With the push all around the world towards a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, it was only a matter of time before furniture manufacturers took note and started producing eco-friendly products and ensuring they were readily available. This makes it easier than ever to find “green” furniture for your home, and there’s a huge variety out there too.

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While once it was hard to find eco-friendly pieces, today the furniture companies are taking note of what consumers are asking for and have created entire stores as well as websites that are devoted entirely to ensuring that you have a wide access to all of the eco-friendly furniture you could want. From chairs to beds to dining room furniture and storage pieces, there is a wide selection available that is just waiting to be purchased. With the huge push towards turning entire lifestyles to a more environmentally friendly outlook, you can even purchase furniture for your children’s room and outdoor living areas that come in eco-friendly styles as well.

Decorating with eco-friendly furniture doesn’t have to involve compromises either. Previously, green furnishings tended to be off-the-wall or “hippyish,” not the sort of items you’d find in a mainstream home. Today you can still purchase eco-friendly furniture with earthly flair, but you can also find pieces that look just like regular high end furniture if you desire.

Overall, the furniture companies have done a remarkable job proving that furniture does not have to be plain, boring or ugly to be eco-friendly. The options that are available are all stylish, bold, fun and quite creative, so that those who are environmentally conscious and still care about having a home that looks modern and stylish can get exactly what they want. If you are trying to stick with a specific theme such as modern or contemporary it is now possible to find the furniture you need.

What constitutes eco-friendly furniture? Well, it can be a lot of things, so it’s up to you to read the company’s website and see what it is about and what it is producing.

Examples of green furniture can be pieces that are made entirely or partially recycled materials. Being eco-friendly often means using stains, paints, or finishes that have entirely natural and non-toxic elements (i.e. no volatile organic compounds or VOCs). Wooden furniture is usually made from reclaimed or forest-certified woods (i.e. trees that are harvested from tree farms grown for the purpose, rather than old growth trees–this usually involves replanting of new trees at the same time as the old are taken down). In fact, some furniture that looks wooden may not be made from wood at all but from a composite of recycled materials or perhaps from bamboo, which is a fast-growing grass that has all the strength and durability of wood but grows to maturity in a few short years.

With all the options out there, you are sure to find eco-friendly furniture that fits your lifestyle and your home. Gone are the days of feeling guilty for having a stylishly decorated home; you can now feel free to decorate your home in great furniture that is friendly to the environment, friendly to the wallet, and very friendly on the eyes.

Take some time and search around the great stores (make sure to check out their websites and read the about us pages to get a feel for their priorities and what sort of eco-friendly materials they employ) and you will find numerous collections that you can use to help inspire your latest decorating venture. Whether you purchase an entire collection or only a few pieces, the entire process has never been simpler to support the environment and have a great home.

So the holiday season is just around the corner, and you’re thinking about shopping for something new for your living room, but not sure what to get? Here’s a little story about Amish furniture and an old hutch in my great-grandmother’s living room which might help you in making the right choice for your house.

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The memory of my great-grandmother is unforgettable, despite the fact that when I knew her, I was still a young child. As children, my sisters and I would go to her house and she would always welcome us with a hug and some kind of treat or two. Like her hugs and her treats, her house had that same warmth and distinctively sweet flavor, the memory of which has left a permanent and happy mark upon my mind. I remember in particular the old dining room hutch in her salon, a beautiful piece, and a timeless memory. That hutch was the one piece of furniture in her house that we weren’t allowed to touch, and to this day I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was the glass figurines she had inside, and so fearing that we might break them she kept us away. Or perhaps it was the fact that the hutch had been handed down to her from her own mother and from her mother before, and so stood as testimony both to the arts of the past and to our own family tradition.

In the end however, my grandma’s house one day caught on fire. They told me that she had left the burner on and somehow the rest of the house lit up. Fortunately, my great-grandmother was out at the store at the time, but unfortunately the hutch burnt with the house, and that beautiful piece was forever lost to memory-or so we thought.

I can’t really say why, but the hutch has always remained in my mind, perhaps as a memory of my late great-grandmother and her house, or perhaps for some other reason. As it turns out, I was walking down the street one day window shopping when I passed by an Amish handcrafted furniture store, whereupon I was suddenly startled. I was looking at the same hutch, or at least a very similar design! I paused with excitement, then immediately called up my sister who came and just as excitedly viewed this strange and uncanny piece that stood before our eyes.

So naturally I ended up buying the hutch, which wasn’t too expensive since it happened to be a wholesale Amish furniture store, and to this day, it sits in my house and the memory of my great-grandmother is recalled with it, every time I see it.

The moral of the story is that if you’re thinking about getting some new furniture, but you’re unsure of what to get, think about investing in timeless Amish furniture, similar to the hutch in my great-grandmother’s salon. The benefits of such a piece, as you will find, extend way beyond merely the furniture itself-for such handcrafted pieces really do last a lifetime and much more, becoming antiques which we hand down from generation to generation.