New Year Gift Ideas for a More Sustainable Home
New Year's Eve is just around the corner. This means we will all have to use a lot of brain power soon to come up with gift ideas. Finding the perfect gift is hard. Not all tastes are the same and coming up with something that will be used by the person we are buying the gift for makes things even harder.
That’s why we wanted to give you some inspiration on how to find the perfect gift, but there is a twist. In classic Handan Loomworks fashion, we want the theme for your gifts this year to be sustainability.
If we are starting a new year all over again with a new gift, let’s make it a sustainable and environmentally friendly one.
Custom Yoga Mat
If the person you are buying the gift for happens to be a yoga enthusiast or talked about getting into yoga in the past, what better gift than a yoga mat? Mats you buy from your local sports shop will likely be filled with plastics that are detrimental to the environment and will be prone to wear and tear.
A high-quality, custom-made yoga mat can kickstart your loved one's passion for yoga and make the hobby much more enjoyable. Instead of buying one that was likely made with a cheap and unhealthy material to interact with like PVC, buy one that was made with materials like jute or cork.
Some services also let you customize the pattern and the size of the yoga mat, so you can change the design depending on the personal tastes of your loved one.
Scented Candles
Candles are a great way of making your house infinitely more comfy in a matter of seconds. They are pretty inexpensive, fill the room with a pleasing atmosphere, and allow your eyes to rest for a bit after a day of being overexposed to bright lights.
But that is not the only thing that candles are good for. Scented candles can also fill your house with the season’s most amazing scents. Our favorite smells for the winter are cinnamon, vanilla, and pine, all of which we strongly recommend.
Turning your lights out for a second and sitting under candlelight will also allow you to use less energy for the day, making it a perfect gift for our theme.
Handwoven Furnishing
If your loved one is an interior design enthusiast, you can show off your great taste with a handwoven piece of furnishing, like a rug or a cushion. But to fit with the sustainable gift theme, you can just buy one from a popular fast fashion brand as these brands are known to use some of the less environmentally friendly materials.
Luckily there are so many great slow fashion brands, like ourselves, that use ethical manufacturing methods, sustainable materials, and make in style. A good piece of furnishing that you buy has the potential to brighten up the home of the person you are buying the gift for not for a couple of months, but for years to come.
Browse our catalog of handwoven rugs and cushions and see if you find something that might suit the taste of your loved one.
Canvas Bag
So much of the plastic we use in our daily lives can be replaced with sustainable alternatives. Nearly 500 billion plastic bags are used yearly. This is absurd considering how easy it is to use something else to carry our groceries and other things we buy outside.
A custom-made, shoulder-carry canvas bag can make grocery shopping much easier and more sustainable. Just like with the yoga mats, there are services out there that let you customize the bag with whatever you like.
You can choose a cute graphic, a stylish pattern, or print an inside joke you have with the person you are buying the gift for to make the gift more meaningful and special.
Tea Set
It is getting colder and colder out there as we get deeper into winter and people will soon start seeking comfort in our hot beverages. If the favorite hot beverage of your loved one is tea, a tea set can make the year for them.
Teapots tend to be used on stoves to make tea, so the material of the pot you buy is important. Some pots have some unhealthy chemicals that get released into them when they get hot and some use materials that are dangerous to the environment while manufacturing them. Buying a stylish, porcelain or glass tea set will be the safest option.
These were five of our favorite sustainable gift ideas. Even if you don’t end up buying one of them, we hope we gave you some inspiration. Here’s to hoping that your loved ones like and use the gifts you buy.