope they inspire you to do all kinds of cool things yourself. To create, to save money and to save the planet.

Poetry Artwork with text from The Lorax

Love literature as much as you love making creative things? Then this poetry art project - featuring a poem using text from The Lorax - is for you!

If you love literature as much as you love making creative things for you home then this poetry art project will tickle you pink green. (This is a blog about green living after all!) When I was in university I took a few poetry courses as part of my combined English and creative writing honours degree. One of the assignments – called erasure poetry – really stuck with me and I thought it would be a cool way to create some simple DIY artwork for my newly arranged shelf library.

This project actually combines two different poetry techniques – erasure and cut-up, which may seem similar but have an important distinction.

Love Arrow Sign – Handpainted During Labour!

This love arrow sign was handpainted while I was in labour with my second child. Here's how you can make one too! Contractions not required...

All you need is love – or so the song goes. But in the case of this handpainted sign all I needed was 23 hours of slow labour and nothing to do with my time other than distract myself with online yoga and crafts.

I had started this DIY a couple of weeks before I had my second daughter (who is three weeks old today). I first had to paint the 1×4 with several coats of white paint before I could stencil on the letters. Once that task was completed all that was left was the actual painting of the letters, which I did by hand with an artist’s brush whilst listening to my iTunes playlist “Relax” and trying to dance off contractions. There’s nothing like the imminent arrival of an infant to get the creative – and motivational – juices flowing.

Tree Branch Mobile

Super charming and whimsical DIY tree branch mobile made with a spray-painted poplar branch, stuffed birds and fishing line.

Along with catching up on blogging in general, I need to catch up on blogging about all the DIY projects I did before my daughter was born. True, I’ve done a few homey things since she came into my life that blessed September day, but for the most part it’s been 16 months of laundry, dishes and more laundry (and of course playing!). The laundry sitch has been particularly hairy of late because our washing machine is on its way out (and BTW, this is our second laundry machine to futz out on us this year).

The first one was nearing that magical ten year mark that somehow in appliance years equals 90 human years, so that was that. Then, we got a replacement free of charge thanks to some lovely family members. Unfortunately, that one didn’t belong to said members originally and thus we don’t know how old it actually was. And now it’s dying too. Sob.