18. July 2022
Jenny Bittroff
A couple of weeks ago, an interesting topic came up within our VAST GREEN Team. VAST Lady Franzi was about to move into her new apartment.
Her head was full of tasks to be done right before the big day. Did I forget anything? Are there enough helpers for moving-day? Who doesn’t know the feeling?
When moving into a new home, one has the wish to decorate the new place with nice furniture. There are endless possibilities to lighten your bank account during this pursuit.
If you type the word „kitchen table“ into well-known search engines, you get more than 9 billion results. Quite frustrating right? The selection includes words such as „shabby chic“, „danish design“ and „modern classics“. The price starts at 50 Euros and quickly reaches a four-figure sum.
If you ask me, it is not encouraging to fight through online shops for hours or even days to find the piece you are looking for.
You can also give an already used furniture piece the chance to a second life.
Sounds a lot nicer right? Well it is. Luckily, our dearest VAST Lady Franzi thought so too and told us the story on how she found her favorite furniture piece.
"I love my new table. It is a real treasure with history!" Franzi
„I looked for a new kitchen table for days, even weeks. Everything looked the same and nothing seemed to fit. I recently sold my old kitchen table on ebay-kleinanzeigen, so I thought I would try to find something there again. One day, I found an offer for an old, rectangular, brown wooden table in good condition for 70 Euro. The seller lived no more than 300 m away from me, so I thought I would walk there and take the table back to my home by foot – with support from a friend of course. When I got there, I paid for the table and carried it down the stairs to the entrance, when it fell into pieces. The pieces were still intact so we decided to go get a car because we did not want to carry the single pieces back home. A friend of mine went to get a car and I took one bigger piece, which would not fit into the car by foot. When I waited for my friend to arrive, I noticed an old stamp on the backside of the table top: 21st of June 1939 – I bought a table, which was 83 years old and immediately thought of the many places the table had already been and the „life it lived“.
I like the story because if the table would not have fallen into pieces during the transport, I probably would have never found the stamp.
I love my new table. It is a real treasure with a history and it is so robust, that it even survived a crash. If I would have bought a new kitchen table, I would have missed this joyous feeling. Second Hand shopping just makes me happy“
But, not only Franzi loves to buy second hand. VAST Lady Vanessa decorated a huge part of her apartment with used furniture. From sideboards she lovingly restored, to a kitchen table which once belonged to her great-grandparents, and a closet given to her by her grandparents.
„When my boyfriend and I moved together six years ago, we were still in our studies and therefore couldn’t afford a lot of new furniture. Luckily he brought half of the inventory with him. His great-grandparents already had breakfast at our kitchen table and our closet had been restored and painted by his grandmother ages ago. Step by step it became a hobby of ours to wander through flea markets on weekends, always on the lookout for nice pieces to take care of. Our dearest treasure was found during a walk with our dog Elmo: a neglected TV-lowboard from former East Germany without feet and only two knobs. We saw potential in it, took it with us and restored it with new paint, feet and knobs.
I also love to look for second hand clothing. Many pieces in my closet already had an owner before me .“
Owning a furniture or clothing piece, which tells long stories about its life, brings special joy. It gets you excited for years and years and it is the most sustainable way to decorate your home. We feel glad that our team is interested in sustainability even beyond their professional lives.
You can find online second hand furniture here:
https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/
https://www.fairmondo.de
https://moebelkeller.de
https://www.troc.com/de
https://www.thevintagestore.de
https://furnituregarden.de
