Africa is a huge place – containing over 50 countries if you include the island nations. A myriad of landscapes is contained within their borders – savannah, desert, rainforests, mountains & sea coasts – from remote wilderness to urban hubs.
How can you sum it up in 8 items? Well, you can’t of course, but after browsing offerings on the web, here’s our choice of items with a distinct African flavour.
We have a spare bedroom in our house that has been earmarked as a workroom. It’s currently acting as a spill-over stock room, but the dream is for it to be a craft room. Well, part organised craft room and part creative home office.
One of the main considerations for a craft room is storage. I like and need order in a workroom – everything in its place and conveniently to hand. Although they’re lightweight and often transparent, I really don’t like ugly plastic boxes. Give me wood, wicker, cardboard, textile and other natural materials any day.
Another important thing to take into account is your comfort. You’ll probably be sitting down for long periods of time – at a sewing machine, at a desk – you don’t need a chair that makes your backache. It needs to be the right height for the table or desk that you sit at, so an adjustable workshop stool is ideal.
Adequate lighting is another necessity – especially if you’re doing jobs like embroidery or fitting a zip or attaching buttons. A good desk light with angled arms and a pivoting head is ideal for this kind of work. No straining your eyes with a dim overhead light casting a shadow over what you’re doing.
Once all these physical practicalities are taken care of, the emotional requirements need addressing. Colour is the best way to set a mood in an interior environment. Bright bursts of colour around the room lift the spirits. We both spend much of our working day listening to the radio – it’s usually tuned to BBC 6 Music, but Radio 4 is the soundtrack to our lazy Sunday afternoons.
Property prices in the UK, especially in London and the South, are absolutely bonkers. If they want to own their own home, many buyers may not be able to afford much more than a small flat or bedsit. Studio living is many people’s reality.
If a home is compact & bijou – there’s a lot that can be done to maximise a living space. Items such as room dividers and rugs help to zone & delineate the different living and working areas.
Use space-saving and metamorphic furniture & fittings. Compact, folding, collapsible, stacking versions of usually bulky items such as chairs, tables and beds can free up a lot of space when not in use.
Multipurpose items of furniture prove useful additions to studio living. Daybeds, sofa beds and shelving units that double up as room dividers cut down on the number of necessary furnishings and stop a space feeling over-crowded or cluttered.
Unfortunately, smaller doesn’t necessarily mean cheaper – mini versions of fixtures and appliances aren’t always less expensive than their full-size versions.
According to Wikipedia, ‘Wicker is woven fibre formed into a rigid material, most often used for baskets or furniture.‘ But wicker isn’t just for baskets and furniture, it’s used in homewares in lots of creative, attractive and affordable ways.
Wicker is usually done with willow but lots of other natural (and some man-made) materials are used; rattan, cane, bamboo, water hyacinth, sea grass, rush, raffia, straw… and even banana fibre!
In our last house we had sea grass flooring that was beautiful, hard-wearing, red wine stain-resistant and lovely to walk on in bare feet. We had a vintage cane hanging chair that was a magnet for all young children that came to visit. We have a stack of woven baskets, picnic hampers and a huge industrial laundry basket where we keep all manner of things tidy, hidden and out of the way.
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