The author Sarah Vegna is currently up to date with the new book Lo saves a chair. A book about recycling and seeing possibilities! Here, Sarah tells how recycling became an obvious part of her life, and gives tips on things you can do with a broken chair.

I grew up in a recycled house. It was just my dad and me. He is a trained cabinetmaker, but worked part-time as a nurse. There wasn't a lot of money, so everything was salvaged, renovated, fixed up, because it was too expensive to buy new. Also the house.

Dad managed to buy a small croft when I was four years old. There wasn't even water and sewage in the house when we moved in. He helped others who had houses that were to be demolished, and he took that wood as a resource and built on the croft, which eventually became a villa.

I wasn't always very happy with this as a child, so rarely getting new things, but I think that in so many ways it has shaped me into who I am. And now, when so many people want to save things instead of buying new, I hope to contribute with some knowledge and inspiration.

The fact that I chose the chair for the first book about Lo was because a chair has a good basic construction. If you are not used to carpentry, a straight, simple chair is a good form to build on. I have rebuilt many chairs together with my children. Here are some tips on what you can do with an old chair:

Toy storage

Storage of dirty laundry

To grow flowers and other things in

If you instead put hinges on the seat, you get both storage and a seat.

Or maybe have the opening forward and put an extra shelf in the middle - a perfect garage for the toy cars!

Thanks Sarah for the inspiration! 💚

Books by Sarah Vegna:

Lo saves a chair
We grow strawberries
We bake buns
We wash the car